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  1. 1.
  2.  
  3.  
  4. The sun wasn’t shining on November 23 2011, but at least the clouds were bright enough, as young nubile Elle Dritch stood loitering outside her favorite Gas Station in her hometown of New Dunnwitch, Massachusetts. She was pretty and pale, with shoulder length black hair and a sort of vacuous beauty. She was playing with her earrings and thinking about JFK. Not thinking anything in particular about him, rather, just letting her mind linger casualy on the events nearly 50 years prior.
  5.  
  6.  
  7. “Zapruder…”
  8.  
  9.  
  10. She mouthed silently, letting her tongue trip across that unlikely name. Without realizing it, she subtly shifted her head; back and to the left.
  11.  
  12.  
  13. Forty-five seconds later, with a freshly lit Marlboro Menthol cigarette perched between her delicate lips, Elle Dritch sighed alone, and conceded that the stupid boy she had spent the last half hour waiting for was not going to show up. Defeated, and just a little depressed, she pulled herself away from the gray-brick wall she had been so comfortably leaning up against, stretched her back, and began to walk home, past the churches, the glue factory, the middle school. Out past the park, and out past the cemetery. She walked, alone, trailing cancerous translucent blue smoke in her wake.
  14.  
  15.  
  16.  
  17. But three months into her future, Elle Dritch will have all but forgotten about that stupid boy (whose name, incidentally, was Curtis Dexter. His older brother, Philip Dexter, was a homosexual, a private detective, and lived in Kingsport MA, with his best friend and business partner, who was not a homosexual. Later, we will learn more about this stupid boy, his brother, and his friend, but that’s not important right now.)
  18.  
  19.  
  20. Three months into her future, Elle Dritch will only vaguely recall standing outside the gas station waiting for the stupid boy, will have forgotten almost everything, except for a man named Charlie, who was also not a homosexual, nor a heterosexual, but rather, in terms of quantum mechanics, “both and neither”, which is to say ‘bisexual’.
  21.  
  22.  
  23. So now you know something about Elle that even she doesn’t.
  24.  
  25.  
  26.  
  27. Jodie Wynmacher sat silently reading in her car outside the city morgue on that unusually warm autumn morning, waiting for her friend to finish her shift. She was 32, single, reasonably attractive, and existed in a permanent state of low-level depression, something she herself occasionally suspected.
  28.  
  29.  
  30. Her friend, Lavinia, worked the graveyard shift at the city morgue, an hilarious joke she was fully aware of. Her car had been in the shop for the last two weeks having it’s brakes fixed, something Lavinia reasonably assumed should not take two weeks. She was 28 years old, but in two weeks she would be 29. She was slightly more reasonably attractive than Jodie, and slightly less single, having several semi-committed relationships with several different boys, none of whom were aware of each other’s existence. In five minutes she would be in Jodie’s car on her way to the apartment they shared.
  31.  
  32. Phil Dexter sat in the combination kitchen/dining room of the small house he rented with his life-long friend and business partner, Howard Ward. He was 27 years old and short, standing 5’5. He had short brown hair and a well maintained beard framing his face. He was smoking a Lucky Strike cigarette and nursing a cup of very hot, very strong coffee while perusing the morning newspaper during the last 40 odd minutes of morning left. As mentioned before, he was a homosexual, but had difficulty with relationships due to some of his extreme eccentricities, including a definite interest in the occult, a vividly conspiratorial view of the world, and a very strong misanthropic air which surrounded him, all of which contributed to his very morbid and bleak sense of gallows humor.
  33.  
  34.  
  35.  
  36. Robert Dobbs had been dead and buried for 3.5 years to the day. When he had died he had been 35 years old, married, and had difficulty holding down jobs. He expired in a gruesome car accident on his way back from a failed job interview at the Gas Station where Elle Dritch was waiting for the stupid boy. Had he survived the trip, he would have come home to discover that his wife had left him and taken the dog, the television, and his beloved bronze Don Quixote statuette. Luckily though, he was t-boned by a drunk driver five minutes from his house, and died roughly an hour later from massive internal bleeding.
  37.  
  38.  
  39. He would have been pleased to know that, by loser standards at least, his funeral was well attended, and his wife was very much full of remorse, despite going home afterwards to sleep with the man she had been having a sticky, squirting, torrid, fantastically carnal affair with for the last three months, but he would have been pleased to know that she cried herself to sleep that night after having four orgasms during coitus, which was 2 more than he had ever been able to give her during the peak of their relationship, which had passed three years before his timely death.
  40.  
  41.  
  42.  
  43. As Elle Dritch walked through the streets on the outer skirts of town, she passed the Old Cemetary, the same one where the corpse of Robert Dobbs was interred. As she did, she saw a number of young men and women sitting at aluminum folding tables, fiddling with bizarre and arcane looking machines, under the supervision of three men ranging from their late thirties to their early seventies. Elle stopped, stricken by this incredible sight out of the ordinary, not knowing (how could she?) that what she was seeing was a group of students from Miskatonic University, a college in nearby Arkham, of which New Dunnwich was a suburb, studying the science of radionics. Had she known this, she would have understood little, not realizing that radionics was a forbidden science, long considered by the Keepers of Truth to be little more than Black Magic.
  44.  
  45.  
  46. Elle could have had no idea that soon the black magic of radionics, and the black magic of black magicians would play a large role in her life.
  47.  
  48.  
  49. At the same time Elle Dritch was standing watching the unwittingly doomed students playing with powers they didn't comprehend, Jodie Wynmacher and Lavinia Richardson were driving by the same cemetery, and slowed as they passed Elle. Equally fascinated by the strange sight in the cemetery, and unaware of the synchronistic connections that would tie them to both Elle and the events about to unfold, they almost immediately drove past. Elle as well, equally ignorant of the cruel tricks fate would play on her, lit another cigarette and continued on her way home.
  50.  
  51.  
  52. About 15 minutes later, Elle was in her room, in the house she lived in with her mother. She laid naked on her bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about nothing at all. She could hear the water running in the kitchen downstairs, and she was alone.
  53.  
  54.  
  55. Waiting for the stupid boy to call.
  56.  
  57.  
  58. -
  59.  
  60.  
  61. But an hour later, the students and professors from Miskatonic University lay dying in the cemetery for the first time. On most of them, their jugulars had been ripped out, and as they gurgled their last breaths into accumulating puddles of their own blood in the dirt and grass, ants crawling over their face, the reanimated corpse of Robert Dobbs ambled over to the last survivor, a pretty little 19 year young physics major with horn rimmed glasses and red hair, who was huddled against a nearby headstone, crying and begging the cold empty heavens above to grant her mercy.
  62.  
  63.  
  64. hahaha.
  65.  
  66.  
  67. She felt his teetth, black with the decay of three years death, puncture her pale, smooth skin, the skin her lover back home was so enamored with. And just as gentle and sensual as was the feel of his fingers stroking that flesh, so, in a grotesque parody of their love, the searing, blinding pain rushing through her entire body, causing her entire nervous system to blare like a silent siren, seemed to cary a sensuality all it’s own.
  68.  
  69.  
  70. But she didn’t have time to reflect on this, or even consciously acknowledge it. She died very quickly, and had she been alive, she might hanve unconsciously registered the terrific irony of how the reanimated Bob began to devour her.
  71.  
  72.  
  73.  
  74. As he crouched over the girl’s corpse, his first reaction was to tear another chunk of flesh from the gaping gash in her neck, and then to eat it.
  75.  
  76.  
  77. He didn’t know why he did this. He didn’t know anything, he didn’t think, and was incapable of doing so. Despite the good work the embalmer had done, his brain and nervous system had atrophied extensively, still intact, but damaged and worm eaten. Bob lacked self awareness, but not consciousness. He had still, the vaguest glimmer of awareness, if not of himself, then at least of something. Something he couldn’t express, or even consider. Almost an empty vessel,
  78.  
  79.  
  80. His body told him that he had had his fill of flesh-meat, and he stood. Somewhere, deep inside the labyrinthine network of decaying synapses and atrophied cells of his brain, something clicked, not a thought, but the vaguest vestigial remnant of the action of thought. It traveled through the passages where once thoughts had wirled nonstop, now hitting dead ends, disconnecting, and becoming a jumbled transmission of involuntary commands. It caused the air in his throught to rasp across the little left of his vocal chords.
  81.  
  82.  
  83. Bob uttered a low moan, guttural, frightening and lonely. The empty echoes of what had once been speech, now only a tragic imitation of that which had once been and could never again be.
  84.  
  85.  
  86. Bob was not alive, but he was as close as he would ever be again, and the night was waiting.
  87.  
  88.  
  89. Bob was not alive again, but he was close enough.
  90.  
  91.  
  92.  
  93. 2.
  94.  
  95.  
  96. Elle was tired of waiting. She picked up the phone next to her bed and dialed the stupid boy’s number. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Four…
  97.  
  98.  
  99. “Hello?”
  100.  
  101.  
  102. “Curt? Is that you?”
  103.  
  104.  
  105. “Elle?”
  106.  
  107.  
  108. “Where were you this morning?”
  109.  
  110.  
  111. “This morning? Oh shit! Elle, I’m…I didn’t mean….I…I’m sorry.”
  112.  
  113.  
  114. For almost a minute, Elle said nothing, several half thoughts formed in her mind; disgust, anger, apathy and loneliness, but then her reverie was interrupted by the stupid stammering of the stupid boy.
  115.  
  116.  
  117. “Elle, I erm…I mean…”
  118.  
  119.  
  120. “It’s okay Curtis. I’ll talk to you later.”
  121.  
  122.  
  123. “But I…”
  124.  
  125.  
  126. It was too late, she had already hung up.
  127.  
  128.  
  129. Elle laid back on her bed and raised her fingers in the form of a gun at the light directly abover her.
  130.  
  131.  
  132. Bang.
  133.  
  134.  
  135. And again, unconsciously, she shifted her head back and to the left.
  136.  
  137.  
  138.  
  139. Curtis Dexter had just gotten out of the shower when Elle had called, and now sat on the edge of his bed, drying his hair. His hair was brown, like his brother’s, but longer and not as well maintained. He was eighteen years old, and was 1.5 inches taller than his older brother, but still short. He was enamored with Elle Dritch, but didn’t know how to handle her, she was such a strange little girl, but then again, aren’t most eighteen year old girls pretty strange? No, she was special. He didn’t want to think of her as ‘vulnerable’, but in reality, she probably was. During one of their little rendezvous she had told him things about herself, things that set him aback. Her father had left before she was born, but her mother was not ever without a man in the house, preying on a seamlessly endless stream of suitors and the occasional step-father, using them for their money and support just as they used her to slake their lusts, lust that often their frigid wives overlooked. Elle had hated all of them, except for one, a married man, like many of the others, but different. He was quiet, reserved, and funny. He was a mortician, and he treated Elle and her mother with respect, love, and affection. Her mother couldn’t stand him, he wasn’t very well off, and, at least as far as Elle could figure, she was afraid of being treated well. She was afraid of connecting with men, except at the physical level.
  140.  
  141.  
  142. When she was thirteen, her mother had been entertaining a particularly well-off lawyer, a disgusting and perverted little fat man. Elle wouldn’t say much about him, but it didn’t need to be said, and was nobody's business but hers and his, and he was burried in a well thought out 8-foot grave out in the woods by Elle.
  143.  
  144.  
  145. She was damaged goods alright, and Curtis was fascinated by her, inexplicably drawn into her tragic, dark little world, a world completely unlike the one Curtis had always known. He had good parents, lived in a good Massachusetts neighborhood. His parents were rich, and after the summer was over he would be going to an exquisite private college in nearby Arkham, the same that his brother had attended.
  146.  
  147.  
  148. He thought about his brother and smiled. Curtis was the only one in the family that Phil had admitted his sexual proclivities to, something he would never tell their parents, decent people, but shallow, and very concerned about keeping up appearances. He was going to stay with Phil and Howard next week…Howard…he was even stranger than Phil…
  149.  
  150.  
  151.  
  152. Howard Ward pushed a shopping cart through the supermarket, whistling a song from a Sondheim musical to himself, showing no concern that he was doing so loudly enough to be heard all the way up and down the aisle. He was tall, about 6’8, skinny and pale, with neck length black and pink-streaked hair that lair mostly straight, except for the occasional patch of tangles. The shopping cart was filled with frozen pizzas, ham, salami, pastrami, condiments, potato chips, canned chili, beans, and lots of alcohol: Rum, whiskey, wine, gin, and vodka, all of the best brands, except for the vodka, which was rotgut. He had completed his mission, and there was now enough sustenance to maintain Phil and himself until next week. Satisfied with himself, he wheeled up to the checkout, paid, and was on his way.
  153.  
  154.  
  155. On the way back to the house he stopped at his favorite Gas Station to buy cigarettes: a carton of Marlboro Blend No. 27.
  156.  
  157.  
  158. Howard was heterosexual, twenty-eight years old, and lived with his best friend, who was a homosexual. He didn’t have the same bad luck at relationships as his friend, but attributed that to the wider availability of heterosexual women than that of homosexual men, plus, he didn’t have the same serious cynical bleakly humorous vibe that Philip had. No, Howard gave off a vibe of danger, insanity, absurdity, and cosmic babbling incoherence. He had a weird spark in his eyes that seemed to speak to women, saying:
  159.  
  160.  
  161. “Hey baby, you wanna come with me? I’m gonna blow up the universe.”
  162.  
  163.  
  164. And as a matter of fact, he had used this pickup line in reality several times, to surprisingly good effect.
  165.  
  166.  
  167. At the time, he was dating a college girl, a friend of the recently deceased nineteen year young physics major.
  168.  
  169.  
  170. He sat in the car and lit the last of the cigarettes from his previous carton, took a long satisfying drag, and exhaled. They were going to have pizza for dinner tonight, then get stoned and watch silent films. Silent films were Philips’s sort of passion. Howard’s was Stephen Sondheim musicals.
  171.  
  172.  
  173. He drove home, looking forward to a perfect evening.
  174.  
  175.  
  176.  
  177. “There’s no such things as a perfect…a perfect anything!”
  178.  
  179.  
  180. Lavinia was a little frightened by Jodie’s sudden, desperately angry outburst. They had just been discussing the nice boy, practically perfect, that she thought she could hook Jodie up with, but she clearly wasn’t interested at that time.
  181.  
  182.  
  183. Lavinia didn’t know quite what to say. She pushed her chair away from the diner table and looked at Jodie, not hurt, but almost sympathetic, then she walked off to watch television.
  184.  
  185.  
  186. Jodie sat alone, poking a bowl of mediocre spaghetti with her fork. It wasn’t even a very good fork.
  187.  
  188.  
  189. Several blocks away, Elle Dritch sat cross legged on her bed, a bag of microwave popcorn in her lap, watching an old movie on television about an angry jury. She didn’t like it very much, but it was better than the rest of the crap. She didn’t care either way, she just didn’t want to hear her mother talking to her latest asshole boyfriend.
  190.  
  191.  
  192. Curtis wouldn’t have known how to react to the fact that she wasn’t thinking about him.
  193.  
  194.  
  195.  
  196. 2342 Starkey Street, New Dunnwich Massachusetts, right across the street from the house Jodie Wynmacher rented with her friend Lavinia. They were the last two houses on that road, and the nearest neighbors were several house-lengths away. Quiet, secluded, pleasant. It was inhabited by the Cariou family: Father Benjamin, Mother Angela, seventeen year old Francis, and baby makes four. Benjamin loved his wife and children, and worked hard five days a week as the Human Resources manager at the New Dunnwitch Glue Factory to support them.
  197.  
  198.  
  199. They were a lovely family who loved America, puppy dogs, little children, fluffy animals, and the Baby Jesus.
  200.  
  201.  
  202. Benjamin Cariou was in his study, trying to fix the VCR when he heard it. The VCR was stuck in an auto-replay loop, and ever since Francis had brought that old videotape of Taxi Driver home the other night it wouldn’t eject the tape, it just played, rewound th tape, and started all over again, an endless loop of Travis Bickle, and Mr. Cariou, as much as he admired the film, was getting tired of it. He had tried unplugging and plugging back in the VCR, but that didn’t do any good, it looked to be a mechanical problem. He was just about to give up on it, since nobody really watched the old videotapes anymore.
  203.  
  204.  
  205. Then the doorbell rang.
  206.  
  207.  
  208. “Honey, could you get that?” he called out to his wife, who was in the living room by the door.
  209.  
  210.  
  211. She got up and walked fifteen steps to the front door, opened it, and saw Bob.
  212.  
  213.  
  214. She barely ahd time to scream before he brabber her hair and pulled her, fast, towards his gaping maw and sunk his bloodstained teeth into her cheek-meat, tearing out a great soft chunk of the fleshy-fatty tissue.
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