Midnight in the Cemetery of the Living

CW: Violence, gore, suicide attempt

Their homes resembled large cemetery headstones silhouetted against the urban-lit night sky. The living slept peacefully in their beds dreaming of beach vacations and tax cuts. The ungrateful dead, nocturnal like vampires, slinked around unseen through the floorboards and other crevices where they lingered as odorless, colorless gasses, such as carbon monoxide and radon, which are so easy to miss and which kill. The be-cursed of antiquity rose from their crypts and roamed the night thus, simmering and seething.

Poised to install a regime of dread, led by the worst of the worst, the netherworld vomited out a swarm of repulsive daemons and ravenous beasts, the benighted souls of centuries-old killers, narcissists and other reprobates sent to shatter the repose of the living. They surfaced from beneath the foundations of every home like a fleet of attack submarines prowling enemy waters, militarized to even accounts with the living in the only currency they knew, blood.

Starting at midnight, they circled and hissed in the night sky in a celebration of death. Birds took off for the mountains, cowering. The crushing of civilization in their sights, its reduction to chaff, they would have their way and eat their fill until the sun came up, if it came up.                                        

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Horace and his friends continued their monthly poker game to the crackle of thunder. They sat around the card-table staring at their cards and each other's faces sniffing out the bluff. A ridiculous amount of rain fell, bringing up curls of steam off of the streets and sidewalks on the summer night like so many charmed cobras.

The baby was asleep upstairs. Tiffany, the mom, was at work third shift paying the rent and putting food on the table, for herself, the baby and Horace. They were together, sort of. Mostly Tiffany used Horace for errands and to take care of the baby, which she regretted when she came home from work at dawn to a smelly overflowing diaper.

This month's game was in their house. Tiffany had purchased the drinks and snacks. The others extended Horace credit out of courtesy keeping track how much he owed. He owed plenty, most of it to an awfully nice guy who sat across the table laughing and enjoying, not the least put out by Horace. This was Gunther.

The baby woke, crying. Horace laid his cards face down and trudged upstairs, tired of losing and fed-up ... being Horace. He looked out the window from the baby's room and felt a fury rise within him, a blur of hate and jealousy contracted from the other side, the sitra achra, whose minions stared at him through the glass. They reached through as if it wasn't there and grabbed him by the throat, striking him upside the head like it was speed-bag at the gym. 

Sporting a dopey deranged smile, Horace slapped the baby, growled and snorted out a series of vulgar obscenities. He changed her diaper, grabbed his gun and returned to the game carrying her with the gun tucked under his belt and the belt covered by his loose shirt. He wore a loose shirt in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his beer-belly. 

Horace lost another three deals, pulled out his gun and shot Gunther, to whom he now owed thousands of dollars. No more Gunther, no more money owed to Gunther; the bone-chilling calculus of a feckless killer without a trace of pity in his damnable soul. He giggled his was through the murder in an attempt to engage the baby in all the fun he was having discharging the debt.

Bullets flew, sending the rest of the guys diving for cover. Gunther got up from the table riddled with holes but determined to exact a price. He shot back before he died and hit the baby, whom Horace held like a shield right out of the terrorist play-book. Gunther died astounded at the evil he had just witnessed from a guy he thought he knew.

Horace turned the gun on himself, as cowards do who have no way out, but he had already emptied the cartridge. The baby also survived but she would need 24-hour care and several surgeries. Horace was sentenced to 24 years in Gunther's death and another 15 for drawing the fire from Gunther in self-defense that critically wounded the baby. 

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Tiffany supervised 12 third-shift factory employees, the graveyard crew. Everyone got along nicely. They found little diversions and pranks to pass the time overnight without compromising productivity. Tiffany did not lean on them overmuch but she tolerated no sexual references or harassment or you were dismissed from employment. The light in her eyes beamed confidence and no nonsense.

 "Damn," she thought, looking out the window, "this rain will drown all my plants." Horace was home with the baby, Natalie, her main planting. There was no sacrifice too great for her little princess. Natalie was Tiffany's dream girl, a living doll, a 

wonderful incorporation of everything she had done right in her life. Little did Tiffany know that the poor baby was in an ambulance blowing through red lights and wouldn't walk until she turned 10. 

Horace was not Natalie's father. Natalie's father was in jail awaiting trial on charges that he mowed down a little girl riding her tricycle on the sidewalk. The police suspected he was high or drunk-driving but the blood tests came back negative. In his mug shots he displayed that same dopey deranged smile that Horace had morphed into. He remained on suicide watch at the county jail.

Thunder rattled the factory floor. An enormous clap sent Tiffany scrambling back from the windows. Her heart skipped a beat. The factory lights flickered. Bats flew out from under the rafters high at the top of the building.

As Tiff turned to return to the factory floor, one of the machines backfired like a punctured tire or gun shot. Everyone dove for cover before they realized that it was a blown circuit in the forget-me-not machine, so called because a popular employee had been sucked into its powerful rotating claws some years prior, losing her life in a gory instant. 

Tiffany told everyone to chill while the maintenance man tried to fix it. She went to wake him in his closet office but he didn't move. He was dead. Horrified, Tiffany shut the door and lost her dinner on the factory floor. Blood oozed out under the door. A dreaded sitra achra hit-man had gotten to him.

A faint plume of smoke escaped the machine when it backfired. No-one noticed it. It was colorless and odorless. It came from the core of the machine, which still bore traces of the dead lady's tissue and DNA. The invaders had used her dead cells to store the gasses.   

A moment later Tiffany collapsed. The others ran to help but a lightening strike finished them off; all perished. The bolts were heat-seeking missiles of death that locked onto the warm hearts of Tiffany and her colleagues, who now lay roasting out their final breaths.

The deaths came in 903 categories, 903 ways to die, all imported from the sitra achra. Some involved extreme heat, some extreme cold and still others, extreme stupidity. Bad luck figured into a great many.

The bloodthirsty visitors unleashed unspeakable cruelty. They would deploy all 903 avenues of death if necessary to achieve total dominance. It was no longer about luck, or even pluck; the visitors did indeed suck and they didn't give a fuck.

The power of the explosion sent several corpses from among Tiffany's crew flying high above the flames. One of them landed directly on a passing bicyclist, killing him instantly. It was the mayor's son on a bicycle, on the way to meet her at a downtown office building. Avenue #904. 

The evil messengers took no prisoners, but they produced a great many. Horace led the way, followed by Natalie's father. The correctional system processed them in not realizing that they were more zombie than human. A old guy with orange hair to go along with his orange jump suit was the zombie cult leader.

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A lady stood inside a 7-11 staring at the downpour. She carried a Gatorade and a pack of batteries. Her husband was out playing cards. He would work-out the next morning and want the Gatorade for the cool-down. He was a reformed ex-convict. They were massively in love. This was Essie.

She ran to her car with the bag of items over her head, hurriedly got in, and drove home to the rapid pitter-patter of the windshield wipers. She flipped on the radio and heard news of local flooding. The town engineer spoke of downed trees and exposed electrical wires. Suddenly the station went dead. She flipped through the entire range of channels and they were all dead, replaced by a creepy low-static silence and an occasional blood-curdling scream.

Wispy grotesque creatures appeared in and disappeared from her rear view mirror. They had thick tails and wore droopy pants with gaping holes that hung halfway down their asses and the baseball hats of loser teams turned backwards.

Was it Halloween already? No, it was summer. Something deep down told Essie that Gunther was in danger and that this invasive species was involved up to their skinny blotchy necks. The same group then passed her in another car at high-velocity, windows down, music blaring, the occupants wearing sickening smiles. Their license plate spelled-out: 'WEFUUP.'

She sped up after it but it was gone. They fled to a helicopter pad on the top of a downtown office building where the mayor's flight crew was about to attempt a tricky landing in the storm. The last thing the mayor saw were the whirring blades of the upside down helicopter. The last thing she heard was a snickering through the copter radio..."adios sucker"... Then an inferno.

The mayor's family had only questions. Why them? The mayor's sister took a valium on her way to the morgue to identify the bodies. The family clergyman threw back two shots of Dewers black label followed by a squirt of mouthwash before heading over to the family home. Later on past midnight he was seen walking down the empty sidewalk in the mayor's neighborhood smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Essie plugged new batteries into the remote and sat down to watch TV. The TV weatherman bore a strange resemblance to Horace, one of Gunther's ex-con friends, who gave off a queasy vibe when he came over to play cards. He always seemed perturbed and he never won any money. He tried to act tough but he often got bullied. The guy was a head-case.

Essie called Gunther. It went straight to voice-mail: "Essie, push 1 to leave message, everyone else push 2" which was a play on his love for her, there was no such option. As soon as she hung-up it rang showing his name on the screen but when she answered, nothing. The visiting delegation of the un-dead had commandeered his phone and were using it to terrorize her.

Her cell phone buzzed "Gunther" again. When she picked up, she heard his voice telling someone to put a gun down and a whimpering baby. She screamed "Gunther, Gunther" into the phone. The phone heated up and she dropped it, leaving a satanic symbol featuring an oversized phallus branded onto the palm of her phone-hand

The clock on the living room mantle struck 3 am with 3 pleasant chimes, like nothing was amiss in the world or ever would be. The family cat bellowed an alarmed meow, the feline version of Essie's screams into the phone. Essie pleaded with God or the devil, she didn't care who, to bring Gunther home. She paced and fretted. She put on gloves and called 911. They told her they would check it out. She finished her drink and poured another. 

The house shook violently from the thunder causing a wedding photo of the happy couple to fall over on its face, cracking the glass cover. Essie picked it up to set it right and cut herself on the glass. Blood oozed from her finger dripping onto the photo. She stuck the bloody finger in her mouth. The photo turned into a mess of blood, broken glass and rainwater leaking down through an invisible breach in her roof.

Essie dozed. There was Gunther, walking through their front door. Behind him were bizarre creatures right out of a horror film, right out of her rear-view mirror and the car that passed her. He smiled and waved; they spit and hissed. As he tried to shoo them away they grew more ghoulish. He had a hole in his head. She called to him but he didn't respond. She reached out to him with a bottle of Gatorade. His hand passed through it and he disappeared.

A car pulled up in front of their house. Essie woke, agitated, looking around for Gunther with bloodshot eyes. "Fuck," she thought, "these card games go on to all hours". It was the dead of night. She got up and stepped gingerly over little puddles. At the front window she peeked around the curtains. Just the one car, rain and a vague blue and red glow in the sky suggesting a police presence somewhere in the neighborhood. Plus a lone man

The man walked down the street hunched over, leaning into the rain with his face turned away from it. His face lit up with each drag of his cigarette. He wore a churchman's collar and a black fedora. His heels clicked the wet sidewalk. Several trees were bent over, mimicking him. Essie glanced up and saw a familiar detestable-looking creature hovering. The churchman saw nothing and no-one but the tortured expressions on the faces of the loved ones of the mayor and her son.

The churchman walked on, oblivious. He tapped off the ashes of his cigarette and put it back in his mouth for another drag. The warm swirling winds blowing around behind him in a rising dust devil sucked up everything light enough to be borne upwards.

Essie's phone that lay face down on the coffee table began to vibrate and move around on its own in frantic spasms. Again Gunther'sname flashed on the phone, which she couldn't see, but she knew it was him. Who else would it be at this hour?.

She moved towards the spinning phone. As she answered it, a fear beyond reckoning bubbled up through her feet and ankles. Her cut finger throbbed to the thumping in her chest. The doorbell rang. Her legs gave way and she crumpled to the floor. Dropping her drink, the glass shattering, she clapped her hands over her ears as a sadistic giggling through the phone and the ringing doorbell took turns exploding inside her head. 

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Their bellies full, the aerial purveyors of death and chaos preened. They had lain waste to the neighborhood of Tiffany, Natalie, Gunther, her Honor the Mayor, et-al. They had wrought the havoc they sought and burnt a hole in the sky with their noxious emissions. The corpses were their trophies, the crushed, wounded and condemned badges of honor.

The sun lay buried beneath the black horizon, cloaked in mourning, struggling to rise in a war of wills with the foul creatures of the night. Only daylight could drive them back into their crypts. There was no other strategy for defeating them and little hope for a dark world

Broadway goes dark on Mondays. After that, "The Show Must Go On." But in the new world unfolding, everyday would be reckoned a Broadway Monday. The current shit show of the past's worst human filth acting out their wet-dream fantasies of achieving a world as dead as themselves promised to bring down the final curtain and kill the footlights.

A headless horseman trotted up in front of the hospital carrying his own head. He sported large jagged bite marks sticking up from what remained of his neck. The high school headmistress was asleep having a dream that she died from which she couldn"t wake up. Prayers for a swift end to the merciless onslaught sent up by the faithful veered sideways and plummeted, undelivered..

The mayor's office was also headless, in its own way. Members of the governing body quickly gathered for a vigil in the rotunda of the City Hall. They prayed to the sideways God for comfort and peace for her soul, her son's and their loved ones.

Essie sat crying uncontrollably on the floor of her home. Several police cars pulled up. The officers went inside and tried to talk to her. She was inconsolable. Everywhere she looked she saw Gunther. She remembered her dream and just kept crying.

One of the police officers paced the house in a sign of impatience. He took out his cell phone to text his girlfriend about the raging hard-on he had for her. The other cops rolled their eyes at Essie carrying on so.

The day seemed lost, glued shut, a black hole etched into the calendar. But each grinding millimeter that the sun climbed towards the horizon weakened the willpower of the enemy. One by one they retreated, coughing up their gains. Most scampered down the first chimney they saw and dissolved back into the toxic gasses from which they emerged, cowards that they were and would always be.

The lovers of life slowly came out from their basement hiding places. But this was no time to gloat. It would start all over tomorrow night or the next after that in another place, another zip code. A card game tonight and a group of unsuspecting innocents; a bar fight gotten out-of-hand tomorrow, a drug-deal rip-off the night after; it didn't matter. It was always something. The violent emotions nurtured and then fed off of by the engineers of darkness reside deep within the tortured cries of every human heart.