Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 07:46:21 MDT From: Robyn Meta Herrington Subject: SUB:CONTEST:A Violent Force Thanks to everyone who *has* participated, and to those just sitting on the sidelines, a'wondering.... get at it! Send submissions to ME: Robyn Herrington rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca Likewise, send crits to ME, and I'll pass them along. Robyn --------------------------------------------------------------- A VIOLENT FORCE Karen awoke from her bad dream. Her silk and lace nightgown was wet from body sweat, and her sensitive lips were chapped and bleeding. She glanced over at the clock radio, which was the only thing that had awaken her from her terrifying nightmare. The time read 4 a.m. in flashing orange three inch numerals on the fiber optic display. Her heart was throbbing heavily against her petite chest. She held her left breast with her hand to feel it. Bippidy-Bop, Bippidy-Bop... It was the third night in a row the nightmare had come to haunt her. A voilent force. The horrible invisible 'thing' that stalked down its human prey like a wild animal. The terrible unseen 'monster' that killed and consumed anyone who was unfortunate enough to be trapped or caught. Karen could still hear all of her screams, as she was pursued in her night terror. Feel the ringing in her ears, and the echoing in the hallways of her mind. Pitiful and useless overpowering screams of damnation... And then she felt the feeling of helplessness one often has overcome them when they cannot do a thing to change fate. A feeling of helplessness and lingering frustration. In those horrid dreams, the 'entity's' hunting grounds are always the same. The manicured and well kept neighborhood of the middle class suburban subdivision named "Victoria Heights", where she was resided with her teen-age son Timothy, and her second husband Phil for the past eight months. Karen felt those months were definitely the best she had ever experienced in her life. A 'fairy tale' existence just like she had often dreamed of as a little girl. Her motherly love for Timothy, and passion for successful and handsome Phil fueled the good life she now had the pleasure to know. Karen and Phil had moved to the subdivision care of 'Lady Luck'. Phil had inherited the small wood-framed home from his late mother's modest estate. His mom had been killed in a late night auto accident on the way home from an evening of church bingo at the local parish only a year ago. An eighteen-wheeler transporting hogs to the market collided with her late model Volkswagon. It flattened the little car like a pancake with mom inside. Phil's mother's body was so mangled as a result of the accident, the family had to settle for a closed-casket ceremony. Phil never got over the mandatory need for a closed casket. "You never get to kiss them good-bye that one last time," Phil told Karen, she still had a photo of his face in her minds-eye from that weak moment, his eyes swollen and red with tears... The house was a familiar place in Phil's childhood memories. Unfortunately, he also had some mixed feelings about living in the structure. When he was five, his father (a used car salesman) had built the house with his own hands from the foundation up. Phil always told Karen that in the beginning, there seem to be so much love and happiness for him and his family in the house. Then, after his father left, there was only poverty, pain, and endless tears of remorse... Phil's father deserted his mother and the family (he and two younger sisters) on the occasion of his sixth birthday. He just walked out the front door one morning to go to work and disappeared, never showed up, and never came home. The family never heard from him again. He had just walked out the door of this fine home and faded into oblivion... Of course, Phil's father wasn't the only husband who abandoned a family and left them to fend for themselves in Victoria Heights. A good many other husbands with concrete credibility had deserted their families, never to be heard from again. A large number indeed. With so many truant husbands, it became quite a running joke among the women of Victoria Heights to advise all the newcomers of the subdivision that it was 'cursed'. And the so-called 'curse was really a lot more than a joke. It was not to be taken lightly by the female population of Victoria Heights. Though it was made fun of, it was taken seriously by the women-folk, they merely made fun of it because to fear it would be too unbearable. Karen felt very threatened and scared because of the dreams. It had taken so many difficult years of her life to find such happiness, and a 'curse' of any kind whatsoever was definitely considered a damaging threat. All of the destructive small talk, juicy gossip, and unexplained events in Victoria Heights were blamed on the 'curse'. The reasoning that off-the-wall or strangely different behavior concerning one's husband was really not the fault of their spouse, but instead, the fault of the devil himself. Oh yes, and a indescribable horror that lurks in the night. Karen glanced out the bedroom window and saw the shadow of a dark figure walking in the direction of the house. The shadow stretched across the fine manicured turf like a mischievous spirit. The back porch light lit the figures face, and she immediately recognized it was her husband Phil returning from the graveyard shift from the local steel mill where he was employed as a security officer. Her son Timothy was spending the night with a school mate, and Karen was relieved Phil was home, he would comfort her and give her confidence the bad dream was only a dream and nothing more. As she moved closer to the bedroom window, and watched Phil's snail-paced approach, Karen noticed something odd about the back yard she had never seen before. The grass seem to be softly glowing in the dark with a fluorescent lime green radiance. Karen wondered to herself if the new fertilizer Phil had spread on it a few days earlier might be responsible for this strange phenomena? Phil took much pride in keeping his yard looking neat and trim. Spending day after day weeding and catering to it. Something Karen's ex-husband Joe had never done. Phil seem to have a green thumb. Suddenly, Karen noticed Phil stopping dead in his tracks in the middle of the spacious yard. And though the night was calm and windless, Phil appeared to be struggling with a raging wind which had suddenly erupted from the north. Phil fell to his knees on the ground. Karen let loose of a squealing noise in the back of her throat as she panicked. Possibly, Phil had tripped on something Timothy had left out in the yard. Maybe he had hurt himself. She hurriedly ran down the carpeted stairs to the kitchen, ran to the back door, and swung it open. That's when she saw the blood. Lots and lots of blood... Phil was covered with blood, his own, as though the blades of glass had been razor sharp like tiny machetes, and they had sliced him in a million tiny places. Karen screamed, trying to unlatch the screen door, as Phil struggled to get back up on his feet. Karen kicked open the door, pieces of the broken latch flying in her face and every direction, and saw Phil, not twenty feet away on the ground. Phil looked up to see Karen standing on the porch, and yelled for her to stay right where she was standing. "Stay away, go phone for help, but don't come out in the yard, there's something terribly wrong with our yard," he screamed out as he tried to wrestle with the unseen. "Baby, what's wrong? What's wrong with the yard?", she questioned. "Just do what I say and stay right where you are, stay up on the porch," he replied. In one quick mechanical movement, Phil was sucked into the soil which was tilling around him. His arms extended out, and began to flap like a trapped and wounded bird. More blood came from his mouth as he tried to keep hold of the earth which was swallowing him up. Only then did Phil begin to scream in agony, painful helpless screams, and his voice became incoherent. Phil's body appeared to boat and swell, as though he were trapped and in the process of being compressed by some invisible hydraulic press of some sort. And at that moment, a spray of crimson rain, particles of blood and gore, were forced from his mouth, eyes, and ears as his body exploded. Gushing out in a geyser all over the flood light lit yard. Then Karen heard what sounded like a loud belch, and Phil's remains were sucked deep into the ground. Then, the yard quickly returned to its normal appearance, and the glow faded away... Suddenly, Karen became very aware of exactly what it was she was witnessing. For she had seen it all before in her dreams... The neighbors found Karen sitting on the back porch the next morning. Her face pale, and her hair turned an unnatural shade of white. She clawed with her finger nails at the concrete until they bled, and repeated the same thing over and over, "A violent force." And then told them again and again about how her husband Phil was gone, and claiming of how he had been eaten alive by the yard, and no one would believe. Karen was committed to a county mental institute, her son Timothy went to live with her parents, and life at Victoria Heights continued as usual, as though nothing had happened. Of course, there was the usual talk among the residents of the subdivision that said Phil had probably just left Karen, perhaps for a younger woman he had been seeing on the sly. Probably the same as all the other men whom had left their wives in Victoria Heights in the past. And those who stayed behind made jokes about the 'curse', just as they had done in the past. And they blamed 'it' for all the unexplained incidents that took place in Victoria Heights, and the 'thing' never hungered for long because of their ignorance... ===================================================================== -------+++++++-------+++++++ +++++++-------+++++++------- Robyn Herrington Operations Manager, Microforms Services University of Calgary, MacKimmie Library Ph: (403)220-6903 http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca -------+++++++-------+++++++--------------+++++++-------+++++++-------