Knocking Them Down

This story was originally written for a contest that dictated the genre (horror) and had to include a watermelon and a bowling alley. Writers had 48 hours to submit a story under these guidelines in less than 1000 words. I missed the deadline and swore to myself I’d get it published somewhere. The British horror magazine Morpheus Tales accepted it for inclusion in their 32nd Edition. It is my first ever published story.

I open the door and familiar scents of bowling ball oil and rows of rented shoes fill me.  It’s ten o’clock and the sign says CLOSED, but the door opens anyway so of course I step in.  I’m not from around here—in fact, I’ve never even heard of this town—and from what I could tell no one saw me enter.  I turn the lock just to be safe.

The place is empty of customers, just an old man behind an office desk.  I make a sound with my throat to announce my presence.  He looks up at me with big, smiling eyes.  In front of him sits a half-eaten watermelon on an over-sized plate.  Next to it rests a large knife, hunks of rind still clinging to it.  He spits out a seed and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Howdy,” he says, checking the clock on the wall.  “I’m afraid we just closed.  Martha must have forgot to lock the door.  She’s getting a fright forgetful these days.  We open at eleven tomorrow if you want to—”

“I’m looking for work, if you have any,” I say.  I make sure to sound respectful and humble.  It makes people endear themselves to you.  It’s worked every time I’ve done this.  Over one hundred by now, I’m sure.

Something softens in the man’s eyes.  As if he has been in my shoes before, in a former life when the spoils of youth cast harsher shadows on one’s own future.  He nods.  “Okay.  I can respect a man asking for honest work.  I don’t have much around here.  Just me and the missus.  Place has been in the family for three generations.  I’m hanging up my hat soon—gonna sell the place, although I hate to.  I s’pose I could drum up some odd jobs for you.  What did you say your name was?”

I step into the office for the first time, having been careful not to give my intentions away.  People can sense those things.  I’ve learned that.  We are animals, after all.  We have instincts.  Sometimes they get buried beneath modern technology and the comforts of a new world, but they’re there.  Have someone scare you and see what happens to the hairs on the back of your neck.

I extend my right hand as the old man does the same.  It’s my opening, and I take it.  I snatch for the knife, but I must have given the old man a tell because he catches my hand as my fingers wrap around the handle.  I calmly pull at his fingers but they don’t budge.  I whisper for him to let go.  When he doesn’t, I step around the desk to get behind him but our contorting bodies knock the watermelon to the floor, spilling juice everywhere.  If both my hands were free I could get behind him, but they aren’t and when I plant my right foot it slips out from under me.

I crash to the tile, and the old man doesn’t hesitate.  He lunges out the door, calling his wife’s name in a panic.  Picking myself up, I grab the knife and find him lumbering down the carpeted aisle toward a startled-looking woman in her 60s.  She must have heard him call her name, heard the panic in her husband’s voice.  At the same moment she asks what is wrong her gaze finds me close behind him.  Her eyes bulge from their sockets as I bring the blade down hard into the man’s back.  He makes a sound as if he’d been punched in the gut, and blood shoots out of his mouth in a bright-red sheet.  I kneel over his body and stab him again and again and again, all while Martha’s hands claw at her face and she screams, oh boy does she scream.  It’s always what I remember the most about this thing I do, the screams of someone watching a person they know being butchered.  I never plan on it happening with a witness, but it’s a bonus when it does.

I feel that familiar wave pass through me.  It’s hard to explain.  Like a drug I suppose, although I’ve never tried them.  I begin my work—first at the soft tissue of the neck, then the tougher cartilage.  Finally, I hack my way through the spinal column and vertebrae and then it’s free in my hand.  I stand and gaze into the still-open eyes, and I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or what, but I swear I can see the eyes moving in her direction, the lips forming words.  As if trying to still warn her to get away.

Martha is certainly not getting away though.  Her feet may as well be set in concrete.  Shock, I suppose.  Her fingernails dig into her face, her eyes wild.  I look around the place, taking the moment in.  That’s when it occurs to me.  Yes.  Oh yes.  Even the thought is delicious.

I leave Martha standing there and find a pair of size eleven shoes in the rack.  If this thing is going to happen, it must be done properly.  I take the leaking head with me to lane six, my lucky number, and cradle it in my right arm.  Taking five methodical approach steps, I am careful not to slide by left foot across the end line as I hurl the head toward the pins.

The face makes it bounce at odd angles, but it strikes the pins just the same.  A 7-10 split.  Just my luck.  The pinsetter does its job, and even I am amazed when the ball return spits the head back to me.  I pick the head up then set it back down again.  No.  This kind of shot requires a different strategy altogether, I think.  One with a markedly more feminine touch.