Alex Lee Martinez - Gil's All Fright Diner

"You're really starting to piss me off!" he rumbled.

Cathy brought the bat down. His body crashed apart into a gray slime. It struggled to reshape itself. A lump with eyes rose up, only to be pounded back down. The slime bubbled as Gil tried to regain his senses. She smacked him again, but she was only keeping him down. He was right. She couldn't kill him. Not with her bat.

She snatched up the dagger beside her. The blade sent cold shivers up her arm. It was more than just a knife. It was every depravity of Gil Wilson's damned soul given form.

"Go ahead," Gil said. "You know you want to."

Another voice came to her. "You've got no choice. It's either you or him. Do it."

She hesitated.

"He should be dead. You're just correcting a mistake."

It made sense, but she'd never killed anyone before. Even if he did deserve it, she wasn't sure she could. But she had to. She tightened her grip on the dagger. It bit into her palm, eager to kill anyone, even its own creator.

Cathy glanced at her arm. Her flesh was graying and shriveling. Using the knife, no matter how much she should, would blacken her soul and maybe send her down the path Gil Wilson had taken.

The blade screamed. "Do it!"

She threw it away. It clattered a few feet away.

A fist erupted from the puddle of Gil Wilson. Cathy was knocked away. The goo rose and hovered in the air. The dagger jumped into his hand. Cathy held up her bat, preparing to defend herself.

"Much as I'd like to continue," he sighed, "I must be off. We'll have to finish this some other time. After I've become a god."

He turned and vanished through the far bedroom wall. After ten minutes, Cathy was finally convinced he'd left and dropped her guard. She sat on the bed and wrung her baseball bat nervously. She wanted to run away, but when the old gods returned, even earthbound spirits would be at their mercy. And she couldn't leave Earl. Even if he was probably dead by now.

She prayed he wasn't. Not just because she cared for him. Without some help in the physical world, a spirit didn't stand a ghost of a chance of stopping Tammy from opening the way.

Chad had no doubts. He most definitely did not want the old gods to rise tonight. While the world he knew was not all to his liking, something told him it beat the hell out of the remade one Tammy kept telling him about. He knew she couldn't be talked out of it, and he wanted to be on the right side of the world's new masters. And he was afraid of Tammy. More terrified of her than even the inscrutable and thoroughly inhuman powers she served. The fear made him obey her. That, along with a dash of waning teenage lust and leftover particles of puppy love.

But it was mostly fear.

His apprehension only grew when he saw the police cruiser in the diner lot. He parked beside it and went inside with slow, reluctant steps.

Tammy and Sheriff Kopp stood in the middle of the dining area. She smiled and bound to his side.

"There you are. I was beginning to think you weren't going to make it." She took his hands and kissed him on the cheek. She led him back toward Sheriff Kopp with a skipping gait.

The sheriff tipped his hat at Chad. Chad flashed a nervous grin and swallowed a lump in his throat.

"The sheriff was just explaining to me how he might finally have a handle on all the trouble Loretta's been having," Tammy chirped.

"Really?" Chad mumbled. He felt uncomfortably warm.

"Oh, yes. Go ahead and tell him, Sheriff."

"That's alright," Kopp said. "I really just wanted to speak with Loretta. Is she in back?"

"I think so."

Chad's legs trembled. He fell into a chair.

Kopp headed toward the kitchen. Tammy ruffled around in her backpack. "Oh, it's very interesting how he did it. See, he figured that there was some sort of magical spell interfering with his perception, and that if he stopped and forced himself to really think about it, he just might able to break the influence. So he spent all this afternoon just thinking and thinking about it. And finally it came to him. Make Out Barn."

She sprinkled some powder from a pouch into her palm.

"It all makes perfect sense really. Remember how everyone used to hang out there, Chad. Then there was that fire, and everybody just sort of stayed away." She giggled. "Almost like magic."

Kopp passed into the kitchen. The swinging doors swished back and forth four times, and he emerged, pistol in hand.

"Tammy, Chad, you're under arrest."

She grinned. He'd finally broken the spell of muddling. It was only a matter of time. Once he'd found her temple, he'd soon remember the graveyard incident she'd tucked into his unconscious. The mess in the kitchen was merely the final straw.

Chad jumped, hands in air.

"Oh come now," Tammy said. "You won't shoot us. We're just kids."

Kopp eased back the hammer on his revolver. "I'm not going to tell you again. I don't want to shoot you."

Her silky black hair squirmed about her shoulders as if it were alive. "Go ahead. You can't stop me now. Not with bullets anyway. Not here. Not now."

The sheriff fired. The shot thundered in Chad's ears. He shut his eyes tight and held them shut with bated breath. He wasn't sure if he wanted Tammy dead or not. He dared open one eye and saw the bullet hovering mere inches from Tammy's face. The projectile spun, suspended in the air.

"Too little, too late."

She threw out her handful of dust. It shot across the room and hit Sheriff Kopp in the face. He sputtered and coughed before slumping into a relaxed posture. The gun slipped from his fingers and fell to the tile.

Tammy plucked the dangling bullet from the air. Chuckling, she tossed it away. Invisible forces lowered the window blinds. The front door locked all by itself.

"Come along, Chad. We've got work to do."

Chad followed her into the back where Duke lay in a puddle of blood. Duke's head was dented. Hair had been stripped away in some spots, showing skull and maybe even brains. Chad didn't look too close for fear of losing his lunch.

"You killed him."

"Your point?" she asked.

He glanced up at the ceiling to avoid seeing corpse brain or her creepy, empty eyes. Up to now, Tammy hadn't killed anyone. She'd talked about it a lot, but this was the first fresh dead guy he'd seen. His stomach churned.

"He's only temporarily dead, anyway," she sighed. "We need him for the final sacrifice."

Chad risked another glance at Duke's body. It was hard believe he wasn't well and truly deceased. Even if he were a werewolf, it seemed leaking brains should kill just about anybody.

He noticed Loretta for the first time. She was easy to ignore, just standing in the corner. That same chalky powder Tammy had thrown on the sheriff covered her face. At least she wasn't dead. Not yet, anyway.

Tammy grabbed Duke by a leg. "Help me move this guy, dumbass."

The urge to bolt rose within him, but her stare compelled him to obey. Gripping the corpse's other leg, he allowed his mind to shut off. His body switched to autopilot. She told him what to do, and he did it without really thinking about it. It was either that, or huddle in the corner and wet himself.

Dragging Duke to the front was no easy feat. He weighed a ton. Chad stared at the trail of red left behind. They were really going to do it. They were going to raise the old gods and end the world. The part of his mind still working found it strange that it could all end so easily. There wasn't all that much to it. According to Tammy, the diner did most the work. She just had to charge it up with some basic chanting and black-magic-type stuff and sacrifice someone at the right moment. The Gate would be thrown wide, and mankind would be swallowed whole by a gushing tide of horrors.