Companions in Ruin Read online

  Gerald sat in the recliner across the room, nursing his fourth beer in a row, listening to the fella hooting and hollering about God. He was waving a hanky in the camera like he was one of them magicians about to do some kind of trick. Turn the hanky into a bird or some such shit.

  Instead, what the fella said next actually made Gerald spew out a little of his beer and start coughing. Eileen had the gall to shush him. Normally this would have pissed Gerald off something terrible, but at the moment he was too distracted by the crazy preacher man on the TV screen.

  “Brothers and Sisters, do you want God to bless you? I know you do; I know you want Him to answer all your prayers. For a 100-dollar love offering to Jesus Christ on a Cross Ministries, I will pray over this cloth, anointing it with God’s blessing, and ship it out to you.”

  “Am I crazy, or is that kook charging a hundred bucks for a fucking booger napkin?”

  Eileen shot him a nasty look. “You need to stop cussing so much. And it ain’t no booger napkin neither; it’s a genuwine Prayer Cloth.”

  “A what?”

  “A Prayer Cloth. The preacher prays over it and then sends it to you, and then God will answer your prayers.”

  “I don’t even go to no church and I know that sounds crazy as shit. You saying God won’t listen to you praying unless you got one of those holy booger napkins?”

  “I suwannee, sometimes I wonder how I coulda married such a heathen like you.”

  “Because I knocked you up in the bed of my pick-up when we was seventeen. You wasn’t such a God-fearing lady back then, though you was calling his name an awful lot, if I recall correctly.”

  “You dirty old coot,” she said. “No wonder our boy ended up in prison, with you as a role model.”

  “I ain’t taking all the blame for what happened to Earl. You didn’t exactly win no Mamma of the Year awards yourself.”

  “Just don’t talk to me no more, let me finish watching my program.”

  Gerald finished off his beer, crumpled the can and let it drop to the floor with the rest of them. Leaning forward, he fixed his stare on his wife. “Eileen, don’t you get no ideas in that empty head of yours.”

  “What you going on about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m going on about. There ain’t no way in hell you’re gonna send that quack preacher none of my hard earned money for a damn booger napkin.”

  Eileen didn’t answer, just sat rigidly staring at the TV.

  “You hear me, woman! If you so Godly, remember the commandment to honor thy husband!”

  “First of all, that ain’t no commandment, you old fool. And second, maybe if my husband wasn’t such a lousy drunk there’d be some more honoring going on in this house.”

  Gerald was up in a flash, rushing across the room and delivering a vicious slap to his wife’s cheek. The sound was loud in the dim room like a gunshot and her head rocked back. Right away she started in with the waterworks, and after all their years together, she should’ve known tears only made Gerald madder.

  “Stop your caterwauling, bitch, and go fix me a turkey pot pie!”

  She just sat there for a moment, a hand to her red cheek, bawling like a baby.

  “Don’t make me ask you again.”

  Still sniffling, Eileen got up and hurried into the kitchen.

  Smiling like he’d just nailed Swedish twins, Gerald turned the television to WWF.

  ***

  Three weeks later Gerald found the package in the mail. It was small, almost flat, addressed to his wife. It was the return address that got him boiling over with rage.

  “Eileen!” he roared as he stormed back into the house. “Get your ass out here right now!”

  Eileen came slinking into the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Why you screaming? The neighbors are gonna hear.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if they do. What exactly is this?”

  Seeing the package her husband held, Eileen went as pale as a ghost, now wringing the towel in her hands. “Um, I’m not sure.”

  “That so? You ain’t sure? Well, let me enlighten you. It says it’s from Jesus Christ on a Cross Ministries. What could they be sending you? Huh? Cat got your tongue?”

  Eileen looked ready to bolt from the room, but she knew better. Running would just mean she’d get it twice as worse once she was caught. So she stayed put, though she still didn’t say nothing.

  “You went behind my back and sent that quack preacher money, didn’t ya?” Gerald said in a low growl. “You sent off for that goddamn booger napkin.”

  “Gerald, it’s a Prayer Cloth, and I—”

  He didn’t let her finish. No slap this time; this time he flat-out punched her. She fell to the floor in a heap, blood gushing from her nostrils. She cringed away from him, already doing that whole pleading bit.

  Gerald tore the package open, and sure enough, the hanky fell out into his hand. “Here it is, the Holy Booger Napkin!” he said with mock reverence. “Oh, Holy Booger Napkin, please tell me the lotto numbers and who’s going to win this year’s Super Bowl.”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” Eileen said.

  “What, you think God’s gonna send down a lightning strike or something. I tell you, God ain’t gonna do shit. I’m the one you need to worry about. I’m your God! So you know what I’m going to do with your special magic booger napkin?”

  “Please, don’t throw it out.”

  “Throw it out? Wouldn’t dream of it, this thing cost me a pretty penny. More than a steak dinner at the Sizzler. So maybe I should eat it.”

  Eileen screamed as if he were kicking a puppy to death when he stuffed the hanky in his mouth, making “Mmmm” sounds as he chewed on it. He planned to get it nice and shredded then spit the slobbery wad right in her face. Her look of outrage and hurt was hilarious and he started to laugh…

  Which proved to be a mistake. It caused him to inhale sharply and the hanky got sucked down his windpipe. He tried to spit it back out, but it seemed lodged there, cutting off his air. He clawed at his throat, hoping to make himself puke it up or something. The thing was stuck good, and he stumbled toward Eileen, holding his hands out to her. She screamed again but backpedaled away from him. He dropped to his knees, sticking his fingers in his mouth, snagging the tail end of the hanky and trying to yank it out. It held fast, as if it was caught on a rusty nail down in his throat.

  He keeled over onto his side, the world starting to go gray around the edges. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Eileen crawling back toward him. Finally, the bitch was going to help.

  Only she didn’t. Instead she raised her hands and her face to the ceiling and shouted, “Praise Jesus, the Prayer Cloth works! My prayer is finally being answered!”

  The last thing Gerald saw before everything went dark was Eileen smiling down at him.

  STORY NOTES

  Ours is a God of Anger—This one was inspired by my love of reading church signs when I’m driving around, always interested in the ones that are unusual or funny. I once thought, “I could make a book of these.” And thus started the germ of this tale. It originally appeared in Withersin in 2008.

  The Gang—This is one of several in the collection that came from a writing challenge. In this case, it was an old creepy photo of children wearing animal masks. The original version of this story I came up with had an inconclusive ending where you never learn the identities of the robbers, but I was never satisfied with it so I came up with something I liked better.

  By the Light of Dawn—There was a time in my life when I watched a lot of daytime talk shows, and these programs would often have “psychics” on, and I would marvel at how often they could be proven wrong and yet still book gigs. And I wondered what they might be willing to do to prove their powers if they felt their credibility at stake. And that was how this story was born.

  Sentinel—Another writing challenge, another photo of the figure in the white sheet described in the story. I was aiming for something with a bit of an urban le
gend feel to it.

  Friends Like These—I was late to the social media revolution, but when I finally joined Facebook, I was kind of amazed at how you could connect with all these different people from all over the world. And how people from your past that you thought were long gone could suddenly reappear. I figured it could be the perfect way into a nasty revenge tale.

  The End of Her Rope—I have some friends who did not adjust well to parenthood. Not that they are bad parents or don’t love their children. Quite the contrary, but they were unprepared for just how difficult it was, how much work. I actually have the utmost respect for them; I don’t think I could handle it without losing my mind. That honest self-inventory helped me come up with this tale.

  The Jesus Shoe Store—The Jesus Shoe Store is a real place in my hometown. And much of it is just as described in the story, though I did leave out the part about the sign on the door that says “No singing and no dancing!” While visiting there with a friend once, I was looking at these old-timey wooden kitchen chairs hanging on the walls, wondering what they were for. I wondered, “Are they for Jesus to sit on when he comes by?” And almost instantly I had the idea for this one. This one also appeared in Withersin in 2008.

  Anniversary—This is rather a simple story, though I tried for a bit of a twist at the end. I was interesting in attempting something that felt like a romantic tale and then taking it to a dark place.

  Pick Your Path—When I was a kid, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books, delighting in the many options I was given for each story. I started wondering what it might be like if some of those choices had real life consequences, some of them quite dark. What would a person do? This story is one possibility.

  Debt—This story was inspired by my own unbelievable debt accrued from a trip to the ER for what turned out to be kidney stones. I didn’t stiff them, but to this day I’m still paying on that bill. But I did wonder, what could they do if I didn’t pay? Not like they could give me the kidney stones back…right? This was originally published by the ezine The Harrow in 2009.

  Midnight Shift—I was a security guard on third shift for years, and when I first started the job, I was warned how creepy it would be working a shutdown when no one was on the property but me. Then I worked a shutdown—several in fact—and found nothing creepy at all. However, because my imagination runs wild, I started to wonder what would have to happen to creep me out while working alone on the midnight shift. Several scenarios came to mind, and I put them in this story. Sideshow Press put this up on their website back in 2010.

  Rebecca Weston Speaks the Truth—This was the second story I ever sold but the first story of mine published, in an ezine called Alien Skin way back in 2005. I still remember the joy I felt when the story was released and I saw my work in print for the first time. It’s a feeling I hope to never forget and which I still experience with each publication.

  The Diner—Yet another challenge tale, a photo of a diner that was rundown and covered in dirt. I decided to go with something a bit post-apocalyptic with a traditional horror twist at the end.

  Homebody—I wanted to do a ghost story that wasn’t your typical ghost story. I was musing about what it must be like for a spirit trapped on this plane, especially if the spirit were stuck in one particular place.

  Before and Aftermath—This one was written as a reaction to all the school shootings going on in this country. Not to excuse any of the shooters, but in an effort to understand. When something like this happens, we want to quickly dismiss the shooters as almost one-dimensional psychos so we don’t have to think about it too much. And then more shootings occur. I think what we need to do is truly try to understand what the shooters’ lives are like, so we can maybe pinpoint things we could do to prevent the shootings from happening before they ever occur. The story originally appeared in an ezine called Dread in 2007.

  Work in Progress—I’ve known people who are always writing but never finishing, who are always talking about their works-in-progress but never seem to reach the end. These people usually are just perfectionist that go back over and over their work, revision after revision, never feeling it’s good enough…but I wondered what if some of these writers weren’t really writing anything but just liked to talk as if they were because it made them feel important? What would happen if the time came for them to put up or shut up?

  Depravation—Seems to me that these days people are addicted to being “plugged in.” Restaurants, movies, amusement parks, museums, nature trails—look around and you’ll see people on their phones Facebooking, texting, Tweeting, Instagraming, etc. I’ve often thought that people would just snap if they were forced to unplug for even a small amount of time. This story is my satire of this phenomenon. It appeared in the anthology Evil Jester Digest Vol. II in 2012.

  Must Be Something in the Water—This story was really born from the title. Where I work, we used to have an actual water cooler, and one day I was looking at that big plastic jug and thought, “Must be something in the water.” I thought that would be a good story title, and built the actual tale around it. This was published in the anthology Help! Wanted in 2011.

  Along for the Ride—A friend of mine was once carjacked in much the way described in the story. She was not hurt, but she was naturally left terrified. So I thought I’d write a story where she had the upper hand. This story first saw print in the ezine Fifth Dimension in 2006.

  True 2 Life—I believe this is the oldest story in the collection. I wanted to comment on the crazy reality show generation that felt like everything they did and said was important. And I actually had a lot of fun writing this one, and I still find it funny. The ezine Inclinations published this piece in 2006.

  The Alarm—My fiancé and I were staying at a friend’s mountain cabin for the weekend, and early one morning I heard some kind of an alarm going off in the front of the house. I went searching for it and never did find where it was coming from, though it eventually stopped. That gave me the inspiration for this one.

  Santa’s Little Spy—Friends of mine who are parents have started doing this Elf on a Shelf thing…and I just find it incredibly creepy. The little doll that moves around at night while everyone is sleeping, who is watching your every move. Just seemed ripe for a horror story. This story was part of the charity anthology Widowmakers in 2014.

  The Price of Survival—A zombie story without a single zombie. For me, zombie stories are most interesting when the focus is on the survivors, and what they have to do in order to survive. How far would a young woman be willing to go to make sure she survived? This story originally saw print in a digital collection called Immure Spirits in 2012.

  Unknown Number—This is just a little cat-and-mouse scavenger hunt tale that I had a lot of fun with. When I wrote the story, I was actually rather new to texting, and I just thought it would be a great device to use in a story. The ending was originally different, but I tinkered with it when it appeared in the anthology First Cut in 2011.

  The Holy Booger Napkin—My fiancé and I saw a television evangelist actually asking for money to send out these “prayer clothes”, though he was actually asking for more money than I had in my story because I felt it almost defied belief. While watching, my fiancé suddenly exclaimed, “He wants people to send him money for his old booger napkin.” I said, “No, it is a holy booger napkin.” And almost instantly the story came to me.

  About The Author

  Mark Allan Gunnells loves to tell stories. He has since he was a kid, penning one-page tales that were Twilight Zone knockoffs. He likes to think he has gotten a little better since then.

  He has been lucky enough to work with some wonderful publishers such as Apex Publishing, Bad Moon Books, Journalstone, Evil Jester Press, Etopia, Sideshow Press, and Gallows Press. His books include Asylum, The Hunt and Welcome to the Graveyard.

  He loves reader feedback, and above all he loves telling stories. Find him on Facebook or Twitter. He lives in Greer, SC, with his fiancé Craig A. Metcalf
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