Shaz's Gothic

It was Halloween. The darkness sat on the town like a burnt dress.

Cass revved his bike and spun. Smoke plumed from its burning tyres. He was in a hurry to pick up his girl and give her real a trick or treat surprise.

"Get on Shaz!"

"Where we going Cass?"

"Its a surprise!"

They rode out beyond the town along lonely unlit roads. Panthers in the night searching for secrets. The queuing foothills arrived and Cass let rip up the steep incline to Reekin Fell where the old graveyard lay.

"What we doing here Cass?"

"Its Halloween babe. What could be cooler than a graveyard on Halloween!"

They dismounted and left the bike under a huge Yew. The gate screeched like a midwife and they walked up the curling path between the graves. It was pitch black save for the glint in Cass's eyes as he thought of Shaz in his arms.

The headstones stood at odd angles like rotten teeth. Worn angels stretched dark wings out over the bigger plots. Watching. Waiting. Like a family gathering eager to start.

Cass chose the biggest, darkest most weathered angel.  He felt drawn towards it. Oddly its face had the look of his mother he mused. He touched her face and lay down on the grassy grave beneath. 

"C'mon Shaz. Its nice and soft on here. We can get real comfy and watch the stars at midnight. It's Halloween after all. It'll be fun"

"You're sick you are Cass. You just want to have it off on a grave don't you! "

"What, me? I just want us to get warm and comfy and look up at the sky. I might kiss you. Yeah. Sure! Oh, and this is for you!"

Shaz opened the black box and pulled out a bottle.

"Gothic! I've dreamt about this perfume all week! Thanks babe. You're such a sweety!"

She sprayed the scent from head to toe and winked at her man.

Cass gave Shaz a big smile and he held out his hand. She took it and lay next to him on the grass.

"You're welcome".

They peered up at the endless depths above, beyond the ink of space and they kissed.

Shaz's Gothic infused the night. Cass had felt compelled to get it for Halloween. It wafted round the grave like a ghost and they embraced under the luminous crescent moon. It looked like a thumb clasping the darkness and Cass and Shaz both stared at its ancient glow.

Shaz's scent drifted into the grave itself and descended into its depths. It eased its way through the rents and rifts of death's past and reached a shrivelled dessicated face staring into the earth.

It stirred.

Twitching its dead nose, this mummied entity from eons past took in the aroma. A curious and startling sensation from long ago. A pheromone from a time steeped in smoke and flesh. A time when the entity had been a fertile witch among weak malleable men. A time for procreating with them, for raising pups, for which she was burned on the hill.

The creature had then been buried, barely alive and thrown upside down in a makeshift shaft hardly wide enough for a human. Over the two centuries of ice and worm she had forgotten which way was up and had dug deeper into the earth, sealing her fate further until she stopped altogether and hung motionless like a bat drying up in the infinite murk, dreaming of her witch babies and their own.

But now. This scent! Oh what a smell. Of potions and pestled spices. Of beds and familiars. Foetal and so enticing. Like lust and domination. Invigorating and coming from above. Or was it below. The Witch thing concentrated with all her dry brains and followed the perfume's direction. It was at her feet. She was upside down! The dullards!  But no matter. She need not her previous form! 

I can unfold and dislocate like a sack of bones she whispered.

She turned and crawls. A maggot in the filth. Rising in the dark she ascends slowly, her rancid nails coming away with an audible tear. Gradually the scent gets stronger, mixed with another that she knows full well, her children. Leather nostrils flare to savour its blended promise, the promise of release from her soiled cell, the chance to breathe the stench of humanity once more and at long last be the matriarch of her brood.

Light appears from the surface. The two lovers lie in each others arms unaware of the creeping fiend climbing towards them. They cuddle and caress in the Halloween moonlight trembling with the pleasures yet to come, the hot coupling on the grassy grave.

Cass stands and walks away to pee behind the Yew. He wouldn't desecrate a grave direct. Who knows what might happen! He shivered.

Shaz waited for her man, laughed and turned her head to look where he was. As she did she found herself staring straight into a hideously squalid face sticking up out of the ground. It smiled a toothless grin and Shaz screamed like she had never screamed before.

Cass jumped, his blood ran cold. What the hell? 

"Shaz. Shaz! What's happened? " he yelled, zipping up as he ran, stumbling over urns and vases. 

Shaz kept on screaming, her mind failing as she witnessed an entire monstrous thing emerge completely from the grave. It cracked and jerked as it began to stand, unfolding like a moth.

The witch opened empty eyes and yawned. Shaz's fragile senses snapped and the witch stroked her hair.

"You have freed me my dear, my pretty descendant! You and your brother! For this you shall both be rewarded my babies!" smiled the witch, grating her words through a walnut voice box not used for speech for two hundred years. She reached into Shaz's handbag and lifted up the bottle of perfume. She sprayed it allover herself, its liberating scent settling on her parchment skin from head to toe. She kissed the girl's forehead and whispered 'Sharon'.

Cass found Shaz still sat on the grave rocking from side to side. There was a large hole in the ground next to her. The smell of Gothic was everywhere. 

In the distance he could just make out a dark figure with a strangely familiar gait shambling through the headstones towards the open arch.

He knelt down and held his girlfriend.

"That was our great great great Grandmother Cass! We're brother and sister!" she screamed.

THE FORMICARY

Kotzka loved his pet shop. He'd had it for 50 years. It was his life. His wife's too.

Kotzkas had been a permanent feature of the side-street as long as anyone could remember.

It had been a fine neighbourhood when he and his wife had bought it. It was their pride and joy after getting married. The Kotzkas were popular straight away.

Children came with parents to see the animals in the shop. Zebra finches, Love Birds, Tetras, Guinea Pigs and tortoises.

But it was his ant circus that really drew in the kids. It was Kotzka's variation on the flea circus of his childhood in the far-away hills of the Tartra.

The ant circus was so popular some weekends that Mrs. Kotzka had to issue tickets at the door.

The queues sometimes stretched round the block to the old cinema.

They could have charged folk to see the ants perform but they were just happy to see children enjoy their shop and side show. To strangers it might have seemed they were making money. Maybe even lots of money.

Kotzka had a way with the ants. He could understand them and they him. After they'd completed each small task he'd squeeze a little sugary water from a syringe and offer each ant a tiny blob. They seemed to love it and almost shook with delight as they accepted their sweet wages.

The show's finale was the favourite bit among the kids. The ants would carry little home-made balsa toys across the counter and drop them in front of the eager children, who were allowed to take one of them home. They were visually enthralled and the parents were immensely grateful to this kindly old couple.

One boy, however, was never ever satisfied with the show or the balsa toys. He heckled Kotzka constantly with a barrage of complaints and grumbles.

"That's soooooo boring! Can't they do anything gory Kotzka?"

"What do you feed them. I bet it's live stuff. I bet it's live mice! Show us that you tight old twat!"

"Can't you get them to kill anything?"

The boy would grab the balsa toys with a few ants and stand on them viciously before pushing past his shamed parents and out of the shop.

His name was Norbert. Norbert Vark.

"Don't mind him!" the other parents would say to the Kozkas. "We love you. Our kids adore your shop and the ants. Please don't let that delinquent ingrate Norbert Vark get to you!"

But the longer it went on it did get to them. Particularly Mrs. Kotzka, who after years of the boy's heckling started to lose faith. Norbert never seemed to let up and went on to torment them into his teenage years. 

It seemed as if he hated them and the ants. After a particularly furious onslaught in the shop, the police said they were sorry but they couldn't do anything because he was only 17. Norbert was still a minor but they would speak to his parents as they had done many times.

"We can't do anything with the boy Officer. He's always hurting animals in the wood and he's obsessed with killing insects. Ants mostly. We've given up and when he turns 18 next Christmas we're done. We'll kick him out!"

It was summer when Mrs. Kotzka fell ill. She was anemic and nothing stayed down. The old woman was withering away. Kotzka had moved her bed into the cellar where it was always cool. Their bedroom was sweltering.

Sadly, Kotzka placed a sign in the window, "Shows Over for Now" and the queues fizzled away.

Mrs. Kotzka lay in a bed next to a huge glass tank. It was full of soil and sand and leaf litter. It was as big as a large cupboard and you needed to climb a wooden ladder to see over the edge.

If you had climbed it you would have seen thousands of ants marching round in lines holding bits of leaves above their twitching heads before descending into the tank's depths.

It was a formicary. The ants' home.

Kotzka knew the ants were in trouble. They needed a queen but none had emerged. He blamed himself. Food was short and he'd worked his show-ants much too hard over the years. They'd grown too. They were much larger than the workers. At least six inches long. They were the most agitated about not having a queen and sat in a row at the edge of the tank. They blamed someone specific for crushing their old queen years before. They blamed Norbert Vark.

Kotzka was now trying to feed his dying wife, all his animals in the shop and the ants. Provisions and money were running out. All that was left was a vat of sugary water.

He dribbled some into his wife's thin lips and amazingly she drank. He dribbled more and more and she drank and drank and drank.

One morning he came down to see her and to his astonishment, a few of his show-ants were standing on her chin and dribbling more sugary fluid into her mouth. She was lapping it up like cream!

Kotzka sat down and left them to it. They were doing a better job than him and his wife seemed to really enjoy their twitchy attention. But he knew she needed more than this and fell asleep worrying.

When he awoke his wife was not in her bed. It was night-time and dark in the cellar. He lit a candle and saw to his horror the body of his wife. It was slowly tipping over the edge of the tank! The ants were dragging her in!

He leapt up screaming but his wife turned her head and said lovingly,

"It's alright dear. They will look after me. I loved my time with you but I am theirs now. It will be fine. You will see! Every day you can see!"

And then she was gone. Kotzka ran up the ladder and watched his beloved wife sink into the humus, pulled under by a thousand gentle jaws.

He wept all night and all the next day. Ants collected his dripping tears and took them to her. She whispered through the soil.

"Don't cry my love. I am with our children. Our ants. I am their mother. I am their Queen now".

Kotzka peered into the tank and his wife wriggled slowly toward the glass side. Ants helped her move round and continued to feed her sugary syrup from their palps.  She sipped and smiled at Kotzka. A tender smile that said it would indeed all be fine.

The old man ladled lots of sugar water into the formicary and the ants on the surface applauded with acid squirts. This was his role now. To keep them fed and safe in the cellar.

Kotzka reopened the shop and even put on a few shows. He often looked at the big show-ants who seemed happier than they ever had. Word spread and the queues formed once more.

Even after all this time Kotzka's ant shows were still famous.

To make ends meet and buy tons of sugar the old fellow had to now charge a fee to watch his shows. The money came rolling in and he soon had more than he could manage.

He bundled up notes and stacked them on a shelf at one side of the ant tank. Coins he threw in for safe keeping. The Queen sent some up when he needed any.

And so they lived another year like this. As happy as they'd ever been. Kotzka. The ants and their human Queen. He could speak to his wife whenever he wished and occasionally she rose up and they kissed lovingly, the old man standing on the ladder.

"Kotzka. My dear beloved. I have good news. We have more children. I gave birth during the night. Big children. They will be the wonder of the world!" explained the Queen.

Like any Father the old man worried. About his brood. The sugar vat was nearly empty. He needed something more. Maybe the townsfolk could help.

It was coming on Christmas and he'd decided to put on a special festive show. Word got around. Kotzka wanted sweets and chocolate instead of money. It was a huge success and the children thrived. Soon they would be able to travel.

It was at one such yuletide show that Kotzka heard a familiar and unwelcome voice, even harsher and viler than before.

"That's shite that! There's more action in my Grandma's bush! I want my chocolates back you old bastard."

The crowd gasped. It was Norbert Vark. He'd turned 18 and like his folks had vowed, they'd kicked the good-for-nothing brute out. He was drinking and sleeping rough. He still hated Kotzka. Even more now.

"You can have your chocolates back Norbert", explained old Kotzka.

"Fuck the chocs you old skinflint. I want more than chocolate."

At this Vark left the shop growling at the kids and parents as he stormed out but not before swiping some of the bigger ants off the counter and with a huge grin on his twisted face stood on them. They flattened under his boot with a nauseating pop.

That night, drunk and raging, Vark returned to the shop. It was dark. He clumsily broke in and stumbled past the aisles of sleeping birds.

"So where do ya keep your fuckin' loot Kotzka, you miserly old bastard?" he mumbled to himself, whilst burping loudly in the cage of two love birds.

It was then he heard a soft purring from behind the door at the back. He jostled through and realised it was a cellar.

"Yes!" He exclaimed. "This is it. This is where you keep the goodies eh you miserly old fucker!"

Greed and adrenaline swept Norbert down the steps. He reached the bottom and in the moonlight could just make out a large glass tank and next to it someone sleeping in a bed.

He shoved the sleeper roughly and Kotzka sat up. 

"Norbert? How can I help you. What time is it?"

"Shut the fuck up you old git and show me where the loot is stashed. Or else!"

Vark had pulled out a small axe. One he'd used many times on animals. An old man was a step-up. He was excited and sobering up. He stepped forward and hit Kotzka at the back of the head with the blunt back. The old shopkeeper staggered and gingerly touched the wound. It was bleeding.

"N-N-Norbert! No need for unpleasantness. The money? It's there - in the tank."

"The tank? No funny business Kotzka or you'll get the sharp end! What's the tank for?"

"Oh, just the old straw and droppings from the birds. I sell it to local gardeners for a few shillings. The cash is on a shelf up there, where its safe. Use the ladder. You can take it all Norbert!"

Vark was unsure about it but avarice rolled round his eyes like slots when he saw the brown paper envelopes stacked on the plank.

"Go on up. Its yours. Just reach across the tank Norbert. I've lost my wife so what do I need money for?"

Vark stared hard at Kotzka and then cautiously stepped onto the ladder and began to climb. The old man slowly moved forward.

"I'll cut your fuckin' hands off you old bastard if you try anything. Stay fuckin' there!" Vark warned ominously waving the axe around.

Kotzka raised his hands submissively and beckoned the young man to go all the way.

Vark reached the top of the tank. He saw a few ants scrabbling about.

"What are these ants doing here?" he shouted.

"Oh, nothing. I always end up brushing a handful when I'm collecting the old straw. Just reach over for the money."

Vark stared at the ants staring back at him. He shrugged and leaned over to the shelf. It wasn't easy standing on the top rung, holding an axe and arching over the tank but Vark had the prize in his eyes and he went for it.

As he was reaching out for a stuffed packet a hand shot up from the top of the straw and grabbed his arm.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ! What the fuck is ....." Vark screamed but before he could finish an entire head, torso and another arm were clasped around his middle in a frighteningly tight embrace.

"Hello Norbert!" the head said looking him straight in the face.

"Miss .. Mrs. K-Kotzka! Fuuuuuuuuck!" He shreiked as his feet faltered on the ladder. He struggled against the superhuman hold but it was useless. Mrs. Kotzka had acquired the strength of ants during her time in the formicary. Just to make sure Vark didn't escape the old man flitted up the ladder and pushed him over.

"Thank you my love," smiled the ant woman, who then turned to Vark and whispered, "I am the Queen of this nest now Norbert and you my dear are my coronation feast. After all the trouble you've caused us I shall enjoy you slowly, as will my many beautiful children. Have you met my children Norbert?"

Thousands of fiery ants erupted to the surface and eyed the intruder hungrily. The Queen then opened her mouth to release two huge jagged mandibles. With lightning speed she pincered Vark's face, his shredding cheeks coming away like fillets. The teenager writhed in agony as the ant woman licked at his gushing blood and leered at him with crimson lips.

"Children. Come." she whispered.

"Noooooooooooooo!" Vark yelled as his mouth filled with ants and his eyes were burnt away by formic spurts.

The Queen and her children dragged his flailing body deep into the tank and he was gone. 

All that could be heard was a muffled suckling by countless mouths, one big, the rest small.

"Ah, what a lovely sound. Eat well my darling. Eat long and well!" smiled old Kotzka as he walked out of the cellar.

He went into the shop and placed a handwritten sign in the front window.

"Ant Shows postponed till next Month. Nesting Season has Started!".

Dead.Not Dead Fly.

Stiff on its back the dead fly simmered in the sill sun. It had died the day before just before laying eggs on some rancid chicken. Job done.

The window had a bubble in the glass. It magnified the high noon sunshine into a hot beam of energy.

This beam hit the fly smack where its heart was. Despite shrivelling, the muscle twitched in the searing ray and made its first bu-dum in the fly's scorched chest.

It woke. Dead. Not dead.

Righting itself the dead not dead fly shuddered and shook its head. Hairs fell out that had been singed on the sill.

It gnashed its sucker and rubbed its hands like a dirty doctor. Fly was hungry. It flew through the open window.

It landed on a piece of liver melting near a wheelie bin. Spooning bile fly felt sick and puked it back up. Yuk! It thought. 

Licking its legs it saw a shrew nosing round the rank grass. Fly jumped on its back and a loud zap flashed and cracked. The shrew howled in pain. Fly entered its mouth just before it died and clamped onto its heart, squeezing.

Shrew awoke. Dead. Not dead. It shat. Starving, it scurried off to the turkey farm for fresh meat. It shot up the big bird's arse just before it laid. Schwupp! A sharp slap snapped the Turkey's neck and it collapsed. Shrew burrowed deeper in where it kicked its aorta over and over until it thrummed again.

Turkey blinked. Dead. Not dead and was plucked from the pen for the butcher's window, where it hung like a shirt buttoned up. Bump. Bump. Bump. It made its way to the Christmas Table

Stuffed. Glazed. Basted. It quivered on the platter just before they carved. It stood and delivered shrew who delivered fly. They twitched in the gravy. The spark that hit the carving knife careened around the room and all the seated family fell as the lights blew. Dark.

They arose on Christmas afternoon as their friends came a knocking.

They all feasted late into the night and then went out of the house next door, where leftovers were being cling-filmed for the following day.

The bell rang. Hello.

They entered. Dead. Not dead.