Vampire Night: A Bachelorette Party Trapped in a Cleveland Vampire Massacre

Novella transcript: “Vampire Night” by Joe Rustin. Edited from an automatic transcription. Minor transcription errors may remain; not checked word for word against the audio. Separate host segments omitted.

Vampire Night by Joe Rustin From New Dynamic Press Narrated by Henrique Couto Prologue The jet black Impala tears through the Cleveland night like a bat out of hell. The headlights off, making it practically invisible. It whips down Frankfurt Avenue at speed, flying right on past the Do Not Enter sign of the one-way road. Spoiled for choice when it comes to parking, it veers right into one of the lots, narrowly avoiding the parking attendant on duty.

The scrawny guy jumps backward just in time, saving himself from getting clipped by the front bumper. The Impala doesn't stop. It doesn't even slow down. It continues on into the lot proper and heads toward the far end, near the fence that encloses it, and pulls into a spot. It idles for a moment, then shuts off, the previous roar of the engine dying and allowing the relative quiet of the night to settle in.

After a few moments, the driver gets out. A tall man in a leather jacket, a pair of sunglasses on despite the overwhelming darkness. His name is Colgan, not that he ever offers it to anyone. He circles around to the back of the car. Once there, he fits the key into the hole on the trunk, gives it a twist, and opens it up. The inside has been customized, the sides padded with pink velvet, giving it an almost casket-like appearance.

Entombed are two women who, upon the trunk lid opening, begin to unfurl their limbs from one another and climb out, hands lazily attempting to fix their messy hair and wrinkled clothes. Maxine! Roxanne! he says. The first is attempting to get her mohawk to stand back up. The latter is fixing the chain on her nose ring. Without needing an invitation, he kisses one. Then the other. By this time, the parking attendant has caught up to them.

He approaches, angry and out of breath, and immediately launches into a slew of complaints. How they were going the wrong way on a one-way, and how they almost hit him with their car, and how they need to pay the fee to park here. Colgan doesn't rush, kissing Roxanne. If anything, he prolongs it. The attendant stands there, fuming, but not sure what to do. In the absence of an actual idea, he just berates them some more.

Are you even listening, moron? Apparently not. Hey! Jackass! The attendant reaches out and grabs the man by the shoulder, making a valiant attempt at giving him a rough pull. It's like trying to move a brick wall. Slowly, Colgan loosens his lips from Roxanne's and turns to stare at the man, a smear of lipstick on his closed-lipped smile. What happens next happens fast, practically in the blink of an eye. Colgan catches the wrist of the offending hand, and then effortlessly twists it to the side.

The sickening crack of bone sounds, and the attendant lets out an agonized scream. It turns into whimpering soon enough as Colgan continues squeezing his arm where he's broke it, driving him down to his knees. When the attendant looks up, face twisted in pain, it's to three smiles leering down at him, though there's something off with the expressions. It's the teeth, he realizes. The teeth are wrong, like some kind of childhood nightmare come to life.

They're thin and sharp like needles. Colgan rips the attendant forward and past himself, slamming him face-first into the rear bumper of the Impala. He grabs him by the back of the head next, and effortlessly lifts him up, just enough to clear the trunk before driving his throat down against it, and then slamming the lid like a makeshift guillotine. It doesn't behead the attendant, though, simply biting into the flesh on the back of his neck.

He cries out, blood from his broken nose flying out into the velvet-lined interior of the trunk. His voice echoes around himself. In his panic, the attendant doesn't at first realize that he isn't alone in the trunk. No. There's someone else stuffed far into the back. A woman, it looks like. Her uniform saying 7-Eleven. Her dead eyes stare at him, glossy like marbles. Her throat is a mess of dried gore. The trunk lid is lifted off his neck, and the attendant tries to push himself up with his one good hand, struggling against his fate.

Before he can make anything resembling an escape, though, the two women descend upon him. Chapter 1 You're a hot mess, Jessica. You know that? Don't talk to me, Amy. I can't piss if you're talking to me. The clerk at the BP station, the one catty-cornered to Progressive Field, is a liar. He tells the girls, Amy, Megan, Zoe, and Jessica, she's out of sight, presently ducked down on the other side of the car, pants around her knees, trying to take a leak in public, that they don't have an indoor bathroom.

That part is true. They do not, in fact, have an indoor bathroom. Amy made sure to ask multiple times for clarification, and each time got the same exact answer fed back to her. The lie is when the boy behind the counter, he couldn't be any older than 18 or 19, so he doesn't care, he's thinking about his next math test, probably, tells them that it should be clean, considering it had been emptied out earlier this week.

His words don't exactly stand up to scrutiny. If it's been emptied out this year, Amy would honestly be shocked. What she saw in that porta-potty will haunt her, for years to come. She fully expects to wake up in the middle of the night, coming off a PTSD nightmare, drenched in a cold sweat. Yes, she's being dramatic, but still. She leans back against the Toyota parked off to the side of the pumps, front bumper aimed at Carnegie Avenue, fully expecting to see FEMA vehicles pull into the otherwise empty lot any second to cordon off the thing and declare it a disaster area.

She says as much as she passes her cigarette to Megan, who, after a puff, passes it on to Zoe. It earns her a few giggles. It's mid-July and late evening, a hot, sticky day creeping steadily into a hot, sticky night. The dog days of summer are upon them, and Cleveland has become a swamp. The asphalt from all the road acts as a heat sink. The moisture rolling in off Lake Erie offers up all the humidity anyone could ever want.

Put together, the city seems to be trying to steam its population like broccoli. The sound of urine splashing the concrete punctuates their idle conversation. I can't believe you got us kicked out of an Applebee's, Amy says as the cigarette returns to her. Technically, it was Jessica, Megan counters. Come on, guys, I'm trying to focus here, comes a quiet voice from behind the car. It's honestly kind of impressive when you think about it, though, Zoe offers.

I didn't even know Applebee's did kick people out. I thought it was like Waffle House, you know? You do something outrageous and they give you a free meal or something for entertaining the guests. Well, the guests were entertained, all right, Amy says, passing the cigarette to the left. You'd think they'd never seen tits before, Megan remarks before taking a puff. Probably never seen them at the Applebee's bar, that's for sure. You shouldn't encourage her when she's drunk, Amy continues.

You know how she gets. No, Amy, how do I get? Jessica's words are spoken slowly as she struggles to her feet, bouncing her ass off the car several times before she's fully upright. She manages to get her pants back up around her waist before she circles around the car. Her eyes are glassy, her hair's slightly a mess. She takes the cigarette right from Megan's lips and sucks the last bits of life from it before flicking the butt out toward the road.

Too much fun for the average person, Amy offers. That seems to satisfy her. She finds her grin reflected in Jessica's face. It's been a day and it isn't over yet. They've been at it since five o'clock and this time at the gas station is the biggest lull their evening has had. No one's ready to call it a night, though. This could be the last time they get to hang out. All of them together like this.

So, making it last, even if that means they're going to have the hangover to end all hangovers in the morning, it's worth it. To Amy's left, the whole reason they're out and about, hitting up the bars of their youth where they used to have to use fake IDs, and now they don't even get carded, Megan. Megan. Short, round, blonde hair, a big, toothy smile. The sweetest girl in the world. Really. At least that's what Amy thinks.

Also one of the craziest bitches she's ever met. But that's neither here nor there. There's an engagement ring on her finger, and a doctor, specifically a somnologist, whatever that is, waiting at home for her whenever their girls' night comes to an end. The plan is, after they say their vows, they're getting the hell out of Dodge. Megan's soon-to-be hubby, Brett, has taken a job down in Springwood, and while that isn't necessarily far away, it's far enough.

The promises of, I'll keep in touch, are well-intentioned, but, no one is kidding themselves. Life happens. Time happens. The years haven't been exactly kind to their friend group, and Amy doubts they're going to start taking it easy on them now. Take, for instance, Zoe, who presently is lighting up another cigarette that, after she takes a few initial hits on, will pass it to Megan, who will pass it to Amy, and so on and so forth.

She's got dark hair that she cuts herself, all choppy and stylish. So skinny that she has to stand in two places at once just to cast a shadow. She works as a hairdresser when she isn't bouncing from one dysfunctional girlfriend to the next. Could probably make rent a lot easier if she didn't spend most of her money on psychotic women. Then, there's Jessica. Tall, blonde, pretty, all leg. Could have been a model, or an actress, or a porn star.

Made something of herself. She's never been married, but she's been engaged a bunch. Is already in talks with a new guy who, she says, has really swept her off her feet. This time is different. Her words. It's always different. The only constant being that she's scared to be alone. Two kids at home, different fathers, but she's a good mom. Or tries to be. They're with her own mother right now, facilitating her current drunken escapades.

Finally, Amy herself. She's the designated driver tonight, which means she's only had a few beers, while the others have had a few too many. Red hair, skinny because she forgets to eat, gifted with large breasts, which just means her boss finds it difficult to take her seriously. She works at a bank, makes okay money, enough to keep the lights on and the internet paid so she can keep looking at online colleges, with the intention of applying, but never actually doing it.

It isn't lost on her that she probably had it the best out of all of them, before Megan's news, and this is after, a messy divorce. She wishes she could find a nice doctor, but they would probably just prescribe her Prozac and call it a day. I feel like I'm getting sober, Jessica says. What the hell are we doing? I mean, it's getting kind of late, Zoe answers, glancing down at her phone.

Nine o'clock is not late, you old maid. Come on, it's one of Megan's last nights as a free woman. Amy wipes the sweat from her brow, loosens the strands of red hair that had been sticking to her forehead. All we've done is drink. I think it's time we get Megan some... action. The shorter blonde looks caught off guard. She looks up, expression of shock, and says, you did not hire me a prostitute.

Okay, Charlie Sheen, reel it in. We're going to a strip club, not getting you piped. Oh, Megan says. She almost sounds disappointed for a moment before smiling. I could do a strip club. Good, because you didn't really have a choice in the matter. Jessica's been looking forward to this since I told her. I've basically just been pre-gaming, the woman in question explains. Her pre-gaming would put a lot of seasoned drinkers under the table.

All right, my little drunk bastards. Get in the car. Next stop, Wings and Dings. Don't go away. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter 2 Wings and Dings is only 20 minutes from her apartment by foot, which is good, since she doesn't own a car. So Joan just hoofs it every day she works, which is most of the time she sets off north up East 13th Street, walks the entire way in the shadow of the Reserve Square building, then turns left onto Superior Avenue.

It's late, getting later, but even with the sun down and the moon creeping higher and higher into the sky, it's still hot and muggy. Joan's tank top sticks to her back as she walks, damp with sweat. She regrets the biker boots now, but it's too late to turn back. Besides, sneakers aren't exactly her style, and style is important to Joan. She crosses the intersection of East 12th and Superior, zigzags between bright orange cones, guys working on the road with a backhoe, specifically one guy's working, neck deep in a hole while six others watch.

In the reflective glass of the 1111 Superior building, she takes a moment to be vain and look at herself in the public mirror. During the day, the entire city gets mirrored here. At night, aided by the glow of streetlights, she can really just see herself and a little bit across the street. Tall, black hair done in a punky undercut, blue eyes encased in thick liner, strong jaw, athletic figure. She looks good, better than she did when she rolled back into town a few years ago after failing to make a name for herself in California.

It turns out that it doesn't matter how badly you want to chase a dream. Sometimes, it's just faster than you are. The light glints off the ring in the left corner of her bottom lip, off the dozen or so piercings spread between two ears. She turns her attention back ahead, faces Cleveland at night, which is a lot like Cleveland in the daytime, just darker. A different flavor of people creep out and fill the streets.

Her kind of people. Joan gets as far as the Hampton Inn before the thoughts creep back in. Failure. The word has been dogging her lately, keeping her up at night, driving her to drink. Good thing she's a bartender. She grew up not far from here, west bank of the flats. Now she works on the east bank. It's like that Bon Jovi song, Who Says You Can't Go Home? What he should have been asking is, Why would you want to?

Take a right at the Federal Reserve Bank. Take a left onto Rockwell. It isn't like Joan doesn't like her hometown. On the contrary, she likes Cleveland. All of it. Even the not-so-great parts. The urban decay. The smell of Lake Erie permeating everything. That same stench getting carried along by the Cuyahoga River. The people. The food. The culture. She just thought she used to think about more than just self-loathing, believe it or not.

That when she came back here, she would be a bit better off than when she left. On the contrary, she's probably at the lowest point her life has ever sunk to. For fuck's sake, she works in a strip club owned by her Aunt Diane. Not even as a stripper. At least there's money in that. No, she just tends bar and watches other people enjoying their lives. Up on the left, Joan passes the park.

The statue of Tom L. Johnson sits in a chair with his back to her, his gaze focused on the casino across the way. She feels that. She's getting closer to work. Try as she might to drag her feet. The thing is, it's not even a cool strip club. What Wings and Dings is, is another family failure. Aunt Diane had set out to create, get this, a male version of Hooters. Okay, alright, that's fun.

It's not going well. Every attempt she's made to open up another location has ended in absolute disaster. like, approaching bankruptcy type stuff. Besides men on poles, their other claim to fame is their 69 flavors of wings. Yeah, like the sex number. Ha ha. Buffalo Wild Wings only has 22 flavors, and they're a national chain. To get that kind of variety, corners have to be cut. Here's the lemon pepper one, which is just a chicken wing dusted with lemon pepper.

Here's the garlic salt one, which is just a chicken wing dusted in garlic salt. Here's the Lawry's one, and no, it's not a promotional item, it's just something Aunt Diane had in the spice rack. Lamenting her existence at least passes the time. Joan crosses West Third. The road gets a lot worse here. Cracks, potholes, big stretches of cold patch, beads of sweater on her brow threatening to streak down. She can't tell if she's out of shape or if it's the weather.

Maybe both. So much humidity she feels like she's swimming. Her tank top clings to her by this point as if she took a dip in a pool. Cross West Sixth. Continue on down the avenue. On the right, a red brick building with a for lease sign plastered on the side. On the left, a parking lot. One of three. There's another right next to Wings and Dings. Another across from it, all owned by the same company.

A sign in the front of each says, Please pay the uniformed attendant. Joan doesn't see him though. His name's Marty or something and usually he's out on the sidewalk, front and center, taking his job as seriously as a high school hall monitor. She knows this because he's always trying to get her attention. Joan isn't sure she would quite classify what he does as catcalling because it isn't creative enough. It's just as sad though.

Another sign says they have monthly parking available, which to her sounds like a good way to get your car stolen. and early bird specials. A real steal. Wings and Dings is up on the right, next door to a little bar called Tommy's that it shares a wall with. It's an unsuspecting single-story building of red brick, the entrance a heavy metal door with a blacked-out window. Above it, the name of the club is printed in chipped white letters, spray-painted right onto the brick.

Beside it, a chalkboard, routinely washed clean by the rain or vandalized by passerby. Today, in green chalk, it shows the happy hour times and, below that, in red, proclaims that they have football on the television. Joan really, really hopes the TV goes out again. Before heading inside, she stops to light a cigarette by the door, figures it's best to get the first smoke break of the night out of the way. Really, she's just buying time or wasting it.

Depends on your perspective. She glances across the street, across the one of three parking lots. There must be a hundred cars parked in it, but she never sees anyone actually come back to claim them. Maybe they're the ones renting a space for a whole month. Who knows? Past it is an apartment building, past that, the imposing tower of the Carl B. Stokes United States courthouse. It gleams, even at night. Why a courthouse needs to be so modern art is beyond her.

Need to spend those tax dollars somehow, she guesses. Joan takes another puff, diverts her gaze down the avenue toward where it opens up onto West 9th. The occasional car passes, but, besides that, it's dead. The night still. There's a streetlight at the end of the avenue, and one at the beginning, but none in between, so Joan stands in the dark. In the distance, she hears an ambulance. Pretty quickly, it fades into the soundtrack of the city.

Indistinct shouting, traffic, what might be a gunshot, could be a car backfiring. She catches movement in her periphery, so she glances back to the parking lot across the street. There, moving across the dark background, is a darker silhouette. Joan thinks, for a moment, that it's Marty. She dismisses that thought, though, the figure too tall, too broad. Marty's a shrimp of a man. Besides, this figure isn't alone, her eyes adjusting to the shadows.

Joan sees more shapes moving, people, walking. The lot doesn't have a single light in it, a fact she's never really noticed before, but now is acutely aware. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, but Joan feels silly for it. She isn't scared, per se. It's just somewhat unnerving to see people moving around in the dark. It sparks a primal sort of reaction. At the entrance to the lot, where there's a little booth promising five-dollar parking in the evening, the initial figure stops.

Joan knows it's rude to stare, but she can't help herself. She watches the other people come to a halt beside him. Two or three, she can't really be sure for the dark in the distance. The man, she's fairly certain it's a man anyway, seems to have the same idea she does. She hears the faint but distinctive metal clink of a zippo lighter being flicked open, spots the flame, and watches it turn the end of a cigarette into a burning ember.

This action makes the people more real, less like demons prowling the shadows. She can't make out any of the finer details of the figures, but she assumes they're just punks like her trying to make the best of a Friday night. Somewhere off beyond the lot, a howl rings out. Could be a dog, could be a coyote. She's heard they come into the city sometimes to scavenge. It's enough to pull her out of her staring contest.

How long she's been at it, she has no idea. Her cigarette is mostly ash now. She knocks off the excess, takes one last drag, then flicks the rest out into the street before turning, reaching for the door handle. With her hand around it, the door pulled half open, she stops. It's an unconscious action, her pausing to look back across and up the avenue, sparing one last glance at the people. That initial fear she had felt watching them skulk across the parking lot returns, tenfold when she does.

Using the lit end of his cigarette as a guide, she can tell the smoking man, is facing her now, staring back, returning the favor of her voyeurism. His cohorts are, too. They don't have cigarettes to give away their exact position, but she can sense their eyes, knows they're digging into her, can practically feel them doing it. Then, suddenly, hey, Joan, what's up? she jumps, can't be helped, she steps over the threshold a bit too fast to appear natural and lets the door slam shut behind her with a heavy thud.

Her attention turns to the man talking to her, Brian, the bouncer. He occupies the little buffer room between the street and the club proper. In a fancier place, it might be called a reception area, or maybe a lounge, something like that. Joan thinks it resembles a glorified closet, though, all painted black. It throbs from the music deeper in the club. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. He apologizes. Nah, nah, it's cool, B.

What did you say? Asked what's up is all. Oh, living the dream, you know how it is. Brian's big, like a real mountain of a man. He towers head and shoulders over Joan, towers over most other people, too, who weren't themselves brought up on a steady diet of gamma radiation. You know you're late again, he tells her. Diane's pissed. Diane's always pissed, Joan reasons. Yeah, well, try and not get fired, all right?

You're the first cool bartender we've had. Aw, you think I'm cool? Joan leaves it on that comment. She knows Brian is sweet on her. Doesn't know why, but he is. She wishes she felt the same. He's a nice guy. She pushes through the swinging doors and crosses into a whole other world, immediately greeted by loud, boisterous, bass-boosted remixes of rock and pop songs that make the walls vibrate with life. Neon lights and hues of blue and pink flash, making every other step a tripping hazard. weird.

They pulse in time with the music, at least. That's the plan. Sometimes they feel too erratic, too random to be attempting any kind of pattern. The club is longer than it is wide and still shows evidence of its former life as a common midwestern bar like the one next door. Faux wood paneling on the walls and a solid concrete floor. Probably still beer stains on the seats from those days, too. Joan doesn't trust the cleaning job, the janitor does.

The bar is located at the far end and between her and it are a slew of booths lining the walls in two small circular stages, each one occupied by a decently built man and a speedo, both gyrating their hips in time to a Lady Gaga song. Most of the clientele is women in their 30s and 40s, and that's what she sees as she weaves her way past them, crisp dollar bills coming up from Michael Kors bags.

At the bar, Aunt Diane is mixing a drink but, even so, seems to just know that Joan is nearby, like she has a sixth sense for disappointment. You're late, she tells her, voice raised, either so she can be heard over the music or because she wants to yell. Above the liquor shelves, the TV shows some game of some sport. I'm always late, Joan responds as she rounds the counter, dropping into a crouch so she can dig her apron out from under it.

You're always late, Diane agrees, exasperated. Standing back up, Joan pulls the apron overhead, begins nodding it at her back. What are you making? I'll finish it up. You can head out, she says. Don't worry about this, get me six shots of vodka. What brand? Didn't specify. Dealer's choice. The shelves behind the bar are filled to bursting with liquor, mostly organized. Tequilas with tequilas, whiskeys with whiskeys, vodkas with vodkas. They have Smirnoff and Zvedka and Crystal Lake and Kettle One.

Given it's her decision, Joan settles on Grey Goose, nabs the bottle by the neck, and then turns to the counter to work. Grab a tray, set it down, arrange six shot glasses on it, begin to pour. That's too much, Diane chastises her from the side. It's a shot, as long as it fits in the glass it isn't too much. It's too much. Do you want me to pour it back in and try again?

The woman goes quiet after that, lips pursed. Joan can hear the groaning of the scales as she weighs the option of firing her on the spot. She never voices her decision. Joan picks up the tray and asks, which table? By stage two, the three women with the bad dye jobs. You see them? Yeah, I see them. Good. Diane pushes the drink forward. A woman takes it with a polite ! smile. And Joan lies.

All right, I'm heading out. If you burn the place down, I know, I know, make it look like an accident. Drive safe. You're not safe yet. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter Three The GPS takes her down has her turning up Ontario Street on the other side of Progressive Field. Amy might have lived in Cleveland all her life, but that doesn't mean she knows the flats very well. Certainly not enough to find a small strip club.

Last thing she wants to do is get lost this time of night. How'd you even hear about this place? Megan asks from the passenger seat. She has a red bull in her hand, chemically inducing a second wind. Friend at work, the redhead explains. She veers gently to the left onto West Huron. On the right, the landmark office tower's looms. An imposing structure of concrete and glass, 22 stories done with an art deco flair.

The side of the building is dominated by a massive billboard for the Cavaliers. For the love for the land. Is it full sausage or banana hammocks? Jessica inquires from behind. I don't think it's legal for it to be full sausage, Zoe offers. Amy's eyes flick up, catch the brunettes in the rearview mirror. She's quick to return them to the road. Besides, she continues, if it was, they'd have to be BYOB. That's how other strip clubs work.

You go to a lot of strip clubs? I date a lot of strippers. Amy takes a right after the post office plaza building, turns right onto West 6th, quickly turns left onto West Prospect once it ends, veers right back onto West 6th, her GPS yelling at her all the while giving orders as quickly as it can. She turns left down a one way, Frankfurt Avenue. Well, this is spooky, Megan says, leaning forward view of the shadowy road they've ended up on.

Halfway down the avenue, the GPS announces, your destination is on the right. It's a squat little red brick building that, at first glance, looks abandoned. It isn't until Amy sees the name Wings and Dings plastered over the door that she's confident she's in the right place. There's two parking lots beyond it, one on either side of the avenue. Amy chooses the one on the left, sees the little booth where the attendant should be reflected in the moonlight.

This is sketch, Jessica observes. What, you want the club to be in Hunting Valley? Amy asks. She glances back at the blonde then returns her gaze to the road. She begins to turn into the parking lot but immediately has to stomp on the brake, causing the Toyota to jerk as it comes to a sudden stop. She comes this close to hitting a group of people occupying the entrance. Amy hadn't even seen them until her headlights lit them up.

From one of her friends an oh shit rings out. Megan's hand extends forward in a flash, pressing against the dash, bracing for an impact that doesn't come. Her heart skips several beats, beating in her ears like a drum. Clenching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turn pale, Amy stares at the person closest to her front bumper, a man with short dark hair, wearing a pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket.

He's flanked on his left and right by girls with messily cut, colorfully dyed hair, studs in their ears and faces. They're pale too, in fact intensified by the light of her high beams. Despite their near brush with vehicular homicide, the three don't move. They don't even seem bothered. The man in the center just keeps on smoking his cigarette as if nothing is amiss. What's this dude's deal? Megan asks. Honk your horn, Amy, Jessica suggests.

She really doesn't want to do that. Then Jessica repeats herself and despite the anxiety welling up in her chest like a balloon, Amy presses the horn issuing a loud beep. The man smiles. One of the women he's with laughs. Then he plucks the cigarette ! from his mouth, gives it a flick, sends it flying it hits the windshield leaving a mark of burnt ash before rolling down to get stuck on her wipers.

What the fuck? Zoe says from the back seat. Amy isn't sure if she's still recovering from the jolt of having almost hit someone with her car or if she's just pissed now that he threw his cigarette at her. Either way, she honks the horn again, holding it longer then they finally move stepping to the side and then walking parallel with the car seemingly heading across the road. She sincerely hopes they aren't going to the strip club too or else this girl's night is going to come to a swift end.

What a fucking dick, Megan murmurs, craning her head to look after the punks. Amy, swallowing hard, moves her foot back to the gas and steps on it, pulling up into the darkness of the lot. She casts a glance at the booth where the attendant should be, but it's empty. Maybe they're in another lot, she thinks. She just doesn't want to get a ticket. Amy finds a spot and pulls in then puts the car in park.

After taking a moment to get her bearings, she twists the key, pulls it out of the ignition and steps into the muggy embrace of the night. Her friends follow suit and soon enough they're walking across the lot toward the avenue, huddled close together. Again they pass the booth. Again Amy looks. It's definitely empty. Probably out of business, Zoe suggests. Just left all the signage up. Free parking in Cleveland? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Jessica says.

They cross the road, the punks nowhere in sight. Either they went into wings and dings or they slipped off to some other dark corner of the city. Amy's hoping for the ladder, but as with all things, she's expecting the worst. Hold up, I'm going to smoke before we head in. Amy, stand with me. Zoe asks her, and the redhead really wants to make up an excuse, like she has to go to the restroom or something, but can't think of one quick enough. resign, she says.

Yeah, I can do that. Oh, Megan, hold on. She reaches into her purse, digs around, then pulls out a wad of bills, all singles. Both blondes are only too eager to accept the gift and then, with the cash in tow, head inside. Amy posts up next to the door, leaning her back against the bricks, finds herself staring at her feet, at the sidewalk, at anything, except the brunette. You've been avoiding me all night, Zoe says as she uses a cheap gas station BIC to light her smoke.

I've been corralling our friends all night, Amy reasons. Yeah, but I mean, you never returned my texts, either. Amy's throat feels suddenly tight. The heat of the night must be intense, that, or she's about to spontaneously combust. Her face feels hot. Yeah, she answers after a moment, not sure what else to say. Zoe doesn't speak again, not right away. She takes a moment to enjoy her cigarette and reassess her approach, change her game plan.

If you, like, regret it, you can just tell me, no hard feelings. Judging by her voice, there would, in fact, be hard feelings. It's not that, Amy says, which she isn't entirely sure is the truth. It's not the whole truth, at least. Then what is it? Can we not? She asks, her words a bit too quick, her tone a bit too harsh. She looks at Zoe and knows her expression is the same one she gives unruly customers at the bank.

A strict parent scolding a child. Let's just be here for Megan tonight, all right? We can talk about us later. All right. The brunette turns her attention away. Amy does the same. She can vaguely hear the music from the club, can feel it in the bricks. When Zoe is done with her cigarette and says she's ready to head in, she tells her to go ahead, that she'll be along shortly. She needs to make a quick phone call.

That's a lie. She just needs a moment to herself, to breathe. After the brunette disappears through the door, she finally feels like she can. Amy digs back through her purse. She's been trying to quit, but there's still a pack of Pall Malls there at the bottom, along with a book of matches. She puts the cancer stick between her lips, strikes a match, and lights up. The initial rush of nicotine is just the relief she's been looking for since picking Zoe up earlier that day.

A good idea on paper, not so good in practice. It isn't like she doesn't want to be friends with the brunette anymore. No, God no, far from it. They've known each other for so long that Amy can't rightfully picture a life without Zoe in it. But it's complicated right now, getting more so with each text message she ignores. Her parents wouldn't approve, but they're Baptist. They wouldn't approve of much. Got another one of those?

The voice comes from her right, and Amy looks to see who it is. Her blood runs cold when she spots the man she almost hit with her car, sauntering up, those two women still flanking him. She tries to say something, finds her throat has all but decided to squeeze entirely shut. It can barely fit a breath of air through it, let alone a sentence. What's wrong? Cat got your tongue? He asks, giving her a big, closed-lipped grin.

Come on, no hard feelings about earlier, right? He holds up his hands and mockes surrender, but it doesn't make Amy feel any better. There's a fear only a woman will truly understand, being confronted by a strange man in the dead of night, even if he does have a couple of women with him. Statistics of rape and murder start pouring into her head like a faucet's been turned. She goes on autopilot, reaching back into her purse and retrieving the pack of cigarettes.

Her fingers dig one out and she offers it up to the man. Amy's hand shakes and, for a moment, the man just looks at it, letting it do so. Finally, he accepts the smoke, but doesn't ask for a light. Out comes a zippo. It gleams. So does he, in fact. Up close and personal, Amy is taken aback by just how pale the man is. So pale, in fact, that the veins beneath his skin shine through, looking like black forks of lightning.

Maybe he's sick, she thinks. If he is, though, it's contagious. The women to either side of him have the same quality about them, a sickly paler. They're wearing sunglasses, too. Whatever kind of disease they have must make them sensitive to light. The woman on the left has a bright purple mohawk. The one on the right has a chain connecting her nose ring to a loop in her ear. When the man lights his cigarette, it gleams brightly.

He takes a drag and then passes it off to mohawk, turning his whole body to do so. Much appreciated, he says, twisting back. Amy, still not able to find words that will fit through the pinhole that is her throat, nods. She even attempts a smile, though she can't say how successful she is. None of them try and back off of her now that they have the cigarette. Nose ring even comes closer, leaning against the wall to Amy's right, blocking her path to the club's door.

She feels suddenly claustrophobic. The woman grins. Ain't you a pretty thing, she says. I've always loved redheads. The man reaches up and removes his sunglasses, looks down at them while he folds the arms, and then tucks them into his jacket pocket. When he glances up, Amy audibly gasps. Can't help it. His eyes are black from the pupils to the scleras. Like a night sky with no stars, just two abyssal pits that, under the right light, she has no doubt she could see herself reflected in.

She thinks of the movie Jaws. She thinks of sharks. He steps forward, now just barely a foot separating them. He extends an arm, presses his hand against the wall beside Amy head, and leans in. Let's see if we can't get your tongue back from that pesky cat, huh? He grins again, this time spreading his lips. His teeth are like needles, like some deep-sea fish. Amy stares at them, and begins to breathe so hard that she's borderline hyperventilating.

Without warning, a scream rips up through her throat, and out, into the night. Are you afraid? Good. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter Four Harvey Kowalczyk didn't used to do stuff like this, but then he used to be a married man, a happily married man. Then, his lovely wife of 32 years passed away, taken from him by the big sea. His kids were already moved out on their own by then, and he had been a few years retired from the police force.

This left him with a lot of time to sit and come to terms with things he had otherwise been putting off for most of his life. Things such as the fact that despite his happy marriage and his two sons, his wonderful daughter, and his stereotypically machismo career, Harvey Kowalczyk is a gay man. Sure, he hides it well. He was raised Catholic and that's what Catholics do, hide things, bury them deep down until they become ulcers.

Sure, some things come out during confession, but not everything. With nothing to distract himself from himself, hiding it began to make less and less sense. It isn't even really much of a revelation. He's more or less known he's gay since his late teens, maybe earlier, just never had the gumption to do anything about it outside of the occasional dirty magazine or porno flick. Now, though, he's been dipping his toes into the scene.

He starts with the bars. Those are easy enough. If he gets cold feet, he can claim he didn't know what kind of establishment he'd walked into and beat a quick retreat back to his car. No harm, no foul. Next, the clubs. He's finding he has a real passion for dancing. It's just a matter of learning these crazy new dances they have nowadays. Every Friday for the past few months, like clockwork, he's been coming to wings and dings.

He's a frequent enough flyer by this point that most people know him and he in turn knows most of the dancers by name and has a few favorites. None of them are working tonight though, so he just sits in his booth by the entrance, enjoys the energy of the room, and indulges in a favorite hobby of his. People watching. It's a habit from being a cop, same as the reason why he can't eat at a restaurant unless his back is to the wall and he has a clear line of sight toward the door.

His eyes flick to the stage closest to him. Almost 60 and his prescription for Viagra is suddenly no longer needed. Not when he's watching the fit young guy on the pole spin and spin and spin around the metal bar like he's a top. Looks like he's smuggling a squirrel in all its nuts in his lime green speedo. His gaze moves to the women surrounding the stage. Most are half his age at least.

Routinely a few will look his way giving him the side eye before turning back to their friends to whisper amongst one another. Maybe they call him creepy. Probably call him much worse. He doesn't care. Not anymore. Used to be he would. Just the slightest hint of scrutiny would have him running for the hills. Nowadays though he just takes it with a grain of salt. They chose wings and dings for the same reason he did.

It's out of the way obscure not super popular less likely to get recognized. All the darkness interrupted by neon lights but still offering substantial shadows offers a kind of anonymity. If they want to add a bit of bigotry onto their night out before heading home to their unhappy marriages so be it. He looks deeper into the club toward the other stage. The heavyset blonde that had come in is now getting a lap dance arms flailing in the air laughing so loudly that she can be heard over the music.

Harvey doesn't know the musician but he knows the track well enough. Having heard it played over the speakers a few times. Some woman singing to someone else about how they need to shut their mouth and run her like a river. Sounds hot he has to admit. The bartender is weaving through the club coming his way. Just in time too he's down to just ice cubes in his glass. Another gin and tonic Harve?

Joan asks him when she comes to a stop by his table. I'd appreciate it. Tanqueray? You know me so well. Know you well enough to take this bad boy? She says reaching out to grab the menu off the table and tuck it under her arm. Sixty-nine flavors of wings and not a one worth writing home about. He's gotten into the habit of eating before he comes or right after. The drinks are fine though and Joan pours them heavy.

You should tell your aunt to cut the menu down. Maybe make it a bit more edible? Joan offers smiling. Harvey smiles back. Well, I was going to say refined. That's because you're nicer than me. Okay, one Tanqueray gin and tonic. Coming up. She takes his empty glass and marches back off into the fray. He watches her go, thinking what he has after most conversations with the bartender. What he would look like with that many piercings.

Used to be a time he had seriously considered getting his ears done, but it never came to pass. Too old now, he thinks, would probably look silly. He still has a full head of hair, but it's gone entirely gray now. His face is a map of wrinkles and stress lines, deep fissures that threaten to cut even deeper with every passing year. His stomach used to be flat as a board, but it's starting to round out the front of his polo, makes him look vaguely pregnant.

Early on in the pregnancy, sure, but the point remains. Pregnant. It sucks coming into a new lifestyle when you're already past your prime. It is what it is, though. Harvey supposes it's just nice to be himself, whatever age he's at. He leans back in his booth, eases his sore back against the uncomfortable padding. Sure, Wings and Dings isn't fancy, but Harvey has yet to have a bad time here. chapter 5. Scotty is the cook at Wings and Dings, which means he's most likely the janitor because hardly anyone ever actually orders any food.

He sweeps the floors, cleans the restrooms, and when the piles of frozen wings go bad in the walk-in, he throws them out, just in time for the weekly delivery of fresh ones to take their place. He gets how Sisyphus must feel. They're doing Greek mythology in school right now. Scotty's 19, but he didn't have enough credits to graduate last year, so here he is, doing it all over again, trying to actually commit himself this time.

It's either commit himself or commit suicide at this point. He is not going to be 20 and sitting in a high school classroom. He pushes the broom from one end of the corner to the next. The kitchen spans the entire backside of the club. Between the employee bathroom and the walk-in is a stretch of the standard food service fare. A three-compartment sink, a flat top that he's never used, and he's pretty sure isn't even plugged in, then a row of four deep fryers, the oil basically cooking itself because it doesn't have the opportunity to cook anything else.

How often does he need to switch out the oil? Scotty keeps meaning to look it up on his phone but keeps forgetting. Speaking of his phone, that's what he's playing with at present. Sitting on top of the prep table, he has headphones and music blaring. His social media feed is a depressing reminder that life isn't going how he wants it to. Friends going on vacation, going to college, going out. He hasn't updated his status in six months, isn't sure what he'd even update it with.

Ugh, Mrs. Becker's class is such a drag. He doesn't do anything outside of work and school. He doesn't hang out with people anymore because they're off being adults. And he's stuck being thunk, thunk, thunk. Scotty only barely hears the noise. He isn't sure what it is either. He looks up and around the kitchen, finds himself as alone as he always is. After a few moments, long enough for him to think he's just hearing things, it comes again.

Thunk, thunk, thunk. He reaches up, pulling out an earbud. Dave Grohl blares from it, singing about how he's got another confession to make. He waits again for the sound to come, and when it does, he actually recognizes what it is. Knock, knock, knock. Someone's knocking at the back door, the one that lets out behind the building. He's basically the only one who uses it, him and the delivery driver, and it isn't a delivery day.

So the list of people who could be wanting in is exactly none. It's probably a homeless person looking for a handout. That's what Scotty reasons anyway. Knock, knock, knock. Whoever it is, they aren't going away, so he pulls the other earbud out, sets his phone aside, and slides off the prep table. It's a short walk to cross the narrow kitchen. When he reaches the back door, there's a moment of hesitation before he grabs the handle, gives it a twist, and pushes it open.

He isn't sure what he expects to find waiting for him on the other side, so he opens it slowly. There, in the darkness of the alley between the club and the building behind it, is a woman. She's shorter than him, with bright blue hair, and a chain connecting the loop in her right nostril to a piercing in her ear. She has on big, chunky sunglasses, despite the fact that it's the middle of the night, and she's incredibly pale, so much so that she practically glows in the light pouring out of the kitchen.

Scottie doesn't know what to say. The hypothetical situation he had cooked up in his brain didn't prepare him for this. She breaks the silence. This is Wings and Dings, right? She offers him a closed-lipped smile after asking. Uh, Scottie should tell her that the entrance is around in front. Instead, he just says, yeah, it is. Perfect. She walks right on in and brushes past him into the kitchen. Scottie should definitely tell her that she can't be back here, but all he's thinking is that she is very pale.

She's kind of pretty from what he can see around her sunglasses. It's his responsibility as an employee of the club versus his being a man. He releases the door and it swings shut. Oh, wow. This dump serves food? She's over by the fryer baskets, lifts one by the handle, lets it splash back down into the hot oil. He just watches, not sure how to react. Yeah, hence the, uh, wings in the name.

So it seems. She turns on him. His eyes go to the split in her leather jacket. She has a crop top on. A crucifix dangles from her belly button. Scottie swallows, not exactly sure what sort of situation he's found himself in. Is it too early to be writing, dear penthouse? You're staring. Huh? What? You're staring, you perv, the woman says. She flashes him a closed-lipped smile. Probably has bad teeth, Scottie thinks.

Oh, sorry. Don't apologize. She steps over to the prep table where he'd been sat previously and pulls herself up on it. Without asking, she picks up one of the earbuds and sticks it in. Her fingers then go to his phone, tapping at the music app, probably changing the tunes. So, wanna fuck? Record scratch. Scottie blinks, staring at the woman. Finally, after a few moments of silence, he manages, what? I asked if you want to fuck.

Scottie isn't a virgin, but he feels like it in that moment. Nerves are getting the better of him. Well? She peers at him over the top of her sunglasses, but he's too anxious to make eye contact. He stares at her knees instead. Um, sure. Sure. Sure. He feels like the biggest loser on the planet. Then come here. Awkwardly, Scottie shuffles forward. Once he's close enough, the woman snatches him by his waist, jerks him forward, and inserts him between her legs.

They're close now. He can smell her. Something like perfume and copper. It fills his nostrils, makes his head swim. Kiss me. She doesn't frame it as a request. Scottie looks up, sees his face reflected back at him in her sunglasses. He swallows, steals his nerves, then does as he's bid, leaning in, his eyes drifting closed. She meets him halfway. Her lips are cold, clammy. The kiss escalates quickly when her tongue comes into play, bridging the gap between their mouths.

He has to race to keep up with how fast she's moving. When his tongue slips past her own and into her mouth, though, he brushes up against her strange teeth. His immediate thought is to pull away. He can't help it. Keeping him from doing that, though, is the woman's hands on his head, holding him close and pulling him in. She opens her mouth up wider. It covers his own now. Scottie feels something like needles pricking the perimeter of his lips.

He tries to pull away in earnest now, but his struggling is in vain. She has a vice grip on him. That stabbing sensation only becomes worse. Pain erupts just as the taste of blood hits his tongue. He screams. Her mouth catches it. He tries to push her away. It's like shoving a brick wall. Panic sets in. Scottie begins to hit her to no avail. She bites clean through his lips, and only then does she release him.

The cook flailing backward and hitting the opposite wall. He can't see the damage done to his face, but he can see his lower lip hanging from the woman's own. She spits it out onto the floor, where it makes a wet slap against the tile. Her cheeks and chin are painted red. What's wrong, baby? Don't you like foreplay? When he screams, blood and saliva fly forward. It's a short-lived expression, though. The woman launches forward off the prep table, earbud ripping from her head as she closes the distance between them in the blink of an eye.

Scottie's scream gets cut off when her hand seizes his throat, squeezing it so hard as to shut him up. Completely. That's okay. We can move on to the real fun. She smiles at him, exposing thin, needle-like teeth the length of a finger. When she opens her mouth, it's far too wide. It makes Scottie think of a snake. She dives into the crook of his neck and clamps her jaw down. He feels her teeth tear through his skin, then feels her begin to suck.

All he can do is weakly try and fight her off, a battle he lost before he even started. When that fails, he can't find the strength to keep at it. Scottie just stares up at the kitchen's dirty ceiling, while darkness creeps in to the edges of his vision. More scares to come. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter 6 Megan is getting married. She's going to be Mrs. Brett McKay. The future is awesome and bright and full of so much promise that it makes her feel like she's going to explode.

Megan also has a face full of ass. She's courting sensory overload. Hot pink speedo shrink-wrapping jiggling flesh. The smell of body lotion and sweat. The Tove-low remix reverberating in her chest. This makes her feel like she's going to explode too, but in a different way. Heat burns between her thighs. She hopes Brett isn't too tired when she gets home. To her right, Jessica is the best hype woman she could ask for.

Cheering, laughing, feeding her drinks. To Jessica's right, Zoe is quiet. Keeps looking toward the door, making comments about what's taking Amy so long. She doesn't know what's going on with her friends, but she can guess. Zoe never did know how to keep it in her pants. Dollar bills get stuffed into the dancer's waistband. She isn't sure how many. The shots of tequila have gone straight to her head. Jessica is pushing another into her hand.

She spills most of it down her shirt, cackles like it's the funniest thing in the world. Then, all hell breaks loose. Harvey can see the bartender working her way back toward him, zigzagging through the crowd, drinking her hand. She's about ten feet from his booth when the entrance doors swing open so hard that they bang noisily against the wall, loud enough to be heard over the drone of the music. Harvey's attention immediately snaps to his left.

There's a gun in his boot. Has been since 2016. Can't be too careful nowadays. It's the second thing that pops into his head. The first being, what the hell? The bouncer, he's pretty sure his name is Brian or something, is soaring sideways and backwards through the air, like he's been thrown almost, which seems preposterous. The guy is huge, built like a linebacker. He keeps on flying, too, for several feet before eventually hitting the floor and finally skidding to a halt at the foot of the stage.

The man dancing there, startled, stumbles back from the pole, takes one step too many, and walks right off the edge. He lands on a woman who shrieks in response before shoving him the rest of the way to the floor. Brian's limp. Harvey can't tell if he's dead or not. He would make his way over to check, but his eyes are darting back to the door while he simultaneously pushes himself to his feet.

The doors swing outward, then in. Outward, then in. On the final repetition, they stop short of closing all the way, like something's blocking them. Harvey leans down, hikes up the right pant leg of his slacks, and pulls the Glock from his boot. He rights himself in time for the doors to get another shove, gentler than Brian's impromptu entrance. A man enters between them, casually strolling into the club without a care in the world.

A woman with a purple mohawk follows closely behind. Safety off, bullet in the chamber, both hands. He must be outside of the man's periphery. That, or he just plain doesn't notice him in his lonely corner. It gives Harvey time, which he needs. He hasn't done this in a while. The muscle memory is still there, guiding him. Harvey raises the gun, aims it right at the man in the leather jacket, and is about to start reciting lines he's said a thousand times before when the stranger turns and looks right at him.

It must be the darkness of the club making his eyes so dark, the retired cop thinks. Like pits in his face, it isn't like the lights are flattering. There's something off about him, though. His skin has an unhealthy paler to it. Like he's sick with a terminal disease. Fear reaches a gnarled hand up and seizes Harvey by the bowels. He forgets his training and, instead, just squeezes the trigger. A loud bang rings out in the club, which is followed swiftly by a chorus of screams.

His shot connects with the man's right shoulder, sends him, jerking back, but he doesn't fall over. Instead, he stares at the newfound wound in his person, as calmly as one might observe the hole in their sweater. In for a penny, in for a pound, Harvey fires again, and this time his bullet lands, center mass, bores a hole through the man's white shirt and into his stomach. Blood immediately starts to color the fabric.

The light of the club is what makes it look black. Has to be. Still, the guy hasn't gone down yet. Drugs, Harvey surmises. PCP, probably. Meth, maybe. The man extends his arms to either side, the universal gesture of, really? There's a smile on his face. A horrible, awful smile. Even at this distance, Harvey can see there's something terribly wrong with the guy's teeth. Then, the woman with the mohawk lunges forward, and despite him squeezing the trigger again and again, and emptying the magazine into her, she keeps on coming.

Chapter 7 It all happened so fast that Joan's brain has to sprint to keep up. Here comes Brian, flying through the door like he's weightless. 6'8", but tossed around like a ragdoll. She drops the glass she's carrying when she sees him, hears it explode on the floor by her feet. Gin and tonic shower her legs. Troy, dancing on the stage that Brian slams into, stumbles backward, ends up falling onto a customer.

The woman screams and flails, pushing the poor stripper the rest of the way to the floor. Enter, a pair of strangers. She feels like she knows who they are though, even if she's only ever saw their silhouettes, because the way they stare at the club feels familiar to the eyes that dug into her outside. Her gut tells her as much anyway, and it's seldom been wrong. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

She sees Harvey get up and pull a gun. He looks like he's about to say something, but, instead, just fires. Panic begins clawing its insidious way up through Joan's body, even before the man that Harvey shoots first seems to just brush off the two new holes in his body. The female stranger starts rushing the old man, takes several shots and counting, but doesn't slow down for a second. She leaps, lands hard against Harvey, and sends him reeling backward into his booth with her on top of him.

She raises her left hand, and maybe it's a trick of the light, but her fingers look unnaturally long. Joan isn't so sure it is a trick though, not when those fingers slashed down and a splash of blood comes out, painting the wall behind the booth with a visceral spray. In the dark, it looks black. Liquid night. Joan's body switches to autopilot. She turns, sees a flurry of movement in her periphery, and looks in time to see the man diving into the crowd by the stage, then hears an eruption of panicked cries that drowns out the blaring music.

She can't help but look, sees in the flashing neon lights a middle-aged woman, clutching her stomach, nodded intestines spilling out around her hands. Her face is surprisingly serene, shock numbing the pain. The assailant is atop another victim already, face buried in her throat. All she can do is jerk hopelessly. Troy is backpedaling away from it all, and the bartender dips to help him to his feet. Neither one knows quite what to do, but what they do know is they need to move.

People have begun running for the entrance. Others stand stock still, frozen with fear. Joan opts to move as quickly as she can for the bar with Troy close behind, heart pounding in her ears. She uses a stool as a stepladder, goes from it to the bar, and then to the floor on the other side, falling hard onto her ass and out of view. The dancer follows right after her, landing on her left.

She's trembling. Despite trying to will them to do so, her hands will not remain still. Troy is faring no better. He's gasping for breath, practically hyperventilating. Wait until he finds out there's blood in his bleached hair. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, she chants like a mantra. With the loud music, she can barely hear herself think, not that she's having any particularly brilliant thoughts. Just pure, primal fear rushing through her mind like a freight train.

After a moment of sitting, she shakily twists around and onto her knees, raises herself up just high enough to peer over the top of the bar counter. High-pitched screaming mixes with the chorus of Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls. Spilled liquor stings her nostrils. Another smell, too, has begun to permeate the club. Something like rust. What she sees makes her feel sick to her stomach. The woman who had attacked Harvey is now indiscriminately slashing at anyone unwise enough to get close.

Those that do can only cry out as arcs of blood erupt from newfound gashes in their person. She's fairly certain no one's made it to the entrance. The man is leaning against the stage where Troy fell off, licking his fingers. Joan can't hear it for the music, but it looks like he's laughing. At this point, she's seen enough. She drops back down behind the bar, a nauseous feeling rolling in her stomach, the taste of bile creeping up in the back of her throat.

Troy is saying something. What? She asks him, voice trembling. I said we gotta go, man, he repeats. Go. Go! Yeah, they do. She nods at him. First things first, though. She digs her phone out of her pocket. We gotta call the police, she tells him, having to use both hands to keep her phone steady while her thumb punches in 911. Just make it quick. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit! She raises the phone to her ear.

Here's the dial sound. It can't take any more than a couple of seconds, but it feels like hours before she hears, 911, what's your emergency? Joan is about to tell the operator on the other end what's happening. Not that she's really all that sure herself. When a body flies over the top of the bar and smashes into the shelves behind it, glass and liquor rain down on her and Troy, and the thrown woman falls dead at their feet.

Troy screams. She does, too. Feels it rip up and out of her throat. In the chaos, she throws her phone. Doesn't mean to, it just flies out of her hand. She's about to go for it when the kitchen door swings open. Out walks a woman she's never seen before. Definitely isn't a new cook. When she turns her dark eyes on Joan, though, the bartender knows. She's one of them. The horrible, toothy smile the woman gives her is just confirmation.

On the phone, the operator is asking, Hello? Are you there? Hello? Hello? It's a short walk from the kitchen door to the bar space. The woman makes it with a confident stride, the chain connecting her nose ring to her ear, bouncing with each step. She's saying something, but Joan can't make sense of it, not over the sound of her own heartbeat. Doesn't matter. As soon as the woman reaches her, stepping over Troy like he's not even there, she dips and grabs her by the front of her tank top, hauls her up and to her feet.

She thrusts her back in against the bar. It hurts, but Joan has more to worry about than some lower back pain. She's going to die. She knows it, doesn't like it, but it's just a fact. Joan figures, though, that if she has to die, at the very least she can fight like hell before it happens. Pour me something strong, sweetie, nose ring is saying. Joan's response is to reach up, snatch the chain in her fist and rip it down as hard as she can.

It tears from the ear, taking the piercing it's attached to with it. The woman screams. Then she slashes Joan across the chest, leaving in the wake of her claws four angry red lines. She's readying up for a second swipe when Troy tackles her from the left, knocking her sideways. It's a short-lived victory. Nose ring catches herself, shoves the dancer off her with such force that he's thrown back several feet and lands on his ass.

It gives Joan time, though. Her hands blindly search the bar behind her. She finds a bottle, the Tanqueray gin she used for Harvey's drink. She seizes it by the neck, just in time, too, as nose ring lunges back at her, murderous intent in those abyssal eyes. Joan swings the bottle, connects it with the woman's head, an audible thunk that she can feel the whole way up her arm rings out, and she falls to the side, clutching the bar counter for support.

Dazed, but not dead, Joan drops the bottle and turns, begins to run away. She makes it maybe two feet before nose ring slams into her, knocking her down to the floor. Nose ring follows her down, too, and lands right on top of her. The bartender rolls, a move she immediately regrets as she stares up into the woman's hellish mouth. Drool drips from around her needle-like teeth, painted red already from a prior meal.

It hits her in the face. Despite her best efforts to shove the woman off, she can't manage to even make her budge. All she can do is amuse her, it seems, as nose ring laughs. Starving on the streets of LA doesn't seem like such a bad way to go all of a sudden. She glances up and Joan follows her gaze, sees Troy again, this time armed with the chef knife she uses to cut limes.

He shouts something, Joan can't quite make it out, before plunging the knife down into the woman's back. She cries out, a terrible high-pitched noise, then slashes at the dancer, knocking him backward again, this time into where the counter wraps around toward the wall. She rises up off the bartender, rushes toward him, and pins him to the wooden surface. From her back, the knife glimmers like a singular beacon of hope. It's all Joan can do to struggle to her feet, the front of her tank top a mess of red and shredded fabric.

She takes the few steps forward she needs to, and then grabs hold of the knife's handle, yanking it from the woman's flesh only to plunge it right back in. She manages to do this a second time, foul-smelling black blood pouring from the holes in the woman's leather jacket, before Nose Ring throws herself backward, knocking Joan back with her. She turns, seizes the bartender, and throws her to the side, directly into the liquor shelves.

Bottles fall, Joan feels a cut on her forehead. Stars dance in her vision. Before Nose Ring can attack her again, though, Troy comes up from behind, smashing a glass over her head, It does nothing but piss her off and distract her, which is all Joan needs. As the woman turns, the bartender pushes through the pain. She launches forward, seizes the knife once again, and returns to doing her best Norman Bates impression.

Just. Fucking. Die! Her words are desperate, but they seem to do the trick. She drives the knife in at an angle, feels it sink in all the way up to the handle. Nose Ring cries out again, but doesn't throw her off like last time. Instead, she slumps forward against Troy, then slips slowly to the side. Finally, she begins the short journey to the floor. Joan follows her down, breathing heavy, tears stinging her eyes, and her hands still clutching the handle of the knife.

Her right arm burns from exertion. She might stay there forever, on her knees. Troy grabs her by the shoulder, though, and hauls her to her feet. She looks down at the woman, the monster. Then she casts her eyes out at the club to see the unfettered violence unfolding from the other two. It all seems simultaneously like a dream, yet it's painfully real. Come on! The dancer is yelling. Even as she looks on at the slaughter, Joan is being pulled away from the bar and toward the kitchen door, she doesn't blink, not once, until she's pulled through the door.

Did you hear that? Better check the locks on your doors. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter Eight Dominic just needs money. He's in college, CSU. Dancing on the weekends isn't ideal, but it makes him enough to pay rent, and at this point, he has to accept that the five-year plan he made in high school is going to have a few bumps along the way. Okay. A lot of bumps. Such as not getting the job he wanted and having to settle for Wings and Dings. and his girlfriend leaving him because she's going to go to college out of state and doesn't want to do the long-distance thing and people trying to kill him.

The last part comes as a surprise, he has to admit. He watches the chaos unfold and isn't sure what to do. In just an electric blue Speedo, he's not exactly dressed for a fight. All the same, the fight comes to him. After killing that ex-cop, what's his name? Harry? Howard? Harvey? The mohawked woman cuts into the screaming crowd with abandon. The man, too, though he's further away. Not the one that reaches Dominic first.

He stands between himself and the bachelorette party he's been entertaining for the past however long. It isn't his intention to protect them. Not really. He just hasn't had the chance to move yet. Now it's too late. Fear. True fear. Pulse pounding. Hair raising. Pants shitting. Fear. Floods every corner of Dominic's being. He's about to start pleading. It's about the only thing he can think to do having seen Mohawk move a mile a minute without trouble.

When her hand reaches out at speed and grabs hold of him. his balls, specifically. Dominic yelps. High-pitched. Pained. There's an intense pressure as the woman retracts her hand. A tug and a pull. His speedo is torn away but it isn't alone. He feels a tearing. A snapping. A sound like a wounded animal rises up in his throat but he can't manage to make more than a peep. Feeling lightheaded, his legs shaking, the dancer looks down at his now nude body.

There's his cock, shrunk in fear. Below it, a mess of red. It paints his thighs and the floor at his feet. He looks up, slowly, to where Mohawk is leering at him with a nightmarish grin. In her right hand, she rolls his testicles between her two long fingers like a coin trick. He's fairly certain he's going to vomit. Dominic can feel his cheap lunch from McDonald's racing up from his stomach and flooding his esophagus.

Before he spews, though, the hand holding his gonads strikes forward and clenches his face, contracting his jaw and holding his mouth shut. Dominic feels his testicles squish against his cheek. One pops, not unlike a grape, spraying his skin with fluids he would rather not think about. He isn't sure how he's still conscious. Frankly, Dominic isn't wholly sure he is. Maybe this is all a dream, he tells himself, and he'll wake up in a cold sweat late for work.

Yeah, that's it. Mohawk's left hand plunges forward. He thinks she just hit him in the stomach, but it's more than that. The pull of skin feels far more intense. He can't move his head to look, though, so he's left blissfully unaware of the hole that's just been punched through his midsection. His vision is fading. Any minute now, he's going to wake up. This isn't real. Can't be. Any minute now. Chapter 9 Megan's bachelorette party is ruined.

No, that isn't the most pressing thing right now, but it's what she can't help but think. Her awesome and bright future had seemed so close, and now it's infinitely far away. She doesn't even know if she's going to be alive much longer, let alone get married and have kids. The blood of the stripper who had been giving her a lap dance soaks her front from the hole that had been punched through his chest and out his back.

At first warm, now, it's cold and sticky. Eyeliner draws dark streaks down her face from the tears that refuse to stop falling. The heavyset huddles behind the stage closest to the bar. Jessica is right behind her, a hand on her back. Next in line is Zoe. Zoe. All three peer out at the club, at the living nightmare playing itself out before their very eyes. She doesn't know what to do. In the absence of a plan, all she does is sit there and watch.

Not ten feet in front of her, there's Mohawk all over a woman. Megan guesses she should count herself lucky, having not been chosen as the next victim in the woman's murder spree. Mohawk has her head thrust into the crook of the lady's neck, needle-like teeth digging into the flesh, throat flexing as she sucks down blood. The victim is dead already. Her unseeing eyes stare blankly at Megan, face frozen in a twisted expression of pain and horror.

Her fate isn't unique. There's bodies everywhere now, more by the minute. People are running, they're screaming, some slip on the gore that paints the ground, land sprawling, get attacked before they can manage to get back to their feet. Others almost make it to the door, but end up stopped short by the man lingering there. Others may be also wanting for a plan, do like she and her friends do, and shelter in place, wait for their turn to die.

Megan now knows how the cows at the slaughterhouse must feel. Standing in line, listening to their fellows up ahead getting killed, and what do they do? The only thing they can do, shuffle forward when it's their turn. I called the police, comes Jessica's trembling voice. What are the police going to do? Zoe asks in response, her words a wet croak. Die, Megan thinks, but she doesn't say that. She didn't think Rihanna's S&M would be the soundtrack to her death, but then again, she also didn't think she would die in a strip club, or that the thing that would kill her would be monsters.

Heart disease, maybe, but not these pale horrors. Monsters, the stuff of Hollywood movie magic and Stephen King novels, but Megan can't think of another word for these things. They have fangs and claws and a hunger for blood. They're monsters. It isn't the scream that gets her attention, not with the chorus of them filling the club. No, it's the reaction that both the attackers have to the scream. They look up, puzzlement on their faces.

Megan dares a look to the bar, sees the source of it, a woman being mercilessly stabbed, by the bartender. It doesn't take her having a front-row seat to see that the woman is one of them. Her nasty teeth glimmer as she screams. She looks back, sees the man mouthing something, can't hear it for the music. They're distracted, though. Now's their chance. Come on, while they're busy, she finds herself saying, shocked she has the ability to even plan something so bold, let alone enact it as her body begins to move.

She doesn't get up, but rather, begins to crawl on hands and knees to the left. The floor is sticky with spilled beer and spilled blood, but that's the least of her concerns right now. There's a bathroom on this side of the club, between a set of booths. She doesn't know if they'll have a window or what, but it's closer to the front door, at least, and gets them out of sight for a moment or two.

Megan glances over her shoulder to make sure her friends are following. They are, she's relieved to find. She directs her eyes forward again, continues on her way. She can barely hear the music now, her heart pounding and her ears like a snare drum. She doesn't know if the monsters can see her. She can only hope that they can't. And if they can, well, she's sure they'll let her know. She reaches the booths, twists right, and continues crawling.

Not far now. Her breath comes and shudders, snot runs down her chin. Maybe Zoe's earlier concern for where Amy had gotten off to hadn't been just her worrying over nothing. Oh God. Amy. They left her out front, the same front these things entered from. No, she can't dwell on that now. There's time to mourn later. The booth ends and Megan follows it around to the sticky leather back. The archway for the bathrooms is in front of her, but she doesn't come up off her knees.

Instead, she keeps crawling right on. Right for the women, left for the men. Even though the circumstances may be allowed that she can choose whichever she wants, Megan still opts for the door on the right. She almost makes it there when there's a loud thud not far behind her. Too close for comfort. Megan wouldn't even look, dead set on making it to the bathroom, if it weren't for the sound of Zoe screaming.

She turns around, feels all the breath in her lungs vacate. The woman with the mohawk has the brunette pinned to the wall, has ripped her right off the floor so that her feet are dangling. Zoe stares at her and she, in turn, stares at Zoe. If she and Jessica both rushed mohawk, then maybe they could knock her back, grab the brunette and make it into the bathroom in time to barricade the door.

It's a big maybe. More likely, they'll all three of them die in quick succession. Zoe mouths something. It looks like, help. Megan mouths something back. I'm sorry. She turns quickly and grabs the door handle for the bathroom, uses it to hoist herself up to her feet, then shoves it open and clambers inside. Jessica follows close behind, almost tripping on her heels as she does. She manages to push the door shut and twist the lock just in time for mohawk to crash into it from the other side, denting the metal inward toward them.

Both blondes scream. Then. Silence. It's almost as deafening as the music and screaming had been. With a locked door, Megan feels the promise of relative safety. We left Zoe, Jessica says. That safety seems to vanish with her friend's words. Yeah. Megan stammers. What else can she say? We left her. Yeah. When Megan repeats herself, the word cracks. The tears are falling again. Did they ever actually stop? Something slams into the door again.

Both women jump. She thinks it's mohawk at first, but then she hears the loud groan, the whimper, the pleading from the other side. The woman is using Zoe as a battering ram. The second hit comes and it sounds wetter. Maybe that's just Megan's imagination, but it does. Both her and Jessica cry out in desperation, but their words aren't going to help here. There just isn't a lot to do otherwise, except try and escape.

It's a small bathroom. One quick turn and Megan has taken stock of all she needs to. A row of sinks on the wall by the door. Four stalls opposite them. The strip of floor in the middle leads to a small window up near the ceiling and that's where the heavyset blonde runs to, looking up at it with a foolish expression of hope briefly crossing her face before reality comes crashing in. She won't fit.

It isn't even worth experimenting. She can tell from where she's standing. Help me up, Jessica says as she sidesteps her friend. Jess, I won't fit, she responds, tears choking her words. I will, the other blonde answers. And I can run and get us help. The door should hold until then. I won't fit, Jessica. Help me up! Trying to hold back her sobs as best she can but failing miserably, Megan kneels down and clasps her hands together for Jessica to step into.

Once she does, the heavyset blonde uses the wall for support and gives her a lift. A third bang rings out from the door. There's no more groaning that follows it. Jessica opens the window and thrusts her head out. All right, just lift a bit more, she instructs, voice slightly muffled. Megan does, even as the fear of being alone starts to creep in. This is it, she thinks. The end. No wedding. No honeymoon.

No big house. No kids. She pushes her would-be maid of honor further up. Hears her loudly complain as her tits make squeezing through the narrow slot difficult. Once they're through, though, it's smooth sailing. At a point, gravity takes over and Jessica just slips from Megan's hands as she topples through the window. She hears the other blonde let out a loud yell from the other side of the wall as she tumbles to the ground.

The next bang that comes from the bathroom door is rougher, louder. It isn't Zoe this time, but Mohawk herself. Megan is sure of it. Are you okay? She calls toward the window. Yeah, Jessica answers, sounding like she's in pain. Okay, I'm going to get help. Just hang on. As she announces her intentions, the bathroom door finally gives up the fight and slams open, bent and ugly, but not so much as the woman who stands in the opening and flashes Megan her awful smile.

Shh, it was only the wind. You're safe. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter 10 Car 13, Respond Officer Chase Perry's cruiser is parked on the side of the road at the intersection of Detroit and West 28th between Linda's Market and North High Brewing. He's got the rearview mirror adjusted so he can see his face, his fingers aggressively working at a zit on his chin when the call comes over the Motorola.

His left hand drops to the remote microphone clipped to his chest, squeezing the button on it. His right stays with the angry red bump. This is Car 13, he says. Hey, Chase. The voice of dispatcher Tim Moore is a welcome one to interrupt the otherwise boring night. Only kind of night Chase ever seems to get. Keep him busy out there? No, he isn't. It's his third month on the job and he's yet to see any real action.

Part of him supposes he would count himself lucky for that, but his Clint Eastwood fantasies are going woefully unfulfilled. Brought up on the stories his father would bring home, the senior Perry, also a cop, he's been itching to kick ass and take names since he graduated the academy. Hasn't happened yet. Non-stop. You actually just caught me on the heel of thwarting a bank robbery, Tim, he says. It's like an action movie out here, I tell ya.

Well, I hope you can fit this into your schedule then. Got, uh, two calls, both from that place on Frakeford Avenue, Wings and Dings. You know the place? Male Strip Club? Yeah. Don't you go there a lot? Har har, funny guy. My first caller didn't say anything but the second said she was being attacked by, let me check here so I get this right. Yeah, right here, I jotted it down. Monsters.

Sounds like you're getting crank called, my dude. Sounds like that, don't it? I figure it's either that or a possible 10-9. You got Narcan? Yeah, somewhere in here. Might need that, I don't know. Check it out and radio back, will ya? Only because you asked so nicely. What's the address? Tim feeds it to him and Chase punches it into the GPS, then releases the microphone and sighs loudly. He twists the mirror back into place, puts the cruiser into drive and pulls away from the curb.

This fucking zit is going to drive him insane. That is, if the boredom doesn't do the job first. He takes the right up ahead, veering onto the ramp for the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway. It connects the west bank to the east bank of the flats. He punches it. No siren. Doesn't see why he'd need it. The speedometer climbs, 50, 60, 70. Keeps going. He switches lanes to pass a slower car, moves back without signaling.

The city passes by him on the right, a blur of brick and concrete and steel, but mostly decay. Lake Erie on the left, unbothered and unmoved. Just sitting there. Stinking. It isn't like he thought he would be kicking down the door of drug dens and cleaning up the streets with good old-fashioned steel. Okay, maybe that is what he thought. Chase's favorite TV show is The Shield. He could be a younger, more handsome Michael Chiklis.

He's still holding out hope anyway. It's early in his career. He's got the smell of the academy on him, that's all. Once he's a bit more experienced, has a few notches in his belt, the brass will be putting him on all the big dick jobs. The local gangbangers will find out that he's one bad hombre. Be nice if his complexion could clear up before then. Chase can't think of a single badass with acne.

He goes from the passing lane to the exit ramp in one fell swoop, cresting down toward Lakeside Avenue before turning left onto West 6th. He blows through the intersection with St. Clair Avenue, and then it's just a little bit further before his GPS is telling him to turn right onto Frankfurt. Maybe when he's done with this bogus call, he'll pick up a late lunch and a tube of clearasil for this goddamn zit.

He's still squeezing it with his right hand when he spots the blonde running out from the side of Wings and Dings and directly into the avenue. Chase doesn't have time to stop, but he tries anyway. He slams on the brakes. Lot of good it does him. He's going 50 in the cruiser skids. All he sees is her hair lit up in the beams, her wide, doe-eyed expression. Then he feels the sudden jolt as the front end connects with her body, and he's thrust forward, headbutting the steering wheel.

Everything goes black. If you're not afraid, then you're already dead. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Chapter 11 Both Joan and Troy cry out in horror when they see the state of the cook Scotty, strewn across the prep table like so much meat and clearly dead. His throat is torn open and blood soaks his apron, not to mention the clothes beneath it. Realizing that they might share his fate soon enough if they idle though, both the bartender and the dancer manage to get over their shock and press on, wordlessly assuring one another that the only thing they can think about right now is getting the hell out of Wings and Dings.

They push the freezer in front of the kitchen door, both needing to work together to move the thing despite it being on wheels. It probably won't help them in the long run, but it might buy them some time, and that's a precious commodity right now. Afterward, taking a moment to breathe, Troy inspects Joan's wounds. Normally, she might take offense to a guy ogling her chest, but this one time, she isn't going to raise a stink over it.

He reaches out and peels shredded fabric away. Every little touch stings. There are exactly four gashes that have been drawn into her flesh, stretching from the top left of her ribcage up over her right tit, stopping just short of her shoulder. They don't seem to be bleeding anymore, at least, but they're going to leave wicked scars. That's okay. She can live with scars. Do you feel... okay? Do you? Joan manages a bark of laughter that turns into a half sob.

She has to keep reminding herself not to break down into tears. No! Jesus! Fuck, Joan! What the fuck is wrong with their teeth? I don't know. I don't know. And their fucking eyes, man! Harry shot them! I saw him shoot them! He shot that lady like six fucking times! Joan's hands physically grasp at straws while she speaks, trying desperately to find any sense in what's going on here. It seems impossible. They've left the realm of real and accepted fact in the rear view.

They are in the land of nightmares now. We gotta get out! Get help! Yes, they do. Nodding, snorting snot back into her nose, Joan pushes herself up from where she's been leaning against the wall. As the adrenaline of the previous fight with Nose Ring begins, the pain in her chest becomes more and more apparent. She tries to push it out of her mind for now, but the throbbing ache isn't making it easy.

The back door of the bar is located in the far right corner by the walk-in. Their path takes them past where they've moved the freezer. As Troy passes in front of it, it launches forward, clipping the dancer and sending him sprawling. He tries to catch himself on a table, but fails, ends up hitting his knees with the air knocked out of him. The freezer connects with the opposite wall so hard that Joan is shocked it doesn't go right through it.

It bounces back, rolling a foot or so, before coming to a stop. It's the man. He holds the kitchen door open, letting the noise of the club behind spill in for a moment, before he steps forward and it swings closed. She sees him, but, more pressing, he sees her. There's rage in those black voids he has in place of eyes. It's etched into his face, too. He moves, and in turn, so does she.

Cat, Meat Mouse. His stride brings him forward at an impossible speed, and Joan only narrowly avoids him by diving to the left. The freezer's in the middle of the floor, blocking any easy escape, so, thinking fast, she clambers up and onto the flat-top grill, thankful the club never uses the thing, and crawls forward. She makes it to the end before he snatches her by the ankle, one quick tug causing her to land flat on her gut and her head to dangle over the deep fryer, the sizzle pop of 350-degree oil just feet below her face.

The metal guard that lines the flat-top, meant to keep grease from splashing out, cuts into her neck, causes her to choke. She grabs hold of it as she's pulled, but it doesn't help. It bends as she holds on for dear life, then her fingers begin slipping, the side of the guard that faces the deep fryer slick with residual grease. She curses Scotty and his shoddy cleanup job right before she loses her grip entirely.

She hears Troy yell, call the man a motherfucker. The hand on her ankle lets up with the almost simultaneous sound of a scuffle. Joan doesn't look back to see what the dancer has done to earn her her freedom. She just claws her way forward and then off the grill and on to her feet. Thinking fast, her heart beating a mile a minute, she grabs a pot from a shelf and thrusts it into the deep fryer.

Just in time, too, Troy flies by behind her, thrown. As she turns, the man is there, barely a few feet separating them. Joan swings the pot up and out of the deep fryer, filled with oil, and douses the left side of the man's face with it. He doesn't scream. He roars, stumbling back with both hands reaching for where his pale skin is now turning pink and red. Ugly blisters already begin to form.

The bartender could press her luck, but chooses not to. The pot clatters to the floor and she turns and sprints toward the back door. Ripping it open, only then does she look for Troy and finds him struggling to his feet by the walk-in. Come on! That seems to do the trick. He pushes himself off the wall, practically throwing himself toward the door. He isn't fast enough, though. Something hits the other side of the door.

Joan can only assume it's the man. Whatever it is, it's heavy, enough to throw the bartender out and into the alley. The door slams loudly shut behind her. She stumbles over her own feet, ends up landing flat on her ass. Troy! She screams it, voice hoarse. It's too late, though. The rational part of her brain knows that for a fact. Even if she went back in there, it only served to get them both killed.

There's still a piece of her that wants to try and save the dancer, though. There just wouldn't be anything left to save. Back on her feet, Joan begins to run. It's all she can do at this point. Chunky boots thud heavily against the ground as she rounds the side of the club and makes her way toward the street. There's a car there, she sees, parked in the middle of the avenue. Only as she draws a little closer does she see that it's a police cruiser, the light bar on the top not on.

The front end is dented inward, a blonde crumpled on the ground in front of it. The presumed owner of the car, a cop, is sat on the curb. Joan doesn't stop running until she's in front of him. He's younger, younger than her even. There are tears running down his cheeks and a deep cut across his forehead. I didn't see her, he says, voice a wet mumble. He gestures hopelessly. It isn't my fault, I didn't see her.

We need to go, she says. The scene is shockingly normal compared to what's coming for them. It barely even catches her off guard. The way she sees it, they can worry about vehicular homicide, accidental or not, later, when there aren't monsters around trying to kill them. I didn't see her, the cop repeats, wiping his nose on the back of his arm, leaving a streak of snot. Shut up, shut up, we have to go, now!

He isn't moving. Something is, though. She catches it in her vision and looks up. The man. He's strolling down the side of the building now, coming right toward them. There's nothing to do for the cop, she decides. She leaves him to sit on the curb and half walks, half runs to the open driver's side door of his cruiser. The key's in the ignition, the engine's still on, the airbag isn't deployed, and for that, she's at least grateful.

Despite all the computers and radios and shit, she's fairly certain it drives just like a normal car. She slams the door shut, just in time to cut out the surprised scream of the cop as he's jerked in one fluid motion from where he'd been sat on the curb and into the air, feet dangling off the ground. Foot on the brake, Joan throws it out of park and into reverse, slams on the gas once she has, and begins flying backward from the scene.

She backs right up into a car parked on the other side of the avenue, gives herself a jolt, but is no worse for wear. At least, she doesn't think so. In the beams of the headlights, she sees the dead blonde curled up on the asphalt, the cop, feet kicking hopelessly, the man, face buried in his throat. The thought to hit the attacker with the car crosses her mind, but she isn't confident it would do anything other than leave her without an escape vehicle.

So, when she puts the cruiser in drive, she turns the wheel, avoiding the scene entirely as she guns it for the end of the avenue. She doesn't know where she'll go, just knows that anywhere is better than here. She barely slows down as she veers right on to West 9th, the tires squealing loudly. Joan almost loses control of the vehicle, but manages to keep it in check. She's done it, she thinks.

She's made it out. Excitement explodes up from deep inside her and she begins slamming her hand against the steering wheel while screaming expletives. That's Joan, a survivor. She makes it as far as the intersection with St. Clair when there's a heavy thud on the roof of the vehicle, like the car's been struck with a meteor. The surprise catches her to panic and she twists the wheel, almost hits another parked car, but manages to straighten out her trajectory in time to avoid the collision.

She's heading down St. Clair now, toward West 10th. Denial sets in, tries to anyway. It quickly makes itself scarce when a fist comes from nowhere and smacks into the windshield. The first hit doesn't shatter it, just makes a round break in the center of her vision from which a hundred little cracks spiderweb out from. The second hit, though, comes right through. Fingers topped with thick nails, no, claws, reach for her and she has to lean all the way back to avoid their grasp.

Screaming, Joan does the only thing she can think to do, which is step on it. The speedometer climbs as she makes short work of the avenue. At the bend where St. Clair becomes Old River Road, she slams on the brakes, tires squealing loudly as they're forced to come to an unexpected halt. The man on the roof goes flying forward, hits the pole with a loud, snapping sound that Joan can not only hear but feel deep in her skeleton.

He lands in a heap on the ground, motionless. She's breathing hard, tears are streaming down her face. Come on, she says. Do it, fucker. As if on cue, the man begins to stir. It's a slow, sluggish movement. He stumbles to his feet, one arm bent completely backward at the elbow so that it points in the opposite direction. One leg is violently turned inward toward the other. Joan takes her foot off the brake and floors the gas pedal.

Before the man can react, she's plowing into him, narrowly avoiding pinning him to the pole and instead driving him down the incline toward the Cuyah River. He stares at her through the windshield, pitch black eyes, spelling out all the awful things he wants to do to her. But she doesn't relent. You fucking bitch! She hears him scream it, then drives her foot down hard on the brake for the last time. There's a wrought iron fence lining the walkway that straddles the Cuyah to keep people from falling in and, beyond that, a muddy embankment toward the murky water.

As she stops, the man again is launched forward, this time hitting the fence and tearing it clean from the ground. She doesn't know if the decorative spikes that top it stab him, but she only hopes they do. He keeps flying until he hits the water, landing with a splash. She doesn't know how long she just sits there and looks on, foot on the brake, waiting for him to come crawling out of the water, like the monster he is.

She isn't sure she breathes the entire time she does. The crackle of the radio is what brings her out of it, giving her a start. Car 13, respond. Joan doesn't know what she's doing with all the bits and bobs at the console. She presses button after button to no avail, each time saying hello, but getting nothing back. Her voice steadily becoming more and more cracked and broken as she proceeds. Finally, after much trial and error, her hello is answered.

Who is this? I'm the bartender for Wings and Dings, she manages to say. I... We need help. Epilogue Three months on from the incident, Joan still has trouble sleeping. Who wouldn't? Every time she closes her eyes, those people are there, waiting, like they've carved their likeness into the back of her eyelids. No, not people. Monsters. People don't have needle-like teeth and pitch-black eyes and claws where fingernails should be. She thinks of the cop who had been sat on the curb, the one who hit that poor blonde who almost, almost got away.

She thinks about how, when the man had him, he was tearing into his throat. Same story for Scotty. His throat had been absolutely destroyed when she and Troy found him. What does that? They never found the guy she flung into the Cuyahoga River. Could be he drifted out deeper into Lake Erie, the police say. They never found the woman she killed, either. The woman with the nose ring. Joan isn't sure if the lady with the mohawk stole her away or what happened.

Maybe these monsters dissolve after death. Maybe they didn't really die. There's a scary thought, one that's occurred to her time and time again in the little hours of the night. The club is closed. Hard to come back from something like this, she figures. The stack of overdue bills threatening imminent cancellation of crucial services probably didn't help. Her aunt will survive, though. Like her niece, Diane is a survivor. Joan hears she's going to franchise a Burger King.

She moves quietly through her studio apartment. The clock on the stove reads 2 a.m. Her pot of coffee is only half drunk, though, and it seems like it'd be a waste to leave it. She pours herself another cup. From the kitchen counter, she crosses the floor, passes by a television showing Night of the Living Dead, and stops at the window that overlooks the street. Her reflection is a stark reminder of that night.

Topless, it's her apartment, sewer, means she can see the four scars running horizontally across her chest. She fingers one, an unconscious action, while taking a sip of the bitter coffee. In therapy, Joan often offers up theories of, maybe if she had done this or that, things could have turned out differently. Maybe not for Brad, or for Harvey, definitely not for Scotty, but certainly for Troy. She could have saved the dancer. It isn't your fault, Joan.

Comes the canned response. Yeah, well, she pays the person to say that, doesn't she? It's a weekly visit to make herself feel better. It isn't working. Survivor's guilt is a bitch like that. Outside the window, her eyes scan Elm Street. Her apartment is located in a building that looks like it had been a warehouse at some point. Probably was. Across the street, a similar building houses the cafe she now works at.

Good thing about cafes, they close before dark. They seldom get attacked by monsters, too, from what she hears. Joan doesn't know what she's looking for when she inspects her little slice of Cleveland. That isn't true. She does know. She just wishes she didn't. In the wake of what she's been through, every detail becomes suspect. She doesn't recognize that Impala, for instance, parked half in and half out of the beam of the streetlight.

She's sure she would know if she'd seen it before. It's an older vehicle, a classic. Both in front and behind it are much cheaper, more economic models, less descript. Rationally, she knows it's probably someone visiting another tenant, or someone got a new ride, or whatever. But that isn't how her brain decides to file things away anymore. From her perch, she continues her watching, or spying. It depends on how one wants to look at it.

When something catches her eye. A flame. Given the distance, it's tiny. But it still stands out. There's someone standing near the Impala, Joan realizes, in the shadows. A darker silhouette on a dark background. The flame is nothing more than a lighter. It's just someone having a smoke, she realizes. But it still sends a chill down her spine. The person lights their cigarette, and the flame goes away, replaced by a burning orange ember.

Using the lit end of the cigarette as a guide, Joan can tell where the person is looking. they're staring up at her window. At her.