The Greatest Horror Story Of Our Time

The Greatest Horror Story Of Our Time

Laura Patrick lived alone in a quaint suburb of New York City in a simple seven bedroom, four bathroom, indoor pool having, vaulted ceilinged cottage. She earned a living working for a media outlet in New York City. It’s not important which media outlet, or even which medium. Let it be said that she works for a media outlet and makes enough money to own a house which she can later run full speed through without ever running from one side of the house to the other. Also, note the vaulted ceilings, which will come in handy for yelling.

Laura has had a saucy, off and on style relationship with Rugged Dave. Rugged Dave is a fireman who owns a variety of guns and ammunition. He loves Laura very much, but sometimes his manliness is too much for her to handle. He never shaves. But constantly trims his beard as to always have rugged stubble. Rugged Dave Stubble.

Oh and Laura has a kid from a previous marriage and Rugged Dave lives with his Creepy Aunt Selpthe. Slebleth. She’s from the old country. Aunt Suhbbleth. Sublet. Shelbath. Old Country. She’s always swathed in blankets and talks in a so high a tone that it is reminiscent of metal being torn asunder and is prone to screaming single phrases, from which, one could see glimpses of the future. Or maybe she’s just crazy. Either a telepath/soothsayer or just crazy. One or the other. Shelpehtsk.

Today Laura has planned a barbecue and swim-about at her indoor pool, which is located in section 7A of your readers companion "Map of Laura’s House."

Laura is sitting pool side drinking an Atomic Margarita. She is happy. She sips and watches Rugged Dave cook an elk on her pool side grill. Her son, eight year old Henry David Thoreau, is swimming, but is careful not to go near the very deep end. He’s tossing those weighted rings under the water and then diving under to fetch them, as this activity is the most hypnotically entertaining pool activity known to mankind. He’s a very strong swimmer.

"Mother. I’ve yet again captured yon rings. I felt you should be alerted to this new development." He’s so precocious.

Selpthe is in a rocking chair swaddled with blankets and seems content. "CONTENTMENT ABOUNDS!!!" She screams. Everyone has a good laugh over this, just another one of Selpathe’s scathing social commentaries about how happy everyone is right now. And how perfect everything will always remain forever.

"More elk?" asks Rugged Dave while sharpening his Bowie Knife on his arm hair. "Yes please" says Laura, who loves anything elk. Last year Rugged Dave escaped from her house and in the morning she awoke to find that he had left her an elk on her doorstep. The gesture scared her until she was assured it was a present. Since then she was hooked on elk and Rugged Dave. His gesture of kindness was all that she needed and knew she had found a soulmate and possibly a father for her son Henry David Thoreau, whose biological father will never be mentioned in this story. "WHORE!" screams Selpathe but nobody knows why.

Laura takes the awkward silence as the perfect time to ask "Who wants brownies?"
"MEEEE!" says everyone else, because everyone always wants brownies.

"I’ll be back in a few minutes with the brownies. While I’m gone, don’t let anything change for the worst very drastically."

"Mother. Your sentiment is asinine. I feel you are a goose. A silly one. Dissemination of brownies will not, should not, could not, change the landscape of our afternoon. Please. Off to the brownies with you." said Henry David Thoreau. What a scamp!

And so Laura went to fetch some brownies.

"SUNGLASSES HUT! SUNGLASSES HUT!" Says selpath, evoking the name of her favorite store to buy sunglasses. Or maybe something else entirely. Maybe some secret meaningful glimpse into the future!

"Hey slugger, you want some elk? I mean, vegetarian shmeginarian? Right? I took this baby down at fourteen hundred with some buckshot that I threw....slugger?" Rugged Dave turned around very slowly towards where the camera would be if this were a movie as to slowly reveal the horror on his face, even though in a situation like this, every second counts, although, so does drama. Rugged Dave’s eyes fell across what could only be described as: The Pool. But nowhere in that pool was Henry David Thoreau, son of Laura, and certainly not the author of "Civil Disobedience" who has been dead for quite some time.

Rugged Dave sprang to action. He ran four paces and then swan dove into the pool. "GREG LUGANIS!!" screamed Selpathwek, noticeably impressed by her nephews diving prowess.
"Brownies!" Laura announced as she finally returned from the brownie closet. She looked around and was curious to not see her son or her boyfriend. "Selptthhhheee where is everybody?"

Selpthhhee stirred and looked at Laura with her cold, haunting eyes, and in her prophetic tone of mystery screamed "I DON’T KNOW, WASNT WATCHING!"

Laura read this sign correctly from Selpthe that her son and boyfriend were both under the water because "oh my dear god, Greg Luganis almost drowned when he hit his head on the diving board after a miss judged dive because he wasn’t watching what he was doing and now he sponsors sunglasses hut. The place to go for low sunglass prices. My son and boyfriend are drowning!" she screamed!

"WHAT?" screamed Selpathe, clearly confused.

Just as Laura was about to spring into action, bubbles started to appear from the very deepest end of her pool. Slowly at first, then more quickly, someone was approaching the surface. Seconds ticked by as the bubbles got closer and closer and Laura and Selpathe nervously chewed delicious brownies. "CREAM CHEESE???" asked Selpathe wondering about the origins of the chewy-gooey texture of the brown taste explosion.

Then just like a Rugged Dave emerging from the water, Rugged Dave emerged from the water. He was holding five weighted rings and the limp, lifeless carcass of Henry David Thoreau. The kid, not the brilliant author of "Walden Pond."

Rugged Dave immediately began CPR. Five chest pumps, and then a strong steady breath into the mouth of the drowned child. Five pumps. Breathe. "One, two, three, four, five. BREATHE! Goddamned kid, breathe! BREATHE YOU COCKSUCKER!" Rugged Dave was delirious with anguish and possibly suffering from the Benz from coming up from the depths of Laura’s Media Outlet Financed SuperPool. But try as he might, the child would not resssusitate. recessitate. Resuscisate. "RESUSCITATE!" Thank you. The child would not resuscitate.

Laura screamed into the vaulted ceilings "WHY GOD WHY!" and other haunted screams that are tiresome to write and painful to read.

Day fell into night.

Laura was finally asleep, exhausted from screaming things repeatedly that I refused to copy down for the sake of you, the reader. Over and over for seven or eight hours, she screamed into her vaulted celings, bemoaning the fate of her son.

She stirred occasionally, ‘why so deep?’ in reference to her two hundred foot deep - deep end. Entirely too deep for any deep end. It was like someone had constructed a lake in her house for the sake of tying in the fact that there’s always a creepy body of water in modern horror films. And socio-economically disproportionate housing and then combined those two in a way that was more distracting than funny.

Rugged Dave watched over her, a soliloquy perched on just the other side of his lips. Ready to spring forth. A soliloquy that would vault him into the highest echelons of soliloquy givers in times of great sadness. He would climb the ranks of those that have gone before him in great impromptu speeches given while "nobody" could hear. Rugged Dave glanced upwards, a single tear in his eye and said: "Fuck."

Exactly.

Light from Laura’s bedside reading lamp fell over her and kept Rugged Dave from sleeping. Kept him from screaming. It had been one of the worst days of his life. A child dead. A horrible storm washed out the roads and cut off all communication with the outside world. An elk gone to waste.

Oh. While day was "falling into night." A big storm came and knocked out all the power and washed away all the roads. Effectively trapping our four characters in the giant house with the dead body of Henry David Thoreau!

"RIDICULOUS!" screamed Selphethe

Selpthehehs scream reminded Rugged Dave that he hadnt checked on his beloved Aunt in a while. Her room was just down the hall from the master bedroom so Rugged Dave figured it wouldnt take much to check on her. He quickly ran to the escalator and went down to her room. He gently tapped on the door as not to wake her if she was sleeping. At the slightest touch the door creeped open and made a horrendous squeeking sound. "SQUEEEEEEEEEK!" said the door as the metal hinge grinded itself open despite it’s being opened with not much more than a tap. Thereby being well lubricated enough to open with a faint tap, yet not well lubricated enough to not sound like a vault door made of bones and evil.

"Aunt Shelpthe?" said Rugged Dave. "Aunt Shelpethe, where are you." In the distance of the room he could hear the faint creeking of that goddamned rocking chair she made him take everywhere.

"Aunt Shelpthe is that you, in your chair?" Again no answer. Dave felt along the walls to find a lightswitch, a lamp, a candle, a torch, a match, anything that would illuminate this hideous darkness. This creepy milky darkness. He continued to feel his way along the wall. Still nothing. He keeps feeling and feeling and feeling and still. Nothing. And oh man is it dark. Dark and because the damned wall is so big it’s taking forever to find the fucking switch. Man is it dark and tense and taking a while. AAAAAnnnnddddd there it is! Instinctively his hand went to his knife, in case of mysterious troubles in the dark. He took a deep breath. Then he threw the lights.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Standing no more than four inches in front of Rugged Dave was a Masked Villian!! A white cloaked monster with a horrible metal face! A green, bug eyed mask of evil! Dave pulled his knife and slashed at the air wildly to subdue the screaming Masked Villian!

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Screamed the attacker and fell to the floor in a clump. Bleeding from both it’s arms or what may yet be revealed as tenticles or wolfman paws or fiery wings!! Dave didn’t know which of these things it was, but he was sure it was one of those three and one of those three alone.

He rushed over and was ready to deliver the sweet killing stroke! He stood above his attacker and said "see you in hell, meat bag. Any last words?"

"NIGHT VISION GOGGLES!!!!" screamed the heap.

"Wha-" Dave bent down and rolled over his attacker to discover his his bleeding attacker was none other than....SPTHEHTHETH!!

Why, it was old Sphteheth all along! That googley eyed monster wasnt anything more than his Aunt Splethehth in the night vision goggles he got her for her birthday. Silly Rugged Dave and his stabbing.

"PRICK!" screamed Spechialtits who was just doing some late night night-vision-goggle reading. Or as she called it "VISAGOGOREADIN!" screaming a mushy word as she’s known to do.
Everyone’s heart was beating pretty quickly. After all Dave just turned on the lights to discover a Masked Villain staring him dead in the face and then with all the stabbing that went on it’s easy to see how everyone would be a little keyed up. Jumpy.

Dave tucked shepehellchek back into bed and went on back up the escalator to his room, amazed that he nearly jumped out of his skin for no reason. And also he almost killed his aunt with a knife. But hey, thank god it’s Friday!


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That's all of that. And by all I mean 'enough.' That's enough of that. I could keep it going, but I really dont want to. There are some funny things in there, but it's not enough to really work on. Unlike Sherpa, which still needs finishing.

I like the size of the house, that makes me laugh, also the size of the house was really just a way to build dumb suspense. Everything being so big made it nessiscary to draw out descriptions. Naming the kid Henry David Thoreau was strange and funny because it makes him sound that much more refined and inteligent, but mentioning his father is probably confusing 'is he saying that thoreau is his father?" I wasnt. "CREAM CHEESE?" kills me. But enough is enough on that. Maybe someday far away I'll write up an ending.

Also, the thought behind "Spelbthah" is just that I wanted a very appropriate name for the creepy aunt and didnt come up with anything so I just mashed out something as a place holder. Spelpthe. Shelpath. Spellshack. Nothing good came out. So I just kept mushing it further as I went, hoping that would be funny in itself. But it isnt.

Also, I like any time where I start writing my thoughts of the story insde of the story. "...which was more distracting than funny." I just enjoy doing that and I dont know why.

But it doesnt really function as a story, so it's not worth saving. Neither are other entries on here, but this one in particular set out to be a start to finish story type story and it doesnt work as such so it can eat my ass.

Worth mentioning is that these four pages probably took me three hours to write whereas "Jackson Street" Took maybe an hour "Meathead' Less than that. They're all first drafts but this one didnt really come as easilly as I thought. Also problematic was that I had an idea for what I wanted to write here and both "Jackson Street" and "Meathead" and, for the most part, "Sherpa" all just sort of fell out of my head.

By the way, all of this post-writing-writing, is me trying to pick apart why things did or didnt work for me. So please feel free to never read the post-writing-writing. It's a post-mortem that I can look at later and remember how I felt about the writing at time of post and then how I feel at time of Re-read.

dan.