Jeff Strand: Casket For Sale

Andrew cried out as the metal plate affixing the camera to his chest tore free. The flesh underneath was red and blistered and bloody and I realized with horror that the plate had been burned onto him.

He slapped me, hard, but I didn't let go.

The camera ripped free, taking pieces of skin with it.

Andrew howled with pain and pressed his hand to the wound. "My beacon!" he shouted.

I flung the camera toward the woods as hard as I could. It smacked into a tree and fell to the ground.

Andrew got to his feet, whimpering. "Where is it? What did you do with it?"

"Andrew, please! You're not in your right mind! They did something to you!"

"Where's my beacon?"

"Your name is Andrew Mayhem. Andrew Mayhem! It's a goofy name, but it's yours!"

"I know what my fucking name is!"

"I'm Helen Mayhem. I'm your wife."

"I don't have a wife."

"Theresa is your daughter. Kyle is your son."

"Shut up!"

"Andrew, I love you!" I said, somehow managing to stand up. "We all love you!"

Andrew slammed his hands over his ears. " Shut up !"

"Andrew, please, come back to us!"

It was working. I could feel it working.

" I said shut up !"

I stepped toward him. My leg wobbled and I nearly lost my balance, but I did it.

"This isn't you."

"You don't know who I am!"

"I know exactly who you are. You're the man I married."

Andrew stared at me.

Was that a flash of recognition in his eyes?

A flash of love?

"Helen…?" he asked.

"Yes, it's me!"

His voice cracked. "Helen… what have I done?"

Andrew thought, I've lost my beacon, that's what I've done.

"It wasn 't your fault," it said. "They did something to you."

I nodded. "Yes, they did something to me."

Blood gushed from where the demon had ripped off my beacon. It poured out like a waterfall. I didn't even know I had that much blood, but yet it gushed out, soaking into the ground.

The larger demon took another step toward me. I forced myself not to cry out in fear or disgust. I had no idea what trick this creature was trying to play by insisting it was my wife… my wife , if such a revolting thing could even be imagined… but maybe if I played along I could defeat it.

"Where are Roger and Samantha?" the demon asked.

I shrugged.

"Are they alive?"

Yes? No? What was the best answer? Did this demon fear them? Did this demon need them?

"I don't know," I said.

The demon stepped away from me. Its scaly, slimy skin glistened in the sunlight. "I'm taking Theresa," it said.

It crouched down next to the fallen demon. I couldn't let it take the little one. I'd be punished if I didn't slay them. I had to kill them as quickly as possible.

"I'm going to send help for you," the demon said. "Everything will be okay, I promise."

The demon scooped up the smaller creature in its wretched arms.

Blood continued to pour from my chest. And then it squirted from my eye. I wasn't sure how I could see with blood squirting out of my eye, but I could. Suddenly it squirted out of both eyes.

"Stop it!" I demanded, rubbing at my eyes to block the flow. "I need that blood in me!"

The blood that had soaked into the ground bubbled to the surface, quickly rising over my shoes.

The demon had cursed me.

I saw faces in the blood. Screaming faces. Laughing faces. Crying faces. All of them looking at me.

I turned and ran.

I didn't care if I'd be punished. I didn't care if the demons got away. I had to escape, get out of here before I drowned in my own blood and the faces sunk their fangs into me.

I ran into the forest. Sap oozed from the trees, trapping birds and squirrels and other forest animals within. Razor blades flowed in the sap, slicing the poor things without mercy.

I smacked into a tree, knocking my face off. It hit the ground, face-down. I continued running, leaving it behind.

Trees reached for me with their branches, ripping off my arms and legs, which were replaced with new arms and legs for the trees to rip off. I'd never realized I had so many arms and legs.

I wished my chest would quit bleeding. This was getting ridiculous.

As I ran, I glanced behind me (without turning my head, which was odd) and saw a giant pile of my twitching arms and legs. I could also see a tongue flapping around in there, even though my own tongue was clearly still in my… oh, nope, wait, it was gone.

I ran out into a dirt clearing. An infinite clearing, where the trees couldn't detach any more of my limbs.

In fact, the clearing was kind of boring.

I twiddled my thumbs.

I twiddled my tongues, since I now seemed to have two.

That demon had looked kind of familiar, now that I thought about it. Maybe I'd tried to slay her in some other plane of existence. Maybe we'd dated. It seemed unlikely that I'd ever dated a demon, but I'd done some experimenting in college.

I heard a sound like a squeaky faucet handle turning, and the blood flow from my chest grew weaker and weaker until it stopped altogether. With a sound like a zipper closing, the wound healed, leaving only a scar that read "Do Not Pry Open."

The ground rumbled.

Earthquake!

Or a tornado with ground-rumbling properties!

Tornado with ground-rumbling properties. That was just silly. I laughed at my own foolishness, which was difficult with seventeen or eighteen tongues in my mouth.

And my severed pinky. I wondered how that got in there.

Something emerged from the ground in front of me. I hoped it was a bag of gold instead of a zombie.

The object broke free to the surface.

It was a tombstone. The inscription read "Graverob This , Asshole."

Another tombstone burst out of the ground: "R.I.P. Andrew Mayhem." Then another: "R.I.P. Helen Mayhem." Theresa and Kyle Mayhem followed.

Hundreds of tombstones burst through the ground. One emerged directly underneath my feet, knocking me to the ground. As I fell I hit my head on a tombstone, knocking off the top half of my skull.

I lost consciousness for a few years.

When I recovered, I yanked off my new beard and realized I was surrounded by millions of tombstones. They were so close together that the people had to be buried standing up, or several bodies deep. Or else they were really tiny people.

I bellowed in terror, just for the hell of it.

Goblin made his way through the tombstones. My arch-nemesis was looking bad, his face a patchwork of scars and gashes, but I had to admit his cyborg makeover did look pretty cool.

"Andrew," he said, nodding politely.

"Goblin," I said, returning his nod.

"Why aren't you digging?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Dunno."

"Don't you know where you are?"

I looked around without moving my head. The iron gates read " Sanity Cemetery."

"I'm in Sanity Cemetery," I replied. "Duh."

"Your sanity is buried here, Andrew," Goblin informed me.

"I'm insane?"

"Yes."

"That sucks."

"Surely you don't think all of this is real, do you?"

One of my tongues popped out of my mouth and oozed along the ground like a speedy slug. "Dunno."

"You must dig," Goblin said. He peeled off one of his scars like a sticker. "Dig deep."

"With what?"

Goblin pointed to my right arm. It had become a shovel.

"Ah, thanks," I said.

"Dig."

Okay, I'd dig. Digging was fun.

A tombstone in front of me read "Casket For Sale (Only Used Once). Serious Inquiries Only, Please." A red X glowed in the dirt in front of it. I wondered if this could be some sort of sign.

I began to dig. It wasn't easy, because when you're digging with a regular shovel you use your feet to slam it into the ground, but I couldn't do that because the shovel was my arm, and so it was pretty awkward at first and it kind of hurt my back, not to mention the whole weirdness factor of having my own arm be a shovel, I mean, the tongues were weird, too, but at least they were just multiples of a standard body part, while a shovel was a completely foreign appendage to the human body.