Sunday, May 28, 2017

KINGDOM of the ANTS part 3

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



By R. Peterson

Mr. and Mrs. Lopez were out for the evening; as their son Kent had gone to make a movie with his friend Scotty, the Lopez residence on Garlow Street in Cloverdale was empty. Good thing it was. It was neighbors who felt the shaking just before midnight and instantly feared an earthquake. By the time they ran into the street, many in pajamas and nightgowns, they could tell it was no earthly upheaval, the tremors were too confined, but something was definitely happening to the Lopez residence. The sides of the Spanish stucco house were shaking and the cedar shingles on the roof were breaking apart and flying into the air. Someone called the fire department although there were no flames visible … yet. Just as Cloverdale’s pumper truck number one rounded the corner and roared down the street, with siren’s wailing to wake even the deepest sleepers, the windows of the house exploded outward.
Clair Andrews, who lived across the street, screamed.  Her husband  who was just climbing into his Ford pickup for the midnight shift at the Comanche County Lumber Mill, was suddenly swimming in a lake of insects. “Get em off!” Ben bellowed as he stumbled erratically across his lawn, slapping all parts of his body and apparently blinded by the ants swarming over his face. Before Clair could scream again she too was attacked. She made it halfway to her husband writhing on the lawn before she fell and was also covered.
Ed Fowler who was driving the fire truck thought the crowd of people running away from the house had all been horribly burned until chunks of the swarming black mass of insects covering their bodies fell away and he could see bloody and swollen skin underneath. Crew member Ted Evans reached for his door as soon as the truck stopped but the quick thinking fire chief avoided disaster by instantly locking all the doors with a switch on his armrest. “Hold on Ted! Let’s take a minute to figure out what we’re up against before we do a George Custer and find out we’re outnumbered by the Indians,” he gasped.
Lucille Morgan, a twenty-three year old third grade teacher who was due to be married in August, climbed on the bumper of the truck then sprawled across the hood as thousands of ants began to feast on her flesh. Her swollen and bloody face was pressed up against the windshield. She opened her mouth to scream and a stream of ants flowed from her mouth and out her nose. In an instant the soft creamy flesh beneath her pink nightgown was turned into what looked like raw strip steaks popping and sizzling on a hot grill.
The river of ants pouring outward in all directions from what used to be the Lopez residence didn’t appear to be slowing; in fact the flow of insects was increasing. Seconds later, all the glass windows of the truck were covered by the dark moving mass and Ted reached over in the dark and turned on the windshield wipers. The black blanket covering the truck’s windshield became two crimson smears of twitching legs and tiny severed heads. Still they came on. Ten insects replaced each one that turned into a bloody mess. The truck began to rock on all eight of its tires.
Ed thought to use his radio to call the sheriff’s office. “Mayday! Mayday!” he bawled into the mouthpiece. “This is pumper truck number one and we’re under attack!” Nanette Grover who manned the 911 lines for four hours after working a swing shift as a waitress at Spare-A-Dime laughed out loud. “Is that you Ed Fowler? I’m jealous! You been dancing with a flirtatious bottle of Black Velvet again?”
“I mean it Nanny! We’re in bad trouble here!”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Ants!” Ed screamed. “God Damn! Ants!”
Nanette laughed again. “For two grown men, you and Ted Evans are the biggest posies in town. Don’t be afraid of a few ants! Step on them! That’s what those work boots you’re wearing are for!” She listened for a reply and instead heard more screams and breaking glass … and then a buzzing sound as she lost the signal. Her smile evaporated and her hands shook as she dialed Sheriff Walker’s number.

-------2-------


Sheryl Bliss groaned when the power went out, not because she was afraid of the dark or of being alone; darkness had always given her a kind of electric comfort, but because Sara Rue vanished from the big screen TV just when she was about to have sex with the Amish hitchhiker in the rest area and Sheryl had really wanted to see the movie Gypsy 83. She and Johnny had fought over the video rental. He had wanted to watch Gladiator but the only thing Sheryl liked about Russell Crowe was his last name and she had insisted on the low-budget cult film. Johnny had called the “B” movie a piece of trash and had left early. Sheryl despised Johnny’s friends Kent Lopez and Scotty Target but sometimes she wished he had more of their independent focus. She found a candle and matches in the cupboard above the sink and wandered through the house turning off light switches so that the circuit breaker didn’t trip when the power returned in a sudden surge.
Sheryl thought she heard the back door creak open but laughed it off as nervous frustration. Johnny wanted her to go all the way and have sex with him but she wasn’t sure if he was the one. She went to the front window and peered outside just as the power went off all over town. At least it’s not just this house she whispered. For a moment there I thought I was in trouble.

-------3-------

A crash of lightning lit up the night sky above Black Rose Cemetery just as the lights of Cloverdale blinked off in the distance. Joanie and the other members of Cloverbone watched in awe as Ham pulled a dead rat from her mouth by a long stringy tail opened her mouth wide showing jagged and rotting teeth and then swallowed the rodent. The reigning Salt Lake City Doom Queen, at a lanky six foot six wearing a hood and flowing black robes, loomed over Joanie and her group as the other members of Abra Cadaver closed in. “Even Goth fights have rules,” Joanie objected. “We are short two members and the siege isn’t scheduled until midnight.”
Ham leaped up on the large slab of granite covering Black Rose’s grave making her appear even more formidable and imposing. “This is no siege,” she hissed as a skeletal digit supporting a three-inch black fingernail swept across all eleven members of Cloverbone. “Your pathetic excuse for a coven is not worth the effort.”
“Then why challenge us to a fight?” Marsha (Baby Bat) blurted. “I saw the rat hanging in Joanie’s locker and the note written with nail polish on the inside.”
“This is merely to be an execution,” Ham said. “Since your numbers are inadequate … the rules no longer apply. Now who wants to be first?” The silence in the cemetery was deafening; only the lustful breathing from the Salt Lake City invaders could be heard.
At least forty members of Abra Cadaver had now formed a circle around the terrified members of Cloverbone. Long fingers, painted white to look skeletal, opened dark robes and produced foot-long ice picks glistening under the constant flashes of lightning illuminating the sky. “Crucify them in the dirt!” Ham ordered as four of her followers grabbed a struggling Jason Lynx, dragged him onto the grass and prepared to pin him to the ground.
“Wait!” Joanie shouted. “We do have thirteen members!”
“Where?” Ham laughed. “I see only a group of children waiting to be run over by a bus.”
Joanie shoved away the Battle Bats holding Jason down and helped him to his feet. She grasped Baby Bat’s left hand and whispered for the others to do the same forming a circle around the huge flat stone that Ham perched on. “Hermie and Rose will be our new members,” Joanie declared.
            “An oracle spirit … and a ghost?” Ham sneered her distain as she gazed at the Ouija board chalk-markings on the rock. “But they’re both dead!”
            “We’ll blow our own Doom Cookie crumbs – thank you!” Joanie told her. “You should never lay siege to a rival coven without knowing the extent of their powers!” Joanie rubbed her crystal and wagged her own finger. “Now excuse me … but you are inside our power circle!”
With a tremendous crack and a blast of dark ethereal energy Ham was catapulted from the top of the stone, sprawling in a twisted heap in the withered weeds on the other side of Jim Coot’s grave. Abra Cadaver’s leader leaped to her feet fuming and furious. “The moon will watch each of you beg for mercy before this night is through,” she vowed. As if following her orders, the lunar orb in the sky peered from behind dark clouds and washed across the astonished faces of Cloverbone.
            “I didn’t know you had such Mansonetic powers!” Baby Bat gushed her admiration.
Joanie felt the last bit of energy drain from the crystal she was holding.  “Had might be the nonterminal word,” she whispered.
            “You’ll all scream for ice-cream!” Ham promised as she produced her own ice-pick and her coven slowly closed in. Her dark crow-like eyes gazed hungrily at the young spoons and forks holding hands as if they were all bugs, “… after we punch your tickets to a very toasty Hell!”
            “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Baby Bat moaned as she clutched Joanie’s hand.
            “I only pray the spirits I called can hear me,” Joanie gasped, “and that they will fight with us!”
All the members of Cloverbone turned and looked inside the circle as a screeching sound came from the surface of the flat gravestone. The triangular piece of wood Baby Bat had used as a Planchette was once again gliding across the chalked-in Ouija Board pattern. Joanie and Marsha both moaned as the pointer spun downward across the white printed numbers and rested on GOOD BYE.

-------4-------

The invading army of ants covered three blocks of splintered rubble by the time Sheriff Walker arrived. He immediately called in every off-duty officer on the force as well as the state police. “You’ve got to do something drastic,” Mayor Otter screamed at him, “or these insects going to destroy the entire city?” The mayor had dispatched her own PTA Ladies for Student Development group to supervise and chastise the firemen and police officers, armed with wet rugs and blankets, trying to beat the swarming ants into submission.
“I smell stove oil!” Sheriff Walker told one of his deputies. “Where is it coming from?”
The deputy pointed to a dozen leaking canisters the firemen were removing from the back of the overturned and ravaged fire truck. “Drip torches,” the deputy said. “They spray oil and ignite it at the same time. The county fire crew uses them to start a back-fire when they are trying to control a large range-burn.”
            “Have your men each take a torch and form a circle around the ants,” Sheriff Walker ordered. “Burning may be the only way to stop these swarming demons.”
            “You’re going to burn part of the city!” Mayor Otter was shocked when she heard the news.
            “It looks like the only alternative,” the sheriff told her and then skillfully played to his boss’s sense of fiscal responsibility. “There isn’t enough money in the city budget to pay for all the sugar to keep an ant farm this size.”

-------5-------

            With no power the silence in the dark house was deafening. Sheryl curled up on the couch and tried to read a book by candlelight. Something appeared to be tugging on her senses as she began reading chapter three of Julia Hughes’ Everybody Lies. Constable McKay was just pulling up to Lavender Hill Cottage when Sheryl heard the distinctive sound of a loose board squeaking. She had lived all sixteen years of her life in this same dwelling and knew every sound the old house made. Someone was in the house and creeping through the kitchen! The board squeaked again …  two someones!
            Sheryl dropped the novel on the floor and stood up, not sure if she should walk into the kitchen or wait for whoever was in her house to come to her. She listened carefully but could hear no other sound only the thumping of her own heart. Fear is like a dripping gasoline tank … let it leak long enough and there’s a chance that it will combust into adrenaline. Sheryl took a deep breath, picked up the candle, pulled an iron-poker from a stand next to the fireplace and marched toward the kitchen.
Shadows from the dining room chairs appeared to hide as she entered the room … slipping under the large formal table and ducking behind a china hutch. She held the candle above her head and turned slowly in a circle … there was no one there. The laundry room leading into the garage was empty as well. Sheryl laughed at herself and was just turning to go back into the living room when a horrible hooded face from a nightmare suddenly loomed before her. Large swollen lips that seemed to be made of rubber uttered a low “Boo!” just before breath from the same lips blew out the candle. Sheryl glimpsed a large butcher knife sweeping toward her in a vicious downward thrust and just beyond someone holding a video camera … she had just an instant before everything went dark.

-------6-------

Joanie watched as six members of Cloverbone had mud, made from grave dirt, smeared over their closed eyes before they were blindfolded.  The six sat on the grass opposite a likewise blinded member of Abra Cadaver and the ceremony of týr began. Cloverbone had been challenged so they went first. Each Blowfish from Abra Cadaver placed his or her hand palm down on the grass and was forbidden to move it. The blindfolded Cloverbone Deathbats moved sharpened forks in the air above where the hands were placed waiting for a silent signal from Joanie who was clutching her crystal and sending out telepathic commands when to strike. Tony Crea missed his target by less than an inch. Jason Lynx impaled a wrist claiming victory, and so did two other Cloverbone.
Joanie and Babybat hissed their delight. Cloverbone had three new members and Ham slipped rings made from silver spoon handles that matched the spoon-bowls the Blowfish wore around their necks from her fingers and gave them to Joanie with a knowing smirk. “We picked up three,” Bitch whispered as Babybat led the three away to be Black lipped (sexually initiated) and to dip their tongues in tar (take coven vows.) “But Ham can afford to lose them … we can’t!”
Ham stood up and raised her arms in the air. Her voice hissed like a snake. “Abra Cadaver has repelled an assault and by the rules of engagement we call for Sudden Death!”
Baby Bat gasped. Joanie scowled as if she knew this was coming. Abra Cadaver had just called for all members of Cloverbone, except for the reigning Doom Queen, to submit to týr in an effort to bring the ceremony to an end quickly. There was no way she could refuse. Joanie watched as all the other members of Cloverbone including the three new ones captured from Ham placed their hands flat on the grass.
Ham leaped to the top of a headstone and swayed dangerously in all directions as the 1938 Adler Damenrad ladies’ bicycle circled soundlessly in the air high above her. Lusty, crow-eyes from Ham’s skull-like head surveyed all thirteen targets. The crystal she held in the air above her was magnificent glowing with a dark and sinister brilliance. Stolen from a grave in South America rumor said … as old as the Spanish Conquistadores. The blinded blowfish began to sweep the air above the hands with their forks. As was the custom of Abra Cadaver before a siege, Ham began to speak loudly in tongues … when she stopped … all of her Blowfish would strike as one.
“Ickoo bladaba … zit em ba.
Kooloo beezabub … to ing ka.
Gagawa zobo .. turn da noo.
Zig ba … zig ba … ba zig … Boo!”

With a flash like lightning, thirteen Cadaver forks, sharpened with needle-like points, pierced the exposed palms of all thirteen members of Cloverbone. Joanie hung her head among the shrieks and the agony of her former coven members. “Do I hear a challenge from your pathetic oracle demon or your impotent grave ghost?” Ham listened for a full minute to the wind whispering in the trees drawing out the graveyard drama, and then she laughed with great scorn. “No I think not! Since you are now a Doom Queen without a following … I with great reluctance, but with equal pleasure, sentence you to death!” the victorious Ham was suddenly furious. “Crucify her!”
 Joanie Otter was hardly aware of the spoon rings being stripped from her fingers as a dozen Blowfish dragged her to an open spot between graves. “I’m sorry!” she called to Babybat as the joyful members of Abra Cadaver stretched out her arms and legs and prepared to nail her to the ground with wooden mallets and razor-sharpened railroad spikes. In the distance sirens sounded as if the entire western Montana world was under siege.
“Hermie! Rose! Where are you?” Marsha (Babybat) moaned as she was led away with the others to be tar tongued into the new coven.

-------7-------

Even with the back fires Sheriff Walker was losing the battle with the ants. People were frantic … running everywhere. “There are just too many!” Walker told one of his deputies as millions of ants continued to push through the flames using the burnt corpses of other ants as shields. “Get ready to evacuate the town!”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Mayor Otter protested. “How will we get everyone out of their homes?”
“Sound every police siren and the alarm for the fire truck,” Walker ordered. “Make sure every house is empty. Make sure we leave no one behind!”

Suddenly every police officer, firefighter and exhausted worker battling the ants gaped in wonder as millions of ants left the flames and began to follow a shrouded personage walking down the center of Townsend Avenue. A glowing object shining with the brilliance of a fallen star was held high above the dark figure’s head.
            “What the hell … or who the hell is that?” Mayor Otter gasped.

Ten minutes later, a deputy reported that the ants were moving out of town down Vineyard Road toward Black Rose Cemetery still following the strange personage.
            “What do we do?” The officers looked to the sheriff for guidance. The distraught mayor had just been informed that her daughter Joanie was missing and suddenly could care less about her civic responsibility.
            “Let the ants and their leader go,” Sheriff Walker said. “This night belongs to them!”


TO BE CONTINUED …




Sunday, May 21, 2017

KINGDOM of the ANTS part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



By R. Peterson

Joanie Otter knew something unusual was happening even before she showered in ice cold water, and started applying Lime Crime black lipstick. All three of the moon glow junipers outside her upstairs window were whispering together. The two-inch long crystal she wore on a silver chain around her neck was putting off strange pulsations almost as if creatures that weren’t supposed to were trying to communicate with her.
Joanie rolled her eyes and spit the F word three times when she saw the cerise Gucci pants and matching blouse her mother had placed on the cabinet next to the sink; they must have cost a fortune. Joanie knocked them onto the wet floor and used them to wipe up the water, wishing she would have done it when her feet were still dirty. Her mother hated how she dressed in her senior year of high school, but even the mayor of Cloverdale’s daughter had to choreograph her own death. Joanie knew the truth: all living things on the planet were actually in the process of dying. Why try to deny it? She dropped the wet designer clothes in the toilet bowl and closed the lid. Maybe now “Mrs. Cleaver” and her LSD - Ladies for Student Development friends would take the hint.
Her mother was yelling again from downstairs about the time. Joanie put in a CD of Siouxsie and the Banshees and cranked up the volume on Passenger to earthquake levels to drown out the sound.
            Even though she was on the thin side, Joanie struggled to get into short black denim pants so tight they looked painted on. Black garters supported black bell-bottom leggings exposing three inches of creamy white thigh. The black mesh-top sleeveless shirt with a satanic star woven with silver thread on the front barely covered her small breasts. Separate black sleeves went from her wrists to just past her elbows. She dried her straight shoulder length ebony hair with a towel and shook it out.  Joanie could hear distant rumblings when she put on her crystal earrings and silver bracelets. It sounded like millions of tiny grinding teeth with thrashing legs were blowing up a storm. Better go easy on the pocket-niners. (Ecstasy-pills) 
The nine-buckle boots, with two inch stomps, had a hidden zipper and were very tight but easy to put on. Joanie wanted to get to school early to blow doom crumbs with Bitch and Babybat. Two new kindergoths, Kent Lopez and Scotty Target, were scheduled to be tar-tongued (initiated into the coven) on Saturday night. They better each have a crystal soaked with virgin blood! The nineteenth was the only black wedding in April (first full moon). Joanie was feeling euphoric, excited and desperate.
Something uber-dangerous was coming to Cloverdale, Joanie could sense it, the crystal necklace she wore accentuated her perceptions, but she didn’t think it was Abra Cadaver the rival coven from Salt Lake City or Mortuary Frost the smaller one from Anaconda … although both groups had been extra threatening as of late and a territorial war was definitely coming.
Ham, Abra Cadaver’s reining Doom Queen, had sent Joanie a crushed black rose with a shredded stem inside a plastic bag filled with blood, urine and feces. Joanie sent Ham a huge rotting cucumber with a condom stretched over one end and a black post-it note attached that said stick it written with white chalk. The message was clear, the vicious Mormon-spawned bitch intended to eradicate Joanie’s coven and drown her in the Cottonmouth River or even worse in Cloverdale’s crumbling sewer system. The Cloverbone Coven was her responsibility. If Joanie didn’t destroy all enemies, things could get new sod ugly for the members … and for her fishy - wet and forever cold. And she was still plowing bones … (looking for answers).
Two new kindergoth might help. Joanie hated Ham and the Margaret Hamilton bicycle she always appeared riding after an impressive Mansonite bang of smoke. Big cities could bleed gallons more effects than the tiny. Abra Cadaver had almost thirty forks (boy members) and forty spoons (girl members). Joanie stumbled as she rushed down the stairs and almost fell.
Margaret Otter gasped. “Joanie, be careful!” Then she tried to hand her fleeing daughter a plate of scrambled eggs, toast and a glass of milk.
“I’m on a f#$%$#$ diet mother!” Joanie screamed as she ran through the kitchen. “Don’t be a smell that follows!”
“But you’re over five-foot seven … and you barely weigh a hundred and nine pounds!”
“I know that, mother! Don’t be a f#$%$%# doom cookie!” Joanie yelled as she slammed the front door hard enough to make screws pull out from the hinges.

-------2-------

The Federal Bureau of Land Management was charged with eradicating the two-hundred acre swarm of murderous bugs moving across south-western Montana. Local newspapers and nation television were calling it an Ant Farm. The governor had declared a state of emergency after the insects were blamed for at least nine deaths and a hundred million dollars in property damage. James M. Billman oversaw the loading of three air-tankers filled with two thousand gallons of concentrated Pyrethroids in Missoula airport. “As if range fires aren’t bad enough now we have ants crashing every picnic in the Big Sky state,” he grumbled as the planes took off.
Twenty minutes later all three pilots radioed that the poison had been successfully delivered. “Any chance of survivors?” Billman radioed back.
“Negative,” all three pilots declared. “If the poison itself didn’t kill them … they are surely drowned.”
No one was on the ground near the moving army of ants and didn’t see the millions of tiny holes they had dug deep into the earth just before the chemicals splashed down.

-------3-------

Kent Lopez was overjoyed with his new found powers. He paid Cloverdale’s local jeweler twenty bucks to mount the crystal and attach it to a silver chain. Just by holding the crystal in his hand and thinking about something, he was able to make it happen. “How about letting me wear the crystal for a while before we have to give it up,” Scotty Target suggested when they were gathering books out of their lockers for third hour geometry class. He was thinking about the Cloverbone initiation on Saturday night. “After all we both found it!”
Kent was annoyed with his friend’s persistent claims to something that was obviously his. The whole Goth thing was beginning to seem stupid and childish. “Not until I discover its secrets,” he said. Marsha Hicks happened to be walking down the hall alone. Kent thought she looked exceptionally fine in a short skirt and a tight Cashmere sweater. “Let’s see if those things you’re covering up are real or not,” Kent mouthed the words as he rubbed the crystal and stared. Marsha stopped suddenly and dropped the armload of books she was carrying. She lifted up her sweater with both hands exposing her bra-covered breasts while looking up and down the hallway with eyes like two vacant burned-out buildings. Suddenly she realized what she was doing, pulled the sweater back down, picked her books off the floor and ran down the crowded hallway amongst a chorus of hysterical laughter.
            “Did you make her do that?” Scotty staring was in awe.
            “Perhaps,” Kent said, “or maybe we just got lucky.” Kent smiled as he tucked the crystal back under his shirt. ‘It’s good to be king.”

-------4-------

Joanie wasn’t as surprised as she should have been when she opened her locker with a key and found a dead rat hanging from fishing line with a silver-fork stuck through its neck. Still she dropped her books. She had been expecting this. Ham’s powers were second to none. The word Cadaver was written on the back of the locker with red fingernail polish along with words Froth Moon. The dead rat meant it was a fight to the death and Ham and her coven would be waiting for them Saturday at midnight in Black Rose cemetery. Baby Bat came up behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” Joanie told her. “We have a fight coming and we’re outnumbered.”
“Mortuary Frost?” Marsha smiled. “I think even with just eleven we can make them go soft.”
“Ham sent me a message.” Joanie opened her locker to show her best friend. “She wants me banned from the planet and Cloverbone scattered in the wind.”
Marsha let put a hushed shriek and stepped back when she saw the tortured animal. “How did she get in your locker?”
            “Who knows,” Joanie said looking up and down the busy hallway. “Ham has spies everywhere.” She fingered the crystal hanging around her neck and glared at a pimple-faced sophomore stumbling past with an armload of books. “Naked, sex, boobs, look ….” Joanie chanted. Robert Maxwell stared straight ahead refusing to divert his eyes. “It could be him,” Joanie said. “Either that, or he’s scratching a different itch.”
            “Maxwell is just afraid of spilling his milk,” Marsha snickered. “I heard him crying in confession and telling Father Walters that he’d looked at a Playboy while washing dishes at Spare-A-Dime.
Joanie wasn’t convinced. “A ribbon like that is easy for a grave-queen like Ham to control with her powers.”
            “Speaking of power,” Marsha said. “You’re future Deathbats approach.
Kent Lopez and Scotty Target danced down the hallway as if they owned the school and everyone in it. Joanie felt the crystal around her neck vibrate and knew the pair possessed at least one of their own … and it was very powerful.
            “Remember,” Joanie told Kent when he ambled up to her. “Your crystals have to be soaked in the blood of a virgin before Saturday night.”
            “Just a prick of your finger … from either of you … should do the trick,” Marsha snickered.
            “I haven’t been a virgin since I was twelve years old,” Kent boasted; Joanie knew he was lying. “And I think we have the blood thing covered.”
            “We’re sharing a crystal because it’s extra-large,” Scotty blurted.
            “I’ll decide whether you share a crystal or a pine box,” Joanie told him. “Let’s have a look.”
Kent reluctantly removed the crystal from his shirt casting sly glances up and down the hall to make sure no-one was looking.
            Joanie and Marsha gasped when they saw the magnificent stone. “Where did you get that?” Marsha squealed.
            “Let’s just say I was victorious over an army of thousands.” Kent smiled.
            “We were victorious … and it was more than thousands,” Scotty added.
            “Whatever,” Joanie couldn’t take her eyes off the stone. “Make sure to coat it with virginal blood, cut your own finger if you have to, but both of you be at Black Rose Cemetery by eleven on Saturday night.
            “I thought a Black Wedding was always held at midnight,” Kent tucked the crystal back inside his shirt.
            “There’s a Baking Contest scheduled in that time slot,” Marsha injected.
            “We need two new Gravers to bring our Deathbats up to thirteen otherwise we fade by default … so we’ll push things up an hour!” Joanie tried to project a confidence that she didn’t feel
            “What are you chicks baking?” Both girls could tell Scotty was serious.
            “Ham,” Joanie told him. “Cloverbone is hopefully baking a big juicy ham.”


-------5-------

On Saturday morning, a gasoline delivery driver filling underground tanks at the Conoco station/convenience store just outside of Cloverdale called 911 in a panic. Sheriff Walker and two deputies responded fifteen minutes later. The last three days had been Hell for Montana law enforcement. It didn’t look like a robbery had taken place; all the money was still in the cash register and the only thing that appeared to be missing was a half-dozen 100 lb. sacks of sugar from the grocery section. The attendant, Charles Adams, who lived upstairs with his wife June was found in the garage part of the building. Someone or something had peeled every ounce of meat and gristle from his body and left his bloody skeleton hanging four feet off the ground from an air-powered lube hose. Sheriff Walker turned his head away respectfully as one of his deputies vomited. The sheriff went through the cash register receipts, Charlie hadn’t been to the bank in over a week, and the sheriff noticed a gas credit card receipt from three days earlier billed to Alfonzo Lopez and signed by his son Kent but thought nothing of it.
            Presumably Mrs. Adams was found in the bathroom upstairs. Only a few teeth remained in the woman’s skull and the sheriff hoped these would lead to a positive identification. The bloody mass inside the still warm soapy water in the bathtub was unrecognizable.
Sheriff Walker stared at the thousands of lines trailing across the bloody floor in the garage and on the stairs coming from the living quarters. It looked as if someone with shaky hands had tried to clean up with a stiff bristle broom. Oddly, the lines ended at an old unused well behind the building. The sheriff put in a request to the FBI office in Butte to have a special confined-space repelling and diving team check it out but was informed it would be after the weekend before they could respond.
Sheriff Walker shook his head. It wasn’t even the end of April and with a dozen unexplained deaths in Comanche County was gearing up for the deadliest summer on record.

-------6-------

            Joanie and the other ten members of Cloverbone assembled at Black Rose Cemetery an hour before Kent and Scotty were supposed to appear and two hours before the scheduled fight to the death with Abra Cadaver. Marsha (Baby Bat) had wanted to contact Hermie, the demon inside Joanie’s Ouija board, and ask the spirit for help but Joanie’s mother and her PTA LSD (Ladies for Student Development) friends had taken possession of the strange oracle a year before and refused to give it back. Joanie thought she knew why. Her mother had become mayor of Cloverdale and her friends had all prospered in commerce and romance since they started having weekly talks with the spirit in the basement of the Comanche County Library.
            The old Negro woman the cemetery was named after was buried in the back with family members and the huge slab of granite that covered her resting place was one of the oldest stones in the graveyard. Marsha used the time waiting for Kent and Scotty to draw a crude copy of the Ouija board on the stone surface with white chalk. The Cloverbone members gathered around the stone and Marsha used a triangular block of wood for a Planchette. A deep rumbling sound and flashes of lightning made the sky look like a battleground. “We have to hurry before the rain washes away the chalk.” Marsha placed one finger on the pointer and Joanie and the nine others did the same. She made her voice low, respectful and as loud as possible with the rising wind.
“Are you here with us?” The pointer began to move dragging along all the fingers and stopped on YES.
“Will you help us in our fight with Ham?” The pointer moved again and stopped on NO.
A gust of wind lifted sand and gravel from the road and pelted their faces with the force of a tiny tornado. Joanie looked at her watch it was past eleven. Where was Kent and Scotty?
“Why will you not help us?” Marsha was almost hysterical. All the hands were shaking as the pointer took forever to move and stop on six letters: A F R A I D.
“What are you afraid of?” The pointer had barely begun to move when a blast of air knocked all the members to the ground. A ball of fire rose into the night sky and Ham appeared from a cloud of smoke riding a nineteen thirties bicycle. At least forty other members of Abra Cadaver appeared around the edges of the cemetery moving inward.
“You’re early!” Joanie gasped as the dark woman got off the bicycle and limped toward her. The bike stayed upright without a kickstand and Joanie could see the wheels were still turning.
“Life is short and I don’t have time to waste,” Ham hissed. What looked like blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth and Joanie noticed the tail of a rat sticking out from between rotted and jagged teeth.
“But we’re not ready!” Joanie’s voice sounded like a plea even to her own ears.
“No one is ever ready for death,” Ham whispered and then she smiled.

-------7-------

Kent and Tony sat inside Kent’s father’s car just down the street from the Bliss residence listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. “Damn it! Johnny was supposed to be grounded!” Both boys stared at their friends bicycle parked on the lawn of his girlfriend Sheryl’s house.
“His parents probably went out to a movie or something and Johnny decided to sneak off.” A flash of lightning showed the rubber mask Kent was examining in his hands. The grotesque features on the disguise looked like a dead person that had recently risen from a grave … even better when he put it on with a human-hair wig. Scotty was using a sandstone to sharpen the edge on a sixteen inch butcher knife. In the back seat was a video camera with sound and infrared capabilities.
“Are we really going to kill her?”
“Yes! We have to!” Kent dropped the mask in his lap and was rubbing the crystal. “We were always meant to kill Sheryl … only we didn’t have the power … now we do.”
“Cloverbone ain’t gonna like it when we show up at the cemetery late!”
“When we show up with the crystal, and Sheryl’s severed head, all will be forgiven.” Kent laughed. “I’ll do it slow … just make sure you film everything!”
Kent looked at his watch it was just before midnight. The door to the house opened and Johnny walked toward his bicycle. “Finally! I thought he was never going to leave her alone!”
The two watched their friend pedal down the street as they walked toward the garage. “You remember where the fuse box is?”
            “Yes! On the back wall.”
After they cut the power to the house they watched as a single candle moved from room to room. Then Kent put on the mask and clutched the knife while Scotty held the camera and they tried the back door. It was unlocked … and they crept inside.

TO BE CONTINUED …


Sunday, May 14, 2017

KINGDOM of the ANTS

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.


KINGDOM
of the
ANTS
By R. Peterson

Kent Lopez gasped. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal playing the part of Jillian Everson in the film version of A Box Filled With Darkness started climbing down a ladder into the seemingly bottomless cardboard container in the hallway of the daycare center. Something with a creepy hissing voice had taken one of her children far below. “Don’t go down there you crackly bitch!”
The Bliss living room flickered from dark to light as the film played on the oversized TV.
            “Chicks in movies always do the most returded things,” Scotty Target mumbled. He couldn’t take his eyes off from the strange horror movie either. Over on the sofa, Johnny Olsen and Sheryl Bliss had started making out after Jillian’s big-breasted next door neighbor Erma Kite, (played by Monica Keena,) stumbled into the scene wearing a wet t-shirt after apparently running through a half-dozen lawn sprinklers. Sheryl’s parents had gone to a charity function and wouldn’t be home until after midnight. “See I told you … you stupid c$%#!” Kent yelled when the ladder slipped and Jillian screamed as she disappeared into the box.
            “Release the bats!” Scotty blurted. “There’s this gnarly huge rat down there that tries to eat her!”
            “Do it! Kill the dumb bitch!” Kent was waving his arms wildly and knocked over a can of Coors spilling beer on the expensive carpet. Sheryl whispered in her boyfriend’s ear and then glared at his two friends.
Johnny stopped groping Sheryl and cleared his throat. “You guys can finish watching this movie another night. It’s almost eleven and me and Sheryl want to spend some time alone before her parents come home!”
            “But we’re just coming to the best part,” Kent complained. Sheryl stood up and marched to a coffee table, not bothering to button up her blouse that showed her naked breasts. She flicked the movie off with a remote control. “I’ll clue you boys in,” she said brushing dark hair out of her eyes. “Ingrid Berdal wins,” she said. “She always wins … in every movie she plays in.”
Johnny was holding the door open. “We’ll have to do this again sometime,” he said with a smirk.

            “That sick-flick was radical,” Kent said when he and Scotty climbed into Scotty’s father’s Suburban. “I wish I had a copy of it!”
            “Wouldn’t it be great if we could make our own scaries,” Scotty told him as he started the car. “For once I’d like to see those stupid c$%$# get what’s coming to them.” He started Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon playing on the car stereo.
            “My old man has all kinds of video equipment he never uses,” Kent said. “He has an infrared camera for shooting in the dark and everything. Why not make our own Horno movie?”
            “Who would we get to play the final girl with the big tits?” Scotty looked over at his friend and smiled. Scotty was rolling a massive joint laced with PCP.
            “Sheryl Bliss,” Kent giggled. “She’s the best looking girl Johnny has ever wanted to bang and she has definitely got a big pair of box office attractions.”
            “She’d never do it,” Scotty said. “Johnny told me she hates our guts and doesn’t want him to bring us over anymore. He’s changed since he booed-up with her!”
            “Who says Sheryl has to know she’s being filmed?” Kent lit the marijuana cigarette. A smell like stale almonds drifted up from the chemical treated smoke. “If we planned everything just right … with her home all alone … suddenly the power goes off. I noticed the breaker box on the wall in the garage when I went out to have a smoke earlier.  Imagine her face as she’s being chased through the house by two hideous demons holding butcher knives.”
            “One masked man-beast with a hissing voice and a knife,” Scotty corrected. “If we go to that much work, one of us is going to have to be holding a camera.”
            “We’re sixteen years old and we have no money. How do we make a movie that doesn’t turn into a vomit bomb?”
            “We butcher the Blair Witch for real,” Kent said. “It’ll be totally awesome! We’ll just make sure we get the plasma to splash everywhere on the walls the floor and record all her screams!”
            “That’s so Brazilian! … Release the bats! I love it!”
            “And don’t even think about putting our names on the credits.”
            “Yeah! The cops would definitely think that was a plate of donuts.”
            “Sheryl is one lucky bitch, I’ll tell you what,” Scotty giggled. He took a hit and passed the cigarette to Kent. He was remembering how sexy Sheryl looked when she walked across the room half dressed.
            “How’s that?”
Scotty exhaled. “She’s going to be a major scream queen and all she has to do it stand there with her big mouth open and bleed.”
Both boys laughed for a full minute until snot was running down their noses.
            “We’re really not going to kill her just to make a film… are we?”
            “No, not just for the movie. All monsters need some kind of power backing them up and we don’t got any, but we’ll still get the c#$% … I promise!”
Kent began to laugh and Scotty joined him. They laughed all the way home and quietly for hours afterward as they lay in their respective beds.

-------2-------

            Fourth-hour P.E. was the only class that Kent and Scotty had together. They stood at the gym sidelines watching a group of seniors play slaughter-ball. Kent was almost knocked unconscious when a ball bounced off from his head. Rex Hicks stood at center court smiling. “Hey Rocky!’ he yelled. “Why don’t you and Bullwinkle get out here so we can have some fun?” He was poking fun at Kent being short and squat and Scotty tall and angular. Everyone in the gym laughed.
            “I gave my last drop of sweat to your sister,” Kent called back trying to be equally as funny.
            “I don’t have a sister … you moron!” Rex bellowed.
            “It must have been your mother then … she was as ugly as you are!” Kent stood looking defiant even though the senior stood a foot taller and was twice his weight.
Just then Coach Johnson walked in and the gym became too silent. “That’s it for today,” he called. “Anyone in my class who doesn’t shower better be on the rag … if not … when I get through with them … that sorry individual will be!”
            “I’m going to get you … you little f#$%” Rex whispered as he filed past Kent and Scotty.
            “We better shower before Coach leaves to help Mrs. Markland clean her lab,” Scotty moaned. The whole school knew the coach had a thing for the science teacher and clean her lab was code for rumored sexual activity.
Kent was just stepping out of the shower and reaching for his towel when Rex Hicks snapped him viciously on the upper thigh with it, missing his genitals by inches. “Coach left early.” Rex snickered. “I don’t blame him. Did you see the tight sweater that #$%$ was wearing?”
            “I don’t look at older women,” Kent said. “After your mother … nobody else gets a rise out of me.” He jerked his butt and legs spastically as if he were having sex.
            “Oh my God! No!” Scotty moaned as the entire football team lifted them both into the air and carried them into the bathrooms.
            “That toilet at the end still doesn’t flush does it?” Several students laughed as Rex dragged Kent kicking and struggling passed the line of stalls. One stall seemed to be occupied with just a pair of boots showing under the door. “I’ll bet it’s got at least one German Brown floating belly-up in the bowl!”
Eddy Frazer opened the door and then held his nose. “Ugghh it’s overflowing!”
            “In you go,” Rex laughed as he forced Kent’s head into the foul water.
            “You’re next!” Eddy grinned at Scotty.
            “Why me? I haven’t done anything!” Scotty wailed as they finally pulled Kent’s head out of the water and shoved him toward the showers.
            “You swim with a turd … you get flushed down the drain with one!” Rex told him.
It was all over in a couple of minutes but to Kent and Scotty it seemed like hours. “I’ll get those bastards if it’s the last thing I ever do. Scotty was splashing water on his face from the sink and Kent was trying to wipe off his head with a handful of paper towels.
Suddenly the occupied stall door opened and Coach Johnson lumbered out pulling up his pants. He’d been there the whole time, now he now sounded angry. “Back in the showers both of you!” A sadistic smile formed on his pudgy face. “And don’t you ever mess with my team!”

-------3-------

Kent was determined that he and Scotty were no longer going to be Cloverdale High School victims. He arranged to pick up Scotty just before midnight in his father’s Falcon. “The jocks have all the power at school,” he said. “It’s time we had some power of our own!”
Scotty was surprised when Kent turned into Black Rose Cemetery; they hadn’t visited the graveyard at night in months … tonight was the first night of the full moon. A group of shadowy figures were clustered around a crumbling headstone near the back of the cemetery with the name Jim Coots barely readable. “Coots was a gunfighter and the first non-Indian buried in this bone vault,” Joanie Otter told them when they climbed from the car. She stepped out of the shadows. It was dark but Scotty could still see the white face-paint and black lipstick. All the others, eleven in number, were dressed in Goth attire, mostly black robes with pieces of silver jewelry dangling from various piercings. “He and his death companions were the first to piedi da tomba.”
“What’s she talking about?” The group had formed a circle around the pair and Scotty was getting nervous.”
“Walk from the grave,” Kent said. Then he went on. “Legend says an old Negro woman named Rose established this cemetery back in 1878 and the Sheriff paid her twenty dollars for each coffin and a dug hole to put it in. Cloverdale was called South Fork back then and it was a wild little town. The black woman made herself a fortune.”
“She was a hole-witch who brought back some of the dead to help her run her ranch,” Joanie said. “That’s why this circle is sacred to Cloverbone.”
“What’s Cloverbone?”
Kent wrinkled his nose. “It’s the name of the coven that we’re going to join.”
            “We are looking for two kindergoth to bring our number back to thirteen since the extraction of two of our hole-witches Terrie Franks and Louise Baumgartner,’ Joanie said. “But you don’t just become stick-witches. First you have to prove you are worthy.”
            “What do we have to do?”
            “Each of you younglings must bring a natural-grown crystal the length of the first finger of your left hand dipped in the blood of a virgin to this spot on midnight of the next full moon,” Joanie said. “The prisms will become part of the coven. Do this and you will become members with our full protection … fail … and you will be cursed with death.”
            “You wouldn’t really kill us just because we decided to change our minds,” Scotty laughed but the sound coming out of his mouth sounded weak and afraid. All eleven members of the coven crowded closer. Scotty thought he could see the gleam of knife blades under the dark robes.
            “Break the rules and Cloverbone will be forced to perform an extraction,” Joanie said. “Terry and Louise failed to obey the rules …and had to be extracted.”
            “But those two died when their car plunged off a cliff and burned when they were coming home from a ball game in Butte,” Scotty blurted. He became silent and brooding when he noticed the knowing smiles gleaming from under the hoods.
            “Fire makes a path. Burning is the only way to kill any witch … stick or hole,” Joanie grinned.

-------4-------

            It was almost a week later before Scotty was able to finagle his father into letting him borrow the station wagon for a trip to Crystal Mountain. The hillside in the south-western corner of Montana was discovered to be a vast source of raw quartz crystals after a highway was blasted through in the previous century. The mountain was pock-marked with empty craters but only a few rock-hounds were now digging. Kent and Scotty followed a winding paved path to the top. “It’s going to be hard finding two perfect crystals the size of our fingers,” Scotty sad looking around. “This place looks like an exploded mine field.”
            “That’s because people are only allowed to dig on this side of the hill,” Kent told him. “We have to search the other side to know what we’re looking for.”
            There was no trail and an hour later the two boys found themselves halfway down the steep hill with scratched arms, faces and legs from brambles and wild raspberry bushes. “We better go back,” Scotty gasped. “Every bush we pass feels like it’s trying to grab me.”
They were on a rock ledge about twelve feet wide. Kent walked over to peer off the edge. “This is it! This is why we came!” Kent was almost shouting and pointing down.
            “Release the bats!” Scotty exclaimed as he looked over the edge. A gigantic red-ant pile at least four-feet tall was crawling with what looked like millions of tiny insects. Just then the sun peered from behind a shroud of clouds and reflected rainbow colors of light from a massive quartz crystal stuck upright in the top center of the nest. “That thing is as big as my hand!”
Between dancing for joy the boys gazed at the magnificent gemstone and wondered how they were going to retrieve it without being eaten alive.
            “No way a bunch of ants could have dragged and erected that crystal there,” Kent said. ‘It had to be some acid-tripping hippie who was trying to start his own animal kingdom.”
            “We have to test their defenses,” Scotty declared. He began to gather stones and an hour later succeeded in killing a Robin with a pitched rock. Both boys gasped as Kent flung the dead bird onto the pile and it was consumed in a matter of seconds. “Those things are evil and it’s almost like they are worshiping the crystal like a God. There’s no way we can even get close to it,” Scotty decided.
            “What was it Joanie said in the cemetery,” Kent was thinking out loud. “Fire makes a path?”
            “All I have is a Bic lighter, a pack of orange slow-burn Zig Zag papers and an eighth ounce of Columbian skunk-bud,” Scotty said. “You want to try to get close enough to start that nest on fire?”
            “There’s no way we’re leaving this mountain without that crystal,” Kent told him. “We passed a gas station with a store a few miles back. I’m sure they have lighter fluid … five or six cans should do it. When the smoke clears, we’ll be in control of the insect’s God and all they’ll have is bad memories.”
            “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Scotty whispered. “That an army of ants are never going to forget what we did to them.”

-------5-------

It was sunset by the time Kent and Scotty made it back to the Falcon and drove three miles to the gas station and back. They had purchased six cans of Rosonol lighter-fluid, all the tiny store had. They spent at least a half hour tossing dry brush and twigs on the nest from a distance before squirting the flammable liquid all over the pile. Kent lit a torch made from a torn piece of his shirt wrapped around a stick and then doused with fluid onto the nest.
The pile burst into flames with a terrific whoosh sound. Kent and Scotty had to stumble backward as far as they could in the thick brush to get away from the flames. A screeching sound like thousands of tiny doors being opened filled the air and both boys covered their ears. At first they thought it was the tiny bodies burning and popping like corn, but when they felt the insects beginning to bite their legs they knew they were under attack.
Running downhill is easy when you are scared out of your mind. They made it to the bottom of the hill and to a waist-deep creek in less than two minutes. They both plunged into the water still sapping their faces arms and legs. After the biting stopped the swelling began. Kent was looking out of one eye and Scotty was nearly blind as they made their way back to the nest.
It was completely dark now and the only illumination was from a thin new-moon and Kent’s i-Phone app. The massive red-ant nest was reduced to a pile of smoldering black ash. The crystal was gone! “They’ve taken it underground!” Scotty exclaimed.
“It would take a thousand ants … and they haven’t had time!” Kent used a long stick to poke around in the ashes. “I didn’t think about ants going to sleep at night,” Kent said. “All we really had to do was wait until dark and we could have taken what we wanted without the death and mayhem.” The ashes were deep; the lighter-fluid soaked nest had burned with a ferocious and frightening fury. “But what fun is that?” Kent laughed then suddenly shouted. “Here it is!”
The crystal had fallen on its side and been buried by smoldering ash but was still ice cold to the touch as Kent held it up to the new moon and turned it in his hand. “The power that belonged to the kingdom of the ants is now ours,” he told the night sky.
“This is only one crystal,” Scotty looked worried. “We were each supposed to return with our own.”
“This one is so large the Cloverbone witches are going to be thrilled,” Kent said. “Relax! Something tells me we have the power now!”
Scotty was the first to feel the vibrations underground. A moment later Kent felt them too. It was like the aftershock of an earthquake, common in the northwest of the U.S., but nether boy had felt the original tremor. ‘I think we’d better make like birds and get the flock out of here,” Kent said just before they scrambled back up the mountain.

-------6-------

A half-hour later they were roaring down the highway leaving Crystal Mountain behind. Both boys sighed relief. If they had stuck around the parking area for another two hours they would have seen the carnage as millions of ants descended from the mountain, tearing the aluminum siding off from a fifth-wheel trailer and stripping every bit of flesh off the retired couple sleeping inside. Two hours before dawn, the gas station where they had purchased the lighter fluid was drowned by an enormous swarming black wave. The gasoline pumps exploded sending a ball of fire into the night sky as the station attendant ran screaming from the building as he was being eaten alive. A Montana State Trooper, responding to a call from a concerned citizen, made the mistake of getting out of his patrol car at a rest area and was literally carried down the side of a mountain by an enraged insect army.
“Our troubles are over,” Kent told Scotty as he dropped him off at his house. It was 4:19 AM. Both boys looked at the crystal one last time before Kent took it home. They struggled and fought to see which one could hold it. The raw gemstone seemed to be vibrating. Tiny shockwaves sent delightful shivers and nausea up and down their arms and legs promising delightful things in the future and an equal amount of fear. Both boys felt like they were finally becoming the all-powerful deities that they were destined to be … and they also felt the impending doom!”
“All we need now is the blood of a true virgin,” Kent whispered as if he held the key to Hell in his hand.
“I heard Johnny say that Sheryl’s parents are going out of town again this weekend but his parents grounded him and he was jacked that he wouldn’t be able to go see her!” Scotty was staring at the bag Kent had slipped the gemstone into.
“Perfect,” Kent said. “It’s movie time! Let’s just hope Johnny has left her hymen intact and her virgin blood will power up my crystal!”
Both boys went to bed feeling both sick and wonderful. Scotty kept thinking about Kent using the word my.
While on both sides of the highway eighty-seven miles from Cloverdale the new moon shown on a deadly army of murderous black insects, drawn by strange vibrations emulating from the stolen crystal,  slowly marching ever onward to reclaim the power what was once their own.

TO BE CONTINUED …