Monstrous to the Core - Full Short Story

Here is an original short story I wrote a while ago. 

 

[editor's note: the first version of this story was truly monstrous to the core, It literally ruined my entire night after reading it, and caused genuine stomach pain. This version is much more....digestible. -ILHG]

S. M. Pike

Monstrous to the Core

Journal of CJ Carlson

JUNE 5

12:50 p.m., Lunch Break

“He was standing right over there in the dark, at the end of the hallway. Real tall. And skinny. Like some weird mannequin or something. Had these long…pointy things sticking out his back. Looked like…like…long insect legs.”

Something scared Carlos shitless today and I could barely make out anything he was saying. Only thing that was clear was that supposedly some tall, skinny-looking sumbitch was standing back there where the old part of the restaurant’s kitchen dips down into a low, nearly pitch-black hallway. Nobody really goes down to that hall anyway, so none of us can confirm what Carlos is saying (those that can understand him, that is). Maybe if the bastard would take a few English lessons his words would come out a little more clearly. They got them all over the internet, don’t they?

Though on the other hand, my therapist Dr. Roll says I can come off a bit “insensitive” for some folks, so maybe this is one of those times. Who knows? At least I wrote it down and didn’t say it out loud like the incident last week which almost resulted in an after-closing-hours parking lot brawl. He also said I should keep this journal if I wanted to work on my anger. Well, it was either that, or go on antidepressants, and I sure as Hell ain’t about to do that. Pills are only for the weak minded and for junkies, and I’m neither. Hell, I wouldn’t even be going to Dr. Roll if the damn court didn’t order me to. So I agreed on this whole journal-bullshit since I wanted to keep this job, well, needed to, for any good length of time. Haven’t had the best luck with that recently. World hasn’t been cutting me much slack. I mean, what does being almost thirty, still bouncing around and barely hanging on to any kitchen or cashier or car wash job tell ya? So these days, I work as many doubles during the week as I can. Backbreaking work, but if I up and lose this gig here too, then all these days workin ten to twelve hours, give or take, is gonna really pay off, and ideally, get me to whatever my next gig is without going hungry.

Anyway, Carlos seems to think he saw something down at the end of the stainless steel row of sinks, where the short back hall (if you can call it that) dips downward, and through an old rusted-shut door, turns into some steep-ass stairs going down into the ground-level building. It gets dark down that hallway, even during the day, so my money’s on he just saw his own shadow when he was back there getting dish soap jugs from the closet or something. I think he might be a junkie, or a pussy, or…well, Hell I don’t know.

Ya see, the owner of this joint, old sixty-something, white pony-tailed David Riggs, explained to me when I started here a few months back, that the ground level building directly underneath this establishment was actually the first Rigg’s Shrimphouse and Bar. That they built this one up on thick wooden pillars after Hurricane Katrina did the original restaurant in real good. Now the old beat-down seafood shack sits mostly buried beneath the presence of its only-slightly upgraded re-incarnation, blending with the never-ending overgrowth of pale green and brown tallgrasses and the hot smell of mud water that carries from the swamp.

Fitting I suppose, what with the Merle Haggard and handful of other old country singers Riggs always likes to have on (though, creeping Jesus, he loves playing Merle), now singing about being a Lonesome Fugitive.

And there stands Riggs, leaning at the end of the oak bar, looking up at the Channel 12 Missing Persons Updates on the flat-screen that’s surrounded by carved-out gator heads and neon beer signs, presented atop the shining, glinting city of all manner (and color) of whiskey and gin and tequila and, ya know, bar stuff.

Now when it comes to Riggs himself, though a bit peculiar at times, I think I can say I’ve come to like the old-timer. Not saying he’s peculiar because he watches the TV a lot (well that’s part of it, I guess) but it’s more so how he’s been acting the last few weeks. Nothing too weird. Just more quiet, more staring at you blankly for a few seconds before answering, like he’s chronically gauging how folks talk to him. I know he’s in his sixties but I wouldn’t take him for losing his mind just yet. My best guess is the summer business wave is getting to him, maybe wearing him out, making him take a little longer to get through the snappier hours of these southern crowds in steamy Louisiana June.

Steam. Sweat. Hot…so damn hot.

Old AC unit keeps going out. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the one that was originally built in to the old lower building, now re-circulated to up here to dampen the air with the vague tinge of mildew, and then quit on us for half a day, leaving whatever thickness the outside brings in.

And that’s exactly why Carlos is wrong. No one in their right mind would be hiding out in this mosquito country, in these swamps or around Lake Pontchartrain. And if they’re gonna break into a restaurant and stalk folks, they’d probably go somewhere where the AC works and the kidnapping real-estate has a bit more variety than a handful of waiters and waitresses, me, and a tiny-ass kitchen staff.

But now Carlos seems to have Meagan convinced, too.

Every time I see her run a dirty glass back to the dish room, she quietly asks Carlos the details of what he saw, quick-like, too, as if to hurry so to not get funny looks from the likes of Toby Ray, or worse, Riggs. Then she’d tell him she heard some strange noises outside her bedroom window a couple nights in the last week or so, and that she’s scared to go outside and check, and that when she tells that douchebag waiter she likes so much, Toby Ray, he laughs and shrugs it off.

I think it’s all that damn news and missing persons shit that’s always on the TV. It wasn’t until the reports started happening that Carlos started acting weird, and all of a sudden, he’s seeing long-legged mannequins in the building and shit. Wonder how long it’ll be before Riggs gets back on their asses for wasting time on the clock.

If there is some tall, gangly-looking dope-fiend sumbitches looming around in the shadows though, then Hell, I say let em try what they want; pretty sure Riggs has a small armory somewhere around here. But like I said before, he’s been a little off lately, too. Maybe he’s just getting ready; maybe the explanation is that he senses something and Carlos and Meagan aren’t completely full of paranoid shit. Hard to tell.

Yeah. If they are out there, let em try.

***

JUNE 6

6:49 a.m., Before work

Don’t usually wake up this early, but since I did, and Dr. Roll said I should get more home-journaling done anyway, I sat here half asleep at my shitty dinner table and said why the hell not? Nice enough morning if it weren’t for all this damn fog.

Weird stuff too, this fog.

Ya see, the Shrimphouse is only about three miles down this dirt road from me, and here in the last few weeks, every once in a while, this goddamn fog shows up and makes driving around these backroads one big dangerous guessing game.

Back in town, about six miles northeast, folks keep saying the fog rarely creeps up around the few old stores and buildings, that most of the time they usually only see the dense wall of greyness way down in this direction through the overgrown openings of Chestmore Drive and Crimson End Street (my street), which are the two main points of entry into these backroads. Hopefully it clears up soon. Don’t like these drab-ass mornings of not being able to see my way to work.

***

12:14 p.m., Lunch break

Of course, Carlos is late again. Supposed to get here at noon and here it is a quarter after. The dirty son of a bitch better not be too late or I’m gonna be on dishwashing duty as well as cleaning the damn tables. And I sure as Hell don’t wanna be in the back near that hallway working into the night. Not that I’m scared of whatever he was yappin about yesterday, I just don’t wanna close on double duty. Those nights are the worst: leaving me that goddamn dish room closing check list. I swear if I have to clean the tables/bathrooms/windows/floor ON TOP OF clean the dishwasher area/undo that stupid back latch just to top off the soap for tomorrow/stack all remaining dishes and utensils/mop and squeegee half the fucking kitchen, which if the kitchen crew cuts out early for whatever bullshit reason, would then turn into the entire kitchen…if I have to do all that shit again just on the count of that fucker, I honestly don’t know what I’m gonna do.

I suppose I’d have no choice but to just try to keep my cool. Can’t have stuff happening like at my last job back in town, having the whole damn gas station and diner crew rally against me, and then having to defend myself. If that dumb old bastard Mr. Gerardson hadn’t routinely left his back office door unlocked, or schedule me on the same hours as his cashier daughter, the son of a bitch never would’ve walked in on me laying her out over his paper-strewn desk. But oh well. What’s done is done.

***

11:41 p.m., Closing

All the cooks finished early tonight. Just me and Carlos cleaning up near the dish room, and Carlos keeps saying he hears shit down the hall. Then Meagan started in as she was rolling silverware nearby in those tight-ass waitress shorts, though she’d look a whole lot better if she’d just force herself to stop being so miserable and on-edge, that dumb nervous look behind that bright blond hair. Why does she have to be equal parts visual distraction and annoyance; nothing but a constant series of near-panic attacks ever since her and Carlos started this whole swamp-horror fever dream (or however it all came to be).

And now they’re saying (or more accurately, Carlos is insisting) they hear some nasty little clicking noises somewhere in that gloomy shadow by the back hall, but then it stops whenever he or Meagan or Toby Ray or myself walks back into the kitchen. Dude really must be crazy. He just won’t stop going on and on about seeing or hearing weird shit down that hallway. How the Hell can he see down there, anyway? The far back neon light is so old and shotty that you can’t see your hand in front of your face if you’re standing down there, especially near that old rusty door. I really don’t know what to think of all his yapping, but by God is it getting old.

I’ll give em this, though: when they brought up whether or not they think the source of the noises are coming from the lower level, I’d be lying if I said the hair on the back of my neck didn’t raise just a little. The idea of someone, or something, waiting around, hiding out in the dark down there. Down where none of us ever see, where I really don’t have the slightest clue just what’s in that old dilapidated building. Sometimes the thought of that gets to me. Not really the building, but the idea of someone watching you where you can’t see them; there in whatever dark slit they’ve managed to simply lean into and wait it out in.

Anyway, I need to stop getting carried away like some feeble-minded asshole, finish this cold half-burger and tea, and get back to closing.

***

JUNE 7

12:44 p.m., Lunch break

Now he’s just about gone and lost his sombrero.

When I pulled onto the gravel lot of the Shrimphouse, Carlos was pestering Toby Ray as he was on his way up the side stairs to start his shift, trying to stop him and show him something down through one of the only reachable (and horribly stained with blackness and muck) windows into the old abandoned lower building.

After I parked and started towards them, I could hear exactly what Carlos was rambling about…again: goddamn mannequins.

He was going on and on about how earlier, and even a few days ago, he thought he saw more mannequins down there through that window that you can’t actually fucking see into, saying that, instead of the five or six he saw then, that now there were only two, and that one of them had moved—yeah, moved—as though it were trying to stand still. He was even trying to get me to give a look see; desperately wanting the ability to lure me into his web-trap-thing of paranoia. Seriously, like what the Hell has gotten into him? Did he shoot up or snort one-too-many doses of whatever the hell he rots his brain with this morning? And who cares if there’s some old-ass out-of-commission mannequins standing around down there? I just don’t understand this bizarre nightmare fantasy of his, and I guess now, Meagan, that keeps getting in the way of everything and annoying the ever-loving shit outta me at times.

After another moment of his nonsense, me and Toby Ray finally just looked at each other and tried not to laugh as we went up the stairs to start the day.

***

2:18 p.m.

Meagan came barging in totally out of it.

She was crying, trying really hard to appear normal, like she hadn’t been completely losing it just outside the door. The other waiters went to her side to see what was wrong, but all she did was immediately let out a tired, defeating yelp and then buried her face in her hands; the shriek rattled everyone quiet in a long moment of silence, where only a spoon could be heard dinging against a pot in the kitchen, and the emanating voice of, you guessed it, good ol’ Merle Haggard filled the restaurant and it’s new sudden tension with a scratchy, fading-in-and-out story of drinking and bad decisions. Luckily the lunch crowd is zilch.

She’s still sitting over there trying to keep it together, Toby Ray beside her, rubbing her back, a couple waiters and Carlos standing nearby. A few of the others, along with a couple of the kitchen crew, are now taking turns finding things to move around and look busy so they can peek around the kitchen wall at the incredibly riveting scene of a girl crying. She’s telling them about how she keeps hearing sounds outside her house every night, and that last night and way earlier this morning, the sounds were at their worst. I wish she’d go ahead and describe these damn sounds, too. Same with Carlos. They keep going on about seeing and hearing weird shit, but never seem to want to describe exactly what they’re seeing or hearing.

And of course, that damn Channel 12 is at it again above the bar. More missing persons, all local. No doubt that’s aiding in this slow-moving nervous breakdown.

I’m just waiting for it to happen: Riggs is gonna come through one of those doors any second and tell em all to…well, speak of the devil and he shall appear; he just came out through the back office door, telling them all to break up their little intervention and get back to doing the things that need doing. And I say he should get on their asses even more, not go so easy. All this feeding-into-the-fear crap ain’t doing anybody around here any kind of good. And after all, time is money. The stuff don’t grow on trees, and Riggs knows it. Says he’s gonna send the next asshole home who’s just standing around on the clock. Ha! I knew I always liked the old-timer.

***

3:51 p.m.

Meagan just left. Too freaked out, I think. Was shivering on her way out the door. Now, usually this would be the time where I’d say that seeing Meagan’s long, fleshy legs carry that sweet ass of hers far off in another direction is quite possibly the best aspect of knowing her, but this time things seemed a bit more…off…than usual. Not too sure what it is either, maybe the day is just proving to be a little too long. Too filled with the tension of other folks. Maybe there’s a spill-over effect happening here or something. Maybe I’m starting to catch the bug.

Or maybe Toby Ray is catching it.

Looks like he’s over there semi-tucked behind the drink machine, going through and getting his keys and other stuff ready in his gym bag, trying to remain inconspicuous under the eye of Riggs over in the bar. Guess he’s gonna go check on Meagan soon.

Wonder if Riggs will notice, or even care, as he sits there under the spell of the missing persons updates.

***

11:10 p.m., Closing

Gonna hurry through this one so I can get outta here. Just me back here at the moment. Carlos just finished the dish room earlier than expected and left, and most of the kitchen crew already checked out.

Had to go to the back closet to top off the table-spray bottles…and I heard it.

I don’t know what I heard, but I know I heard it. Down there near that dark hallway where light never seems to be able to penetrate. And it only happened once…I think. Like one very loud, yet very muffled, and extremely abrupt, splitting noise; right at that same moment were a few (or maybe even as much as a dozen, I really don’t know) very tiny and rapid clattering noises. Almost like a single pop of a falling tree accompanied by the clicks of talons by that which chopped it. And then it all fell totally silent so to not be seen or heard any further.

Can’t really see down there, either. Looks like nothing but…shadow and, well, nothing, I guess. Just a long, dark patch of increasingly negative space. Not very inviting in the white noise of the kitchen after most everybody up and left.

Just gonna…hurry this up and get on home. Think I got a long night of drinking ahead.

***

JUNE 8

11:53 p.m., Lunch break

Meagan and Toby Ray are no-shows. Big surprise.

The others keep huddling together and speculating, but Riggs always shows up soon after and shuts them down, getting em back to work.

Can’t stop thinking about closing last night for some reason. Gonna get back to it.

***

2:22 p.m.

Riggs keeps going in and out the back door from time to time, the one that goes to the lower level, or at least I think it does. He’s been going down there on and off the past couple days now to check the status of an old water pipe, and of course it’s aroused all the wildest suspicions from Carlos. But I can see it in the old man’s eye. He’s getting ready for something. Waiting. Has to be.

And naturally Carlos doesn’t see it that way. Probably not helping anything that these damn news reports have now been updated to the all-alarming red CAUTION and BREAKING tags zipping information by in tiny little squares that I can barely see from here, aside from the main headlines shouting for RESIDENTS CURFEW 8:00 p.m.

Yeah. Just perfect. He’s getting that damn look about him alright, the look that says he’s gonna flake out soon and come up with some bullshit excuse to leave early. Then guess who’ll have to pick up all the slack.

He better not do it, dammit. Just wanna get this shit done as soon as possible tonight.

***

12:09 p.m., Closing

Why am I not surprised in the slightest that Carlos left early?

Hardly nobody else here, neither.

Dead silent, too. Maybe the most drop-dead silent I’ve ever heard it in this place. Gonna finish this up.

***

1:44 a.m., Home

Ok, this part’s gonna be a little shaky. Might spill some whiskey on journal. Oh well, fuck it. Surprised something worse didn’t spill on it after what ju…wait, gettin ahead of myself.

But he was right. Carlos was actually right.

It happened when I was leavin the Shrimphouse. No one else was around. No waiter or bartender or kitchen crew or Riggs. Just me in that silent, gloomy place. Lights had been mostly shut off, too.

When I stepped out the side door where the employee stairs are, I noticed that dense, otherworldly-lookin fog again. It came back tonight in full force, and I couldn’t even see half the parking lot (which was empty aside from my pickup) or the tallgrasses I know are beyond it. And right there as I started down the steps, I heard that terrible noise again. That same clattery crunch from the night before last in the back of the kitchen. And it was coming from somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, where Carlos had pinned down Toby Ray for em to peek into the lower building.

It’s the middle of the night so I could barely see, not to mention the slow-moving current of fog down there, and I’ll admit…I was partially frozen in fear. I stood there looking down at the old rusted lower building components, the dead grass at the base of the stairs, the gravel that blended with the fog. And very slowly, I began to make my way down.

When I came to the window, I could tell it had at least a little visibility. Not much, but a little. Stained and coated with what I can only say looks like decades of mold and dirt built up and periodically smeared for the mere chance if seeing through (even through it wasn’t abandoned till after Hurricane Katrina, weird). And I sure as Hell saw what was inside, alright. Whatever it was. I saw it.

When my eyes adjusted to the murky setting within, at first I could only make out a vague silhouette. Like there was some old, weak lantern somewhere back there on the floor in a far corner, and the ancient clutter of forgotten bar tables and chairs stacked all atop themselves and half-collapsed, were trying their best to obscure whatever sight was to be had.

But the mannequin-creature-thing was prominently there nonetheless: a splotchy mess in the darkness that half-blended with the surrounding shadows. And just like Carlos said, or thought. It looked like a mannequin. At least at first.

After my eyes adjusted as much as they could, I could just barely see up at the head area of this tall, skinny human-statue-thing, the features that permeated the surface of its skull. I say permeated because I don’t know what the hell was actually happenin to the thing; it’s facial features a gloom in the shadow, I could see what resembled a line split across the lower half of the face like a wide mouth. Slowly materializing from bare wet flesh, widening, peeling into a long, terrible smile. Then eyes rolling open, glinting in the dark, bulging. Its facial muscles awakening with a deathly twitch, like its face and body were…rumbling?

Then somethin was happening behind it: long, sharp rods started growing out from its back. More than a dozen, maybe two or even three. Very slow. And the longer they spread outward from it, the more they began shifting. Folding. Like huge, long, freakish insect legs.

Then I ran.

I got in my pickup, sped back here and immediately popped open this fifth of bourbon. Now got Crue blaring on the system. Letting the lyrics of Danger vibrate and rattle my nerves, try to even em out, as the whiskey starts numbing them. Try to forget whatever the fuck I just saw.

Try to drown out the thoughts of abandoned buildings and waiters being stalked and missing persons updates.

Try to ignore the clattering I just heard outside my window.

It wasn’t real. It’s my mind fuckin with me. Gotta be.

Only way I –

Goddamn that was loud. Just heard it again. Over by the door.

***

JUNE 9

The Dungeon

Never took CJ for the journalin type, but hey, never judge a thing by the flesh on the outside, right? Not sure yet if I’ll add this journal to the collection, or toss it in the burn pile where most of the boring ones go. Either way, it’s almost always good to write a little somethin in, then maybe read back over it later with a few beers for a quick laugh.

Me and the old man built the Shrimphouse back in the summer of ’78. So when the swamp things came lurkin and huntin after Katrina in ‘05, I wasn’t bout to give the damn place up.

Riggs was always the name of it. Paps wouldn't have it no other way. Katrina was a nasty bitch and it done did the first Shrimphouse in somethin fierce, so a new place was built on top of it.

That was when they showed up. And the bodies came soon after.

At first, they’d just stare at me. Waitin to see if I’d react or retaliate in any way. And of course I never did. You wouldn’t neither if they looked ya in the eyes the way they did me these past years.

Those bizarre, awful black eyeballs. Their leathery canvas-stretched faces and bodies, pale and slimy, like soggy (mostly solid) elongated forms molded from clay. All of em skinny and gaunt as all hell, none of em under six foot it seems. Hell, I think some of em might be close to nine or ten foot.

Most bizarre thing about em though ain’t there pale slimy appearance. Not by a long shot. Most bizarre thing, I’d have to say, is all the different arms and claws that make up the outer portions of their bodies. Sharp at the ends too, with these long talon-like things that don’t mess around. They cover their whole body and it looks like twitching nerves, only to slowly separate from the sliminess of the skin in an impossible-lookin sorta way, and extend as though a very long spider or roach leg would.

Even worse is what they do to the folks they bring down here into the lower Shrimphouse.

Take Toby Ray here for example. Now, turns out, Toby Ray was a bit of a fighter, so the creatures used one of the half-rotted, half-collapsed wooden pillars, and combined him with it to make some freakish human kabob. That seems to be how they make examples outta ya if you give em too hard a time. Effective, too. Shut Meagan right the hell up

Then there’s the main event: going inside.

Ya see, first they split ya from the sweet spot between your legs, all the way up your spine to the back of the skull; this is happenin while their insanely razor-sharp arms are spidering from their body, sticking into your limbs and holding you out like a play-doll so ya don’t squirm or jerk around and make the process any messier than it already is.

Then they pull your skeleton out (talk about a slow, messy process).

This is preparation for what I like to call: the cocoon phase. After they miraculously cram into your carcass, sometimes stretching them to limits I didn’t think were even possible, they just…brew. They stand as still as a damn mannequin for the next few months, letting their insides, I guess meld together, or something. It even morphs the outer appearance a bit, so the bodies never look quite the same towards the end of the process.

I never see em leave, neither. After that period of festering in the human carcass in that long, dark sleep, they simply vanish. No idea where they go.

Speaking of going, I wonder if they’ll ever let me go. At first they just stared at me, totally blank in their horribly gangly forms, and the first few months they would seemingly give me the looming, brooding impression that if I ever ran off or said anything, well, take a wild guess. Funny how much a blank, slimy, completely rancid face with no visible mouth can say so much. It was a terrifying existence to walk around here not knowing what those things were up to, that if I even came close to attempting a signal for help, that it would only be in vain. Worse was when, eventually, they’d all stand around and practically make me listen and watch as they slowly tear apart a small line-up of captured locals; this happens on these foggy nights everyone’s so puzzled over, when the monstrosities are most active and scatter into the tallgrasses, only to return hours later, usually with prey.

After a while, however, that direct, heightened terror dulls to a nagging, vague fear that eventually fluctuates and learns to subside itself, until the thoughts pour in of if they’re ever gonna do this grotesque act on me. Not knowing that answer, that horrible guessing game that could snap and implode at any moment, has proven to be the long-lasting, ever-looming threat of this situation. Not knowing how or what or why or when anything could go wrong on my behalf, if an employee slips down into here and sees too much and gets away, or anything at all—not knowing that…is the real nightmare.

The screams don’t bother me much no more, though. Not even from the folks I kinda knew from work up top, like CJ and Meagan here. My only concern about that is if they ever get too loud and someone just so happens to be lingering around the parking lot in the middle of the night for some reason. Hadn’t happened yet. I pray to God it never does. The screams are turning into my favorite part.

* * *