#2

"FACE THE MUSIC"
by Dallas Lee

She could feel Johnny’s dried cum between her thighs.

Abby took the bed sheets and covered her nakedness. She felt her temples. Her head was throbbing. She saw a plastic glass of water resting on the bedside table. Parched, she picked it up and drank.

“Where am I?”

Then she remembered. After the trip to the graveyard, Johnny and Barbara had asked her to perform ménage trios with them. And, for some strange reason, she had agreed. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Johnny, behind his horn-rimmed glasses, was an attractive man. And with her well-built body, Barbara was a gorgeous woman.

Abby had been turned on by both of them. She hadn’t been able to resist her urges; not after having been to the cemetery. Her emotions had been wounded, and she’d needed someone to cauterize them.

She just wished it hadn’t been Johnny and Barbara. They were too close to her; too close to her heart. But there was nothing she could do about it, now. She’d just have to live with it and worry about the ramifications later.

I’m only human, thought Abby. A woman made of flesh and blood. I’m allowed a mistake every now-and-then.

Aren’t I?

“Oh.” Abby’s head was still hurting. Obviously, she’d had too much to drink last night. And now it was catching up to her.

Tentatively, she climbed out of bed. Her clothes were strewn about the room. She picked up each of them, climbing into them as she did. As she tried to put on her shoes, she nearly stumbled. She quickly reached out and steadied herself on the nearby wall.

Even with her brain a mess, thoughts of seeing Barbara back to work on Monday ran through her mind. How was it going to be working with a woman you’d just had sex with?

“I guess you’re just going to have to learn to live with it, kiddo,” she said.

From the bathroom, she heard the shower spray. Beneath it, Johnny and Barbara were laughing.

For a moment, she thought about knocking on the door. She could tell them that she was leaving.

But then she thought different.

Let them have their fun, she thought.

She walked to the hotel room door and opened it. Quietly, she slipped outside.

Abby wrinkled her nose at the hotel’s décor. Red carpet ran beneath her feet as she walked towards the elevator. It reminded her of blood. Old-style lanterns illuminated the hallway, casting eerie shadows along the walls.

She rode the elevator down to the lobby. At the front desk, an overweight man was leaned back in his chair. A lurid crime magazine, its pages dog-eared and tired, was gripped in his meaty fists.

“Could you call me a cab?” asked Abby.

The Fat Man looked at her from over the magazine, which Abby could now read its title as MURDER AND MAYHEM.

“Just be a second,” said The Fat Man.

Abby walked across the lobby. She heard him dialing the number, and then telling the dispatcher where he could find her.

She sat down in one of the plush chairs cowering beneath a large fern.

The plant reminded her of Tefe.

“I’ll have to call her, today,” she said. “I haven’t talked to her in so long.”

From across from the desk, The Fat Man glanced at her. Abby realized that she’d been talking aloud. She grinned sheepishly.

Moments later, the cab arrived outside the hotel. Abby thanked The Fat Man and walked outside. She climbed into the back of the cab.

And then it carried her away from Johnny, Barbara, and The Fat Man into a brand new day.

“I have such sights to show you.”

“But we failed you, Mr. Voorhees,” said Buck. “Are you telling us that you’re still going to keep us on your pay roll?”

“Why, of course.” Pilate Voorhees spread his long finger-nailed hands onto his desk. “There is plenty of time to correct your misgivings.”

“That’s real good news,” said Roy. “I was afraid of what you might do to us.”

“Indeed.” Pilate’s eyes squinted into diamonds. They reminded Buck of snake’s eyes. He peered at Roy. “You were the closest to what I’m after. What did you think of this swamp… thing?”

“He literally scared the crap out of me,” said Roy, laughing. “I mean, who would’ve thought we’d go into a swamp and see reanimated corpses and muck monsters? That’s the stuff out of a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie.”

“And you say he tied you to a tree with branches?”

“Yeah, those things just came alive and got me.”

“That’s very interesting.” Pilate motioned for one of his well-armed bodyguards to the desk. He nodded at Roy. “Show our dear friend the basement, would you?”

“The basement?” asked Roy.

“Yes,” replied Pilate. “That’s where you’ll be working from now on.”

“Oh.” Roy got up from his chair as the bodyguard laid a hand on his shoulder. He glanced down at the machine-gun the guard was carrying. “That sure is a big gun,” he said, nervously.

“Don’t be intimidated,” said Pilate. “You’re in good hands.”

Roy stepped into the elevator that ran from Pilate’s penthouse down through the Tiburon building. He waved at Buck before the doors closed.

Buck turned to Pilate. “He’s not coming off that elevator alive, is he?”

“You’re a very astute man, Mr. Clark.” There was no emotion in the voice. “But I do have such excellent plans for him. And I’ll give you such pleasure, too.”

Buck watched as Pilate Voorhees unfolded from his desk. The man was somewhere in his early 70s, Buck figured. He was bald, with age spots on his forehead. Tufts of gray hair lived atop his ears. His nose was razor-sharp. He was dressed in a funereal black suit. And he sported buck teeth.

Pilate turned to the large aquarium standing behind his desk. Inside the tank, piranha hungrily swam about. He reached into the refrigerator sitting beneath and pulled out a large chunk of bloody meat. He dropped it into the water. The fish immediately swam towards it, tearing it into gory shreds.

“Come with me,” he said, turning back to Buck. “I’ll show you the next step of our operation.”

He stood up and followed Pilate from the room. They walked down many flights of stairs before they stopped.

“Here we are,” said Pilate. He opened the door and ushered Buck inside.

The room was one large laboratory. Buck glanced around, watching the scientists scurry about like worker ants. Foam heads bubbled from an assorted mess of test tubes. Uncharacteristically, he could hear the hum of an air-conditioner filtering into the room.

“What is this?” he asked.

“This way,” said Pilate. “There’s something I want you to see.”

Buck followed him over to a row of cages. He felt his jaw drop at what he saw.

Trapped inside individual cells were deformities of man. There were beasts with large tentacles, reaching out to the bars keeping them caged. There were monsters with three eyes and tusks that cowered on beds of straw as they passed by. And more, dear God, more than Buck’s imagination could conjure. He was going to have nightmares and restless sleep because of this freak show.

And that’s when he spotted Roy. His friend was chained to the wall, with a ball-gag stuck into his mouth. Spit rolled down the folds of his chins. And tears were boiling in his eyes. He struggled vainly against the chains holding him to the wall. Behind the gag, Buck could hear him screaming his name.

“What do you think?” asked Pilate.

Buck could only shake his head. His tongue felt too fat in his mouth to respond.

“All of my experiments, thus far, have gone terribly awry. Maybe now you can see why I need tissue from this so called… swamp thing. It’ll give me the final piece to the puzzle I need for immortality. I knew that if it truly existed, it would come once you desecrated Alec Holland’s grave. For some odd reason, the local legends have them connected somehow. And I wasn’t mistaken.”

“This isn’t real,” Buck managed to say.

“Ah, but it is.” Pilate swept out his hand towards the monsters as if he were a dealer selling new cars. “And it is here that I need your further help.”

Buck knew what was coming. “No,” he said. “No way in hell.”

“I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with what I have in mind,” said Pilate. “And I’ll oversee the operation myself. I’ll turn you into more man than you are now. I’ll give you everything you need to combat and defeat the swamp thing.”

“Fuck you.”

Pilate snapped his fingers. Two guards, their machine guns aimed at Buck, rushed forward.

“You can either live as an immortal,” said Pilate. “Or die as a mortal.” He flashed a jagged smile that complimented his buck teeth. “So, Mr. Clark, fuck YOU.”

The girl was down on her knees in front of Blaze. He was pushing her head deep into his crotch.

Tefe stopped where she was walking. She was behind the stage area where a new band was jamming out loud. She could barely hear herself think over the racket.

“I told you not to come back here,” said Blaze’s bodyguard, Bruce Dickey. “I told you that you wouldn’t like what you’d see.”

“Go to hell,” said Tefe.

She pushed past Dickey. As she did so, Blaze opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“Hey baby,” he said. “What a surprise to see you here.”

He finished with the girl. As he was zipping up his leather pants, she stood to her feet. She was wiping her mouth.

She looked at Tefe.

“Do you dance at Chubby’s?” she asked.

Tefe shook her head. She wiped away a strand of her white hair that fell into her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, “but no.”

“Well you should,” said the girl. “You have the body for it.”

“Thanks,” said Tefe. She moved aside as the girl walked by. “Is that what you’ve reduced yourself to it?” she asked Blaze. “That girl barely looked eighteen.”

“What do you care?” asked Blaze. “Besides, I thought we’d broken up.”

“That’s news to me,” said Tefe. “Is that what you want? You want to break up with me?”

Blaze looked down at his boots. He shuffled his feet. And he played with his beaded necklace, rolling it between his fingers.

“Of course not,” he mumbled. “I love you, baby.”

“For some reason that God only knows,” replied Tefe, “I do you, too.”

He held his arms open, and she wrapped herself in them. She started to cry.

“It’s okay, baby,” said Blaze.

But things weren’t “okay”. Tefe knew this to be true. She hadn’t known how far she could take Blaze’s abuse – mentally or physically – but now was the time. Things were dead and dying between them.

“Let’s go home,” Blaze told her. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Okay.”

Tefe didn’t know what she was going to do. She’d talk to her mother first, and then her father. They’d know what was best.

She, however, already knew what was best.

She was just satisfied that Blaze didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

This would be too easy…

Alec picked at his nose cavity. A large maggot wriggled out of the hole. It fell down on his lap where he was sitting next to the hole in the ground that was his grave.

“Final resting place, my ass,” he said. “Now I’m going to have to find a new place to be buried.”

“That can be easily arranged,” said Swamp Thing. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“’You think? Man, it wasn’t you who was just dug up from his grave. It wasn’t you that a couple of trailer trash punks wanted to cart off.”

“There’s something very interesting in that,” said Swamp Thing. “Why would they want you in the first place? And who is this Pilate Voorhees that has suddenly appeared from thin air?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Alec.

“We haven’t heard the last of this Voorhees,” replied Swamp Thing. “I have the strangest idea that he’s going to be a replica of Anton Arcane.”

“Wasn’t that guy sent to Hell?”

“Yes,” said Swamp Thing.

“And you think you might have to do this to the Voorhees character?”

“I don’t want to get carried away,” said Swamp Thing. “I’ve yet to meet him. Things could be very different than what I think. Only time will truly tell.”

“Well, there’s one thing I’d really like to know,” said Alec. “And that’s why I’m up and moving around? Instead of sitting up and talking to a plant, shouldn’t my ass be dead and buried? What’s up with that?”

“I don’t know,” said Swamp Thing.

“I do,” said a voice. “I know.” The voice laughed. “And you’re going to get a kick out of it.”

Both Swamp Thing and Alec turned around.

Alec felt his decayed jaw drop down. It fell and rolled off his lap into the open grave. He imagined his words drooling out of his mouth in one of those cartoon bubbles from the EC Comics:

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”