Robert Essig - Death Obsessed

And she remembered where she was.

The smell hit her, so heavy in the air that she could taste the butcher shop odor, the mingling of singed meats and melted hair, and Ronnie couldn’t hold back the rise in her gut. She turned her head to the side and vomited onto her left shoulder.

“Hello?” she said, voice cracking. “Is anybody there?”

But there was no answer.

As Ronnie’s eyes adjusted through the bloody haze, the thin veil of singed flesh, she could see clearly where the source of the meat locker odor came from. She realized, too, that she could taste it because her body was covered in a thick frosting of minced human like a slathering of homo sapien tartar.

A whimper escaped her throat and an indistinguishable chunk of gore dropped into her mouth. She spit it out and squirmed and tried to flail, but she couldn’t move. Ronnie screamed, but there was no one there to hear her pleas.

Blood dripped from the ceiling, ran down the walls, dragged by ornery chunks bent on reaching the floor.

And Ronnie, poor Ronnie, screamed and screamed and screamed again.

If the devils of Earth are dead all around you, do the angels hear you scream?

Robert Essig is the author of several novels and novellas including Brothers in Blood , In Black , and Through the In Between, Hell Awaits . He has published close to 100 short stories, and edited two anthologies. His story "Clarissa", co-written with Jack Bantry, was published in Comet Press' Year's Best Hardcore Horror Vol. 1 . You can find him at robertessig.blogspot.com, as well as most social media sights. Robert lives with his family in San Diego County.

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Published by: Grand Mal Press, Forestdale, MA

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Cover Art by Matthew Revert