Recipe for madness

[Pariah.]

My friend wanted me to write a short horror story revolving around being in a kitchen so he could illustrate it as part of his university course. I ended up writing three, although I think the first two I wrote were better they ended up taking on a life of their own and turned out much too long and in his words "immensely fucked up and disturbing." So I toned it down a bit and punched this out in about 25 minutes. Enjoy.

***

The air is stagnant; stale like a torpid breeze from a mine shaft or old well. Who could believe, who would want to believe that places like this exist, that someone would be capable of something like this, who would dare dream that the line that divided life and death would be decided upon by the quality of a meal or the turn of a day?

Liam Gray’s
RECIPE FOR MADNESS

The edges of the window are still fogged like some great unseen behemoth is breathing against the glass and waiting to get in. It’s always there; like the silent howling of tinnitus or the lingering and invisible presence that lurks behind you in the dark. It starts out small demanding and demanding like a starving baby or an itch. Edged on the periphery of your senses, riding the sweat down the nape of your neck, closing its gnarled claw around the rapid thumping of your heart, it is the first feeling, the most primal of all impulses, it has been called the mother of monsters and the great mind killer—it is Fear and these are her works.

Meet Gordon Stuart and in a way I guess Megan Cohen or at least what is left of her, those crimson plumes splattered across Gordon’s clothes, those unrelenting stains and unclean smells are all that are left of her now—a life time of hopes and dreams snuffed out as quickly as you might blow out a candle. She didn’t scream, she didn’t resist; she just sat and watched as Gordon killed her like it was a joke, like it wasn’t real, like a deer staring headlong into the headlights of an oncoming truck.

Don’t hate Gordon he didn’t do anything you or I wouldn’t have done in the same situation. If anything Megan got the easy way out, he did it for her—at least that’s what he tells himself. The cupboards were bare and he needed the ingredients. The doors were locked, the windows sealed, no one had responded to their cries for help for nearly a week, and whenever he picked up the phone all he could hear was the rumbling and gurgling of an empty stomach.

Events and circumstances, cruel jests of fate, nagging hunger, and ebbing fears, drawn out upon a canvas of flesh like a recipe in the mind and heart of Gordon Stuart—but by what?

Is it fear that guides his hand into the cadaver, is it fear that scoops her entrails into the sink, is it fear that cracks her ribs, or fear that cuts her flesh from her bone with the steady hand and expertise of a butcher?

In a world alone where monsters linger round every corner and nightmares threaten to slink free of the shadows is this madness the only sane response—is Gordon a murderer or a victim? The kitchen calls like it does every day at this time and he goes to it.

As soon as he step in he can feel it—it’s old and heavy and some deep part of him knows it’s watching. His heart is at threat to burst at the mere thought of what it is or may be, no, he dares not look up, it is enough to see the fog obscure the window, too hear the pane rattling in the frame or the squeak of the latch as it slides open, too feel its hunger, lurking, oppressive, looming about him like a cage. With downcast eyes he shuffles to the chopping block, what little courage he has challenging him to snatch up the knife and strike back and perhaps if it were a man, perhaps if he could name it or give it a face he might, but he can't and cannot so does not.

The creature grows impatient and like young Gordon that knife begins to tremble, faster and faster the blade dances in its hilt, squealing with a high-pitch, almost deafening, whistle until Gordon can stand it no longer. He snatches the blade and staggers to the oven… though as suddenly as they come Gordon’s convictions are stayed when his eyes meet with Megan’s; her severed head smiling back him from the counter, pristine and immaculate as the day they first met, gleaming with deadlight like twin keys to his shame, her ruby lips smiling so full of trust and life, even in death, even in fear, unshaken even in this nightmare—a grim tribute to the impossible in a realm where the only boundaries are terror.

Guilt and heartache tear through his mind like a pack of rabid wolves chasing down a boar and bring him tumbling to his knees and casting the knife from his hand across the linoleum.

Beyond the blur of his tears Gordon watches Megan’s bear breast bake and howls with lament. He shakes, and rocks, and cries, and relives the horrors of his captivity again and again but for the first time he is overcome with a fear more horrific than any monster could ever truly be… Gordon Stuart is alone.

The End

[Jadeen Levana]

I enjoyed your story to my heart´s content, and I find your description of fear very amazing. I respect and admire any writer who can convey such feelings to me.

Thanks for writing such a great masterpiece and hope to read more from you :D

[Pariah.]

Originally Posted by Jadeen Levana

I enjoyed your story to my heart´s content, and I find your description of fear very amazing. I respect and admire any writer who can convey such feelings to me.

Thanks for writing such a great masterpiece and hope to read more from you :D

Oh wow, now I feel horrible for not checking in on this earlier.

Thank you Jadeen, I am really glad you enjoyed it. I'll put something new together as soon as I am able. :)

[Fearonsarms]

Very enjoyable I really loved your desriptions and the way you hook the reader in from the start :)

[neverending]

Well done description of a moment of horror.

It desperately needs another going over- it's rife with punctuation and spelling errors.

[Pariah.]

Mind pointing them out Neverending?

I suspect they're just errors because I learned to read and write in Australia and we spell some words differently, such as colour, but I'd like to be sure. As for punctuation, yeah that wouldn't surprise me at the least. I write like I'm actually telling someone a story so it doesn't always convert well.

Anyway, here is another...

Presented for your enjoyment:

Introducing Joey Carmichael; a two-bit hood whose hopes and dreams fit snugly into the dime bag tucked into his back pocket. Joey’s was never the sharpest crayon in the box so as far as opinions go his have never been particularly important but that’s all about to change… because Joey is about to learn the hard way that when the chips are down his opinion of himself is the only thing that matters…

Liam Gray’s
CHINOOK

Pirelli’s used to be a swanky place when that word didn’t sound like some backwards sex act or cheap cardboard cereal but the times have changed even if Pirelli’s menu hasn’t. This the kitchen; plates stacked like skyscrapers, cutlery from when America remembered how to produce quality, and Joey Carmichael sweeping floors—a nagging testament to inhibition, work ethic, and Pirelli’s poor judgement.

With the floor partially swept and no one to tell him otherwise Joey takes his fifth cigarette break of the morning. Outside the air is thick and sticks to his skin but to Joey anything is better than being shackled another minute to that kitchen and he takes great comfort as he paces the back alley far from the angry calls of Mr. Pirelli. Here in the shadows where all mummers can be spoken aloud Joey is the master of his domain and everything he says is law. Yes, here he can light up without judgement or worry, he can defer to instinct and thoughtlessness and any wrong choice can be laughed off or blamed on the weed… but like every utopia before it, it never lasts.

Mr. Pirelli’s screams rattle the plates and shatter the silence—an offensive clutter of noise and bother that rips Joey back from the edge of peace like a snapping rubber band and slings him hurtling into the thinnest reaches of his sanity. Frothing anger combined with a linger sense of self importance, or perhaps an urgent feeling to irrationally deny the truth and irrelevance of every wasted moment of his life drives Joey’s step by bloody step back up ally. As thoughtless as in his nirvana he bursts through the kitchen door and comes face to face with the plump scarlet countenance of Pirelli. Then there, in the face of a terrifying roar Joey finds his courage in defiance and strikes out—against his father, his mother, his school teachers, his ex-girl friends, and every other poor soul whoever dared reflect the reality of his impotence!

Though it is Pirelli who receives the blow; a sharp and wet blow to the chest, above the collar bone but below the neck. As the colour drains from his face and his palate grows cold, only whimpered gurgles slip his gaping wound… perhaps pleading, perhaps screaming—words uncertain by any measure but to say they were his last.

The floor is dirty again and it sings up at Joey like a choir of gibbering cherubim and though his hand remains tightly closed around the meat cleaver and the blood stains to his elbow there is no trembling or doubt. Only the blissful nirvana of a new life, of a new man standing atop a scarlet shroud of shed rage, a man lost within the savage beauty of his own visceral drug-addled rebirth, in awe of an undeniable moment of brutal clarity, in the liberating simplicity of his nightmarish baptism. Joey’s father once told him that the Native American’s wore war paint when they went to war because men didn’t kill men… but monsters could. The thought comes rushing into his mind almost as quickly as the rats scurry from the shadows to fill the wound in Pirelli’s neck and a malicious smile tucks at his edge of his lips.

Kicking the limp hand from his ankle with a bestial snarl Joey kneels down and marks his face with the blood of his first kill and scoffs a little at the fragility of life.

Then just like any other the moment passes and the meat cleaver skitters from his hand. Anxiety isn’t far away, jittering, panic, twitching, nagging, burning guilt—guilt for what he had done and worse still for all he hadn’t, for lies told and maintained, for anger spoken and intended, for life wasted and hopes destroyed, for the death of the faith and pride in his father’s eyes, for the loss of his mother’s dignity, for the tears shed by battered girlfriends, and the vandalism to the cars of his teacher’s, for the blame and the predigest, for the betrayal and the hate, for the inconsequential measure of his life and the one he had taken!

He closes his eyes but he can hear the rats eating. He can see the disappointment in their eyes—pulling him to his knees his every action a bamboo lash across his back. His father’s words pounding through his mind like a hammer, worse than any fear or irrelevance, hammering on his soul like a smith on hot steel…

“Our ancestors used to believe that men don’t kill other men… only monsters kill men.”

“Only monsters kill men!”

The same words over and over, a nightmarish dream more real than the ever expanding range of his senses, more terrifying than the waring hate and shame that burst the blood vessels in his eyes or the pulsating blisters that burst whiskers, louder than the chitinous squeal as his fingers knotted and webbed, more intense than the unceasing itch as course black hair bristled from his body, more painful than his spine bursting free of his back into a long bald tail, and somehow, against all logic, more horrifying than the craven hunger gurgling in his swollen black belly.

***

Portrait of a Rat—a vermin, a lowly beast given to the parody of man or Joey Carmichael—an unwitting victim of weakness fear and an ancient belief. Anyway about it one thing I think we can agree on that Joey was a lost soul intent on dragging as many others as he can down with him if that would mean that he stayed out of the abyss for just one more minute…

The End

[neverending]

Mind pointing them out Neverending?

I suspect they're just errors because I learned to read and write in Australia and we spell some words differently, such as colour, but I'd like to be sure. As for punctuation, yeah that wouldn't surprise me at the least. I write like I'm actually telling someone a story so it doesn't always convert well.

Since you asked:
Twice you use the word "too" where you mean "to."
You use the word bear where you mean bare.
I don't believe these are British uses- they are simple errors in usage. I won't go into the punctuation, since, as you say, you're using an idiosyncratic method. I will however, mention a few things that confused me:

His heart is at threat to burst

I have no idea what this means. Do you mean "his heart threatened to burst?" or do you mean "his heart is a threat to burst?" or something else?

the blade dances in its hilt

I'm unclear what this means as well. The blade was inside the hilt, and dancing? The hilt was dancing?

howls with lament

Do you mean howls a lament? or howls and laments? Howls with lament doesn't make sense to me.

There are also some minor typos and such... I don't want to seem like I'm nit-picking your story apart, but you seemed so incredulous that there were errors, and asked for specifics, so I gave them.

You have some clever turns of phrases here, and a good sense of atmosphere. Keep it up.

[newb]

Listen to Neverending

He's old and wise :D