Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories by Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, Mercedes M. Yardley, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, Kevin Lucia
Authors: Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, Mercedes M. Yardley, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, Kevin Lucia
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stares, unflinching, at the twisted thing her brothers have become. The great beast eats her little sister more slowly, and, it seems to her, with more relish and pleasure than it had eaten her; but then, her little sister had always been its favorite.
The witch removes her white robes, revealing a body no less white, with high, small breasts, and nipples so dark they are almost black. The witch lies back upon the grass, spreads her legs. Beneath her body, the grass becomes rimed with frost.
“Now,” she says.
The lion licks her white cleft with its pink tongue, until she can take no more of it, and she pulls its huge mouth to hers, and wraps her icy legs into its golden fur. . . .
Being dead, the eyes in the head on the grass cannot look away.
Being dead, they miss nothing.
And when the two of them are done, sweaty and sticky and sated, only then does the lion amble over to the head on the grass and devour it in its huge mouth, crunching her skull in its powerful jaws, and it is then, only then, that she wakes.
Her heart is pounding. She tries to wake her boyfriend, but he snores and grunts and will not be roused.
It’s true, Greta thinks, irrationally, in the darkness. She grew up. She carried on. She didn’t die.
She imagines the professor, waking in the night and listening to the noises coming from the old applewood wardrobe in the corner: to the rustlings of all these gliding ghosts, which might be mistaken for the scurries of mice or rats, to the padding of enormous velvet paws, and the distant, dangerous music of a hunting horn.
She knows she is being ridiculous, although she will not be surprised when she reads of the professor’s demise. Death comes in the night, she thinks, before she returns to sleep. Like a lion.
The white witch rides naked on the lion’s golden back. Its muzzle is spotted with fresh, scarlet blood. Then the vast pinkness of its tongue wipes around its face, and once more it is perfectly clean.
DOMINION
Christopher Coake
Friday night they all camped by the lake, as planned, and then what happened with Mason happened, and the next day, Saturday, while the others hiked up a nearby ridge, Hannah lay alone in her tent, trying to think of a way out. She came up with nothing. Would anyone even believe her, if she told? Kyle was Mason’s older brother, and Beth was engaged to Kyle, and constantly stoned. Hannah was in the middle of the Nevada desert, a hundred miles from Reno, and her cell phone didn’t get coverage, and instead of figuring out any kind of plan, she kept falling back into telling herself how stupid she was, how she’d made all the dumb choices she’d spent her life trying not to make, and now what could she even do?
When the others came back from their hike, she rose, reluctantly, to meet them. Mason grabbed her around the waist and kissed her cheek, smelling of sweat and dust. Maybe Beth saw the dismay on her face.
Not feeling any better? Beth asked. Hannah had told them she was hung over.
Say it, say it, Hannah told herself. But instead her mouth opened and out came, I guess.
Kyle grinned. I told you to go easy on the booze, but did you listen?
She said nothing, and so she watched, sick at heart, as they went ahead with their plans. They packed their tents into the Jeep, and Kyle drove them down from the lake, then farther into the desert, toward the abandoned town, where they were going to explore and camp a second night, where Hannah would be even more alone.
In the back seat, Hannah curled around her backpack and pretended to sleep, her face to the window. Mason sat beside her, and she swore she could feel it every time his eyes landed on her, like fingers touching her, hands pressing her down.
***
She was younger than the others: seventeen, though she’d been told she looked—acted—older. Mason was nineteen; Kyle and Beth were twenty-five. The three of them worked together at a restaurant downtown, but Hannah figured they made a lot more money
The witch removes her white robes, revealing a body no less white, with high, small breasts, and nipples so dark they are almost black. The witch lies back upon the grass, spreads her legs. Beneath her body, the grass becomes rimed with frost.
“Now,” she says.
The lion licks her white cleft with its pink tongue, until she can take no more of it, and she pulls its huge mouth to hers, and wraps her icy legs into its golden fur. . . .
Being dead, the eyes in the head on the grass cannot look away.
Being dead, they miss nothing.
And when the two of them are done, sweaty and sticky and sated, only then does the lion amble over to the head on the grass and devour it in its huge mouth, crunching her skull in its powerful jaws, and it is then, only then, that she wakes.
Her heart is pounding. She tries to wake her boyfriend, but he snores and grunts and will not be roused.
It’s true, Greta thinks, irrationally, in the darkness. She grew up. She carried on. She didn’t die.
She imagines the professor, waking in the night and listening to the noises coming from the old applewood wardrobe in the corner: to the rustlings of all these gliding ghosts, which might be mistaken for the scurries of mice or rats, to the padding of enormous velvet paws, and the distant, dangerous music of a hunting horn.
She knows she is being ridiculous, although she will not be surprised when she reads of the professor’s demise. Death comes in the night, she thinks, before she returns to sleep. Like a lion.
The white witch rides naked on the lion’s golden back. Its muzzle is spotted with fresh, scarlet blood. Then the vast pinkness of its tongue wipes around its face, and once more it is perfectly clean.
DOMINION
Christopher Coake
Friday night they all camped by the lake, as planned, and then what happened with Mason happened, and the next day, Saturday, while the others hiked up a nearby ridge, Hannah lay alone in her tent, trying to think of a way out. She came up with nothing. Would anyone even believe her, if she told? Kyle was Mason’s older brother, and Beth was engaged to Kyle, and constantly stoned. Hannah was in the middle of the Nevada desert, a hundred miles from Reno, and her cell phone didn’t get coverage, and instead of figuring out any kind of plan, she kept falling back into telling herself how stupid she was, how she’d made all the dumb choices she’d spent her life trying not to make, and now what could she even do?
When the others came back from their hike, she rose, reluctantly, to meet them. Mason grabbed her around the waist and kissed her cheek, smelling of sweat and dust. Maybe Beth saw the dismay on her face.
Not feeling any better? Beth asked. Hannah had told them she was hung over.
Say it, say it, Hannah told herself. But instead her mouth opened and out came, I guess.
Kyle grinned. I told you to go easy on the booze, but did you listen?
She said nothing, and so she watched, sick at heart, as they went ahead with their plans. They packed their tents into the Jeep, and Kyle drove them down from the lake, then farther into the desert, toward the abandoned town, where they were going to explore and camp a second night, where Hannah would be even more alone.
In the back seat, Hannah curled around her backpack and pretended to sleep, her face to the window. Mason sat beside her, and she swore she could feel it every time his eyes landed on her, like fingers touching her, hands pressing her down.
***
She was younger than the others: seventeen, though she’d been told she looked—acted—older. Mason was nineteen; Kyle and Beth were twenty-five. The three of them worked together at a restaurant downtown, but Hannah figured they made a lot more money
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