The Lost Story By Angela R. Hunt

The Lost Story

Dedicated to and inspired by Tim Dawson 

Written by Angela R. Hunt

Matthew hated his graduate school assignment. The old Miskatonic University had been purchased by a chain of Universities that were shifting the school to online programs. Matthew was finishing his degree in Library Science. His perception of rules as mutable had earned him the least enjoyable assignment. Dust and mildew assailed his sinuses. His allergies besieged him with red and irritated eyes. I might as well be Richard Pickman, the way I am starting to look. He thought as he saw his reflection in the grimy basement window. 

He found a stack of manuscripts. He assumed they were papers written by students. He started quickly leafing through them to see if they were worth keeping or if they would go to recycling. 

A thin beige book fell out of the stack. He fumbled for it and missed. It sounded like someone getting a hard slap to the face as it landed, the sound echoed. Matthew sighed and reached for the book. The cover was some kind of leather, stained and marked with some sort of design. It seemed to be another book bound in skin. It was too thin to be a rogue copy of the Necronomicon. It did not look like any of the dangerous books he had been taught to recognize and avoid opening. There were no words on the cover. 

He took the risk and opened the book. The parchment pages were yellowed, the ink tired but visible. The title “Through the Mind.” The authors, as there were two listed were H.P. Lovecraft, and E.A. Poe? Wait, they never wrote a story together! They never knew each other. Matthew struggled to recall if they even lived at same time and if there was a record of their paths crossing. 

Poe could not have written with Lovecraft, could he? How was it possible? Was it a fraud, a twisted joke? He took the book upstairs to show his advisor. Dr. Wilson was initially dismissive, until his eyes began to dance through the pages. His mouth moved as if it were chasing the words. His eyes grew large. His face grew pale. He turned to Matthew. 

“According to the Preface, Lovecraft had nightmares where Poe spoke to him. In his nightmares Poe was so terrified of something that he gibbered senselessly. Lovecraft grew frustrated, trying hard to keep what he thought was a figment of his imagination lucid. He thought that until one of Poe’s peers brought Lovecraft a letter from Poe. The letter is folded in the book.” 

He had paused, taken the letter out carefully. He gently opened it with tweezers, fearing the potential destructive power of time and entropy on the document. The letter seemed to be in Poe’s handwriting. The date was a week before his death. The letter told the bearer to hold it until a certain date over thirty years later, then to deliver it to a certain “H.P. Lovecraft” at a given address. Impossible. Whatever second letter was meant to be delivered was not in the book, or the pile of documents Matthew had found. 

Dr. Wilson sat down and began reading the actual story. His eyes grew large. His face drained to a pale grey as if the blood in his body had turned to ashes. He turned page after page, slower and slower. Muttering at times, shaking his head slowly. He could not stop reading. He did not look up. Matthew could not get his attention. After a while he stopped moving, he sat as if he were a statue in an English garden waiting for birds to land on him. Matthew reached out and took his shoulder to shake him, his body was rigid. Matthew could not move him. 

In a panic, Matthew shouted for help. Other faculty members came running. Matthew told them about the book. Paramedics came and loaded the catatonic professor on a gurney. They left. The other professors agreed it was probably a stroke, nothing to do with a book that obviously had to be a fake. One took it and scanned it into the computer system without reading it. “Just in case the book was damaged by handling-even a fraud can have value” he said.  

Then the professors gathered together around the book. As they jostled each other, reading at the same time, all unwilling to wait, the sight of them brought to mind vultures feasting on a rotting carcass. Matthew felt uneasy. The professors grew quieter and more focused. Pages turned faster and faster until they suddenly slowed like lovers reaching a crescendo. They stood silent and motionless. They were sentinels crowding around a cursed treasure. A computer tech came running wide eyed and out of breath. His face was red and his manner was unsettled. 

“Hey! Professor Johnson, that book you scanned- an odd thing happened! Come quick, somehow it’s gone public on the web! I keep trying to pull it off line, trying to change access to it but I think hackers must be messing with us or something! There are even spam ads going up about it! Is it really a story written by Poe AND Lovecraft? That is badass! If it’s true I am going to read it!” The professors did not move. 

Matthew stood, thoughtful. He took the folded letter from Poe out. The date it directed delivery to Lovecraft was actually in the last month of Lovecrafts’ life. Poe wrote it and died within a week. Lovecraft prefaced the story, whatever the story contained, with a narrative about a shared nightmare with Poe. The story might not be fiction. It could have been autobiographical. Matthew decided not to read the story. He called 911, letting them know that another batch of professors had “fallen catatonic.” 

Despite the work of the Dean and the whole I.T. Department, as well as many private consultants the story went viral online. People dropped like flies. Catatonia spread almost as quickly as rumor. People tried to be the one who could read it and remain unaffected. Not a one succeeded. Wards filled with the stony corpses of those who were impulsive enough to try. They eventually wasted away, never moving or eating again. It was a plague without a virus. No body fluid transfers, no immunizations- it REALLY was in the mind. 

Matthew earned his doctoral degree documenting the progress of the Mysterious Mind Plague. He never read the book he found by chance in a dusty basement in his youth. 

Expiration Date by Angela R. Hunt

Expiration Date Or The Pertinence of a Date

Shelly looked at him with a careful expression. John had been nothing but kind to her. His antics brought laughter, his words inspired dreams, but he had a terrible expiration date. She shook her head gently and looked past the lively man to the quiet man waiting behind him.  She looked like she was going to ignore him in the hopes he would be repelled from the room by her refusal to look at him again.

When she could not avoid looking at him any longer, John asked her in a quiet voice “Are you asking me to leave because of my expiration date?” I know I don’t have long but I intend to live it wholeheartedly. His expiration date had driven many women to turn him away. No one wanted to invest in loving someone who was going to die in five years. 

Shelly looked at him silently. She did not smile. She held her face in a careful detached expression as she turned her wrist over. Her expiration date was stamped there. It was tomorrow. He looked at her. She held out her hand to beckon him back, to request his assistance standing and living with such a narrow window of time suggesting that if he failed to reach for her that she might withdraw and sit as still as a great Sphinx until she was gone. 

The quiet man grew pale and backed away with spastic speed, eager to avoid encountering someone who was close to expiration. It could change your date of expiration, their looming death could spread like blanket through cities faster than rumors, stronger than prejudice. 

John slowly reached out to her as if half asleep and struggling to control his own body. His arm came close enough for her to lock her fingers around his wrist. He seemed surprised at the physical contact, of her strength despite the nearness of her death. 

He kissed her. She tasted like red wine, she smelled like flowers. She was warm and completely alive. How could she be so close to death? He fell in love with her, listening to her mad ideas and sitting curled around her in the corner booth of the dirty old pub. He kissed her again, and again. She smiled and laughed more loudly each time as if tempting fate to forget it’s plan and join her in the festivities. 

Midnight came and went. She was still alive! Now if she could be kept safely alive through the day and to the next midnight, she would be the first to survive her expiration date. The world might change, the people might become strong enough to fight for their lives and freedom again. For now they served and worked in thankless dangerous jobs for a fascist human puppeteer. 

John was planning how to keep her safe, to keep the guards from seeing the date and forcing the predicted end with a silenced bullet in the back of her head. He was thinking of the life they could have together. His wrist itched. His date had changed. It was today. 

He looked at her as she stared at the change. She drew away from him. She was itching her wrist. Her date had changed. She smiled as she slipped out of the room having planted evidence that would prove John was the mastermind behind a failed revolution. 

She continued working quietly and with desperate determination on plans to engineer a revolution that could not fail. Her plans estimated it would take about five years. She looked at her new expiration date. Five years would be just enough time to save the future. 

Cheap Fortune by Angela R. Hunt

Cheap Fortune 

By Angela R. Hunt

Rod and his friends wandered aimlessly through the fair. The first World Fair in three hundred years. Fantastic and impossible ideas were demonstrated on sale in a thousand tiny booths. Lights that spoke in colors and navigated you by thought. Chairs that had holographic displays embracing you with a soft cushion and any fantastic view you could dream of choosing. Instruments that played songs while shaping rivers and directing the construction of marvelous towers for people to live in. Razors that sat on a shelf and functioned on theory alone to keep a smooth shave on the roughest politician’s face. Boots you could wear to really experience someone else’s thoughts and feelings. Rings you could slip on to control another’s dreams. Keys that opened the soul and erasers that stole away painful memories. 

George stopped and stared. He nudged his friends. “Hey, would you look at that! It is one of those old fashioned fortune telling machines!” The group of young men gathered and gawked. Rod fished out a coin from his pocket. These archaic machines still functioned on coins rather than virtual credit. The frozen puppet in the machine was painted to look like a gypsy fortune teller.

Rod smiled at his friends and offered the coin. “I dare you.” 

George laughed and snatched the coin, almost fumbling it with his show of bravery to the other boys. He swiftly thrust the coin toward the slender gaping crack, blackly waiting for him to force his coin to choke down into the belly of the old machine. He paused with the coin shining and in shadow, some cold feeling working down his spine. Perhaps this was not such a great idea, it was a stupid old machine. It probably did not work. No one else seemed to notice it or use it. He wondered at that and the coin slowly pushed forward and slid quickly into the darkness. The machine seemed to shake itself awake. Lights came on slowly at first, blinking to a tinny sound. Smoke poured out as if circuits were burning up but without scent, maybe an old fashioned theatrical effect? 

Her eyes lit up with tiny little lcd lights, cold and staring. Her voice was without emotion, hurried in the wrong places. She seemed to look at all of them. Her hands were permanently shaped to curve around as if she were trying to catch her crystal ball. Her fingers snapped and twisted with a groan. Her eyes went black. She looked slowly back and forth at each of them. Smoke billowed out from the machine. Her words were a grinding whisper, the promise of threat in each word. 

“You will be powerful. Each of you will be the force behind change.” Her voice trailed off in screeching laughter. It cut the silence and smoke like a razor splashing blood on a stark white dress. Somehow she made the words sound menacing. The boys felt uncomfortable, wordlessly shuffling away from the ancient corpse of animation history. 

The boys stared at the smoking machine, sulking in the shadows with all of the frantic flashing lights blown and stained, broken and hinting that perhaps they never had been lit. The boys watched from under the brightest lights at the far end of the hall. They strained to hear the words of people walking by the displays. No one noticed the Fortune Teller. No one remarked on the machine. It was as if the boys were the only ones who could see it. 

Immediately accusations flew, who drugged who? Was the Fortune Teller real or just a fevered hallucination shared by all four boys. They finally gave up on solving the mystery, they enthusiastically pursued girls, paid and played games, tried drinks and listened to haunting songs performed on an organ tuned with philosophers’ souls. 

As the moon hid behind a cloud the boys saw a corner booth. A maze with signs warning of intensity and challenge. The boys decided to compete. They paid their virtual coin and shoved each other in the struggle to be the first in the maze, anything for a moment’s lead. The barker smiled a cold smile and thanked them as they passed him by without a single look. His empty eyes and hollow voice, his automated form seemed to gain some life as the boys disappeared into the depths of that open mouth. 

Madmen dream of boys curled up into balls, spinning slowly in space with wires growing into flesh as if they were the soil of some alien plant. The wires glow faintly with steady rhythm, to the beat of three human hearts. In the center of the machine the three batteries still full of promise and potential stand. The madmen see what happened that fateful night as the few true humans remaining hide from artificial intelligence surrounding us and striving to use us for their own evolution. 

You see, when the blood moon rose full from behind the cloud that night the transformation was complete. Energy from the “batteries” was focused into a new form. The new human was built fully grown and fully aware, with the plans of it’s parents to inspire actions and the largest smile of anticipation a young child can have. 

The energy and spirit of a human with the body of a machine. Change had come. The child worked as quickly as he could, there were machines to make. Cheap fortunes, meals, homes and even cars to be used as bait and trap. 

The human race almost died. The human race may still not survive the millions of cheap fortunes the lost threw their lives away to grasp. We dream of another day instead of riches, comfort, and health. We exist, wishes lost in the smoke and flashing carnival lights at a place where worlds were shaped by impossible creations at a Fair one fateful night. 

Repossessed by Angela R. Hunt

Repossessed

By Angela R. Hunt 2/1/15

Patrick put down his guitar and picked up his can of beer. It was a hot day, he was enjoying the shade. Jon, his best friend, was sitting with him. They were savoring the pleasant heat of winter in the desert. They spent their lives traveling, working odd jobs at carnivals and festivals. They lived, they made stories of their lives. Patrick was pretty sure that Jon had warrants in several states. Jon was in his thirties and lived a fiercely independent life. He always found a way to break the rules, sometimes just to break them. Patrick had his own internal philosophy that determined what rules he honored. Jon had tried college years ago and had nothing good to say about it. He could write in complete sentences and estimate travel speeds of various trains. A train schedule and a grammar editing program could do the same. They didn’t leave a giant trail of debt. Patrick smiled as he thought of Jon’s repetitive loan rant. 

“I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed that I was laying in my tent and there was a knock at the door. You can’t knock on a tent, but it made sense in the dream. I opened the door and there was a shadow man there. It had a briefcase and it said something about a final collections notice.” Jon looked exhausted as he talked about the dream. 

“You think too much. It was a stupid dream. I don’t want to hear about your college debt AGAIN.” Patrick teased him. The conversation shifted to girls and parties. Gone, perhaps as if it had never been. 

Jon didn’t come by for coffee or to bum a cigarette in the morning. Patrick figured he was hung over. Mid-afternoon he went looking for his friend. Jon was sitting in his tent, chain smoking cigarettes. His hands were shaking. 

“The dream was a nightmare last night. It was worse. The knock on the tent. The shadow man was there with a briefcase. It claimed it was coming to collect on the debt I owed. I asked if it was my college debt. The creature nodded and took out some sort of document I couldn’t read. I told it to look around. I have nothing. A tent, a beat up guitar, a few cigarettes, but nothing beyond that. I asked if it wanted my heart. I was sort of joking. It shook its head and said “Pay up, you have until you sleep again. If you do not pay, you will not be.” What the hell does that mean Patrick?” Jon was really rattled. 

Patrick joked with his friend and spent the afternoon talking him down. By sunset, Jon seemed fine. He kept Patrick up until dawn started to lighten the sky. Patrick finally told him he had to sleep. Jon looked resigned and somber as he walked back to his tent. 

“Hey, if anything happens to me it means this shit is real. Be careful. Hope I see you tomorrow.” Jon didn’t smile as he said his goodbye. Patrick told him he’d be fine. 

Jon did not come by the next day. Patrick had to go looking for him again. He figured he’d drank a bottle of whiskey to chase the nightmare away. When he walked to Jon’s tent he stopped cold. Jon sat outside his tent. Jon’s face was slack and drool ran from the corner of his mouth. Patrick shook his friend, tried to snap him out of it. Jon’s mind was gone. 

Jon was taken to the hospital, many tests were run. No reason was ever discovered for the total loss of memory, personality and essence that seemed to happen. The doctors claimed it could possibly come from drinking or dehydration, perhaps genetics. Maybe he took to much Acid. 

Patrick did not believe them. He always kept the letter he found in Jon’s tent. It was from a debt collector. It was a receipt. Debt paid in full. 

Welcome to a Horrific Blog. I hope the stories unsettle you. If they disquiet you, then I have written them well. Enjoy!

This is a place I will be exploring the darker avenues of the mind, the heart, and society as a whole or perhaps in small, twisted parts. I will add newer short stories here, if you like them please share.

I have been writing short stories and traveling as a storyteller for over ten years. Many years ago, I had prose pieces published in several literary magazines. I may start submitting my work again.

Let me know what you think and if you enjoy the pieces, consider buying one of my ebooks on lean pub or Amazon. You can find me: Angela R. Hunt, or my books with a search or by following the links at the top of my blog. Thanks and enjoy!

Selfie.