****!MISCHIEVOUS MISCELLANY!****

A Bleak, Well Haunted House

by Gary W. Wright

        It was late and everyone had left the old and abandoned house on the corner of Bristol and Church except the young man.  The ghost had not appeared and his fellow University of Toronto-Mississauga students had decided to drain their beer bottles and leave, despite his disappointed and even berating attempts to persuade them to stay.

        “Well, I’m staying”, he said in frustrated annoyance as they passed out the front door and vanished into the night.  “All creepy old houses have a ghost, and if they don’t, they should!”

        With that he slammed the door and locked it.  Then he half stumbled drunkenly back over to the living room wall and, turning, half slid and half fell down it to the floor until he sat with his back against the wall with his flashlight beaming straight into the darkness.

        Much later, he awoke with a start to find that his flashlight had gone out and a stygian dark had settled over the room and the house.  He clicked the flashlight on and off but it would not relight.  Sighing resignedly, he sat against the wall and allowed his eyes to adjust to the dark.

        Thump

        He sat up straighter, straining his ears.  Was that…?

        THUMP

        Yes, that was coming from the basement.  Perhaps the ghost had arrived!

        Clambering up off the floor and walking carefully in the dark towards the kitchen, his hands found the door in the wall that led to the stairwell to the basement.  Opening the door, a deep and gaping black maw yawned before him that his eyes still could not penetrate after a minute’s wait.  Sighing resignedly again, he found the railing with his left hand and, holding tightly to it, began to step slowly and cautiously down into the eldritch darkness.  Despite his caution, his left foot stepped into nothingness halfway down, as the lower half of the stairway had crumbled away, and he pitched forward and down with a despairing moan, his life flashing before his mental eyes, and then he smashed his head hard on the cold concrete of the basement floor in an explosion of mental lights, and was no more.

        The police found him later that morning in an already hardened pool of blood after his parents noticed that he had not come home.  As he was so young with a long life ahead of him, many mourners cried at his funeral.  Some thought it eerily fitting that when the reverend had finished speaking and a sad silence had settled on the cemetery, a crow cawed high in the wistfully whispering branches of a nearby pine tree.

        Some also said that for years afterward, the young man’s sad ghost appeared late at night in the front windows of the abandoned house.  Even after the house was demolished and replaced with a new two story model, his despondent ghost was still said to be seen in a second floor bedroom window, unbeknownst to the slumbering inhabitants.  For all houses should have a ghost, shouldn’t they?

Date Night

by Gary W. Wright

        It was a steamy summer night in Streetsville and our lips smacked wetly together.  He pulled back to regard me luvingly with his glowing red eyes and my own red eyes glowed luvingly back into his.  His pale but handsome face dropped down and our lips met again.

        Smack!

        He pulled back again and smiled at me.

        “Care for a bite, my luv?”

        “Indeed!”

        Keeping his strong right hand over the mouth and gently but firmly using his left to draw back the head and expose the neck of the frightened teenage boy that he had plucked from brightly lit Queen Street and into the dark shadows of Ladner Lane, I pressed my full and firm but cold and undead breasts against the teen’s chest and, feeling the rapid panicked beating of his heart, sank my teeth deep into his soft, warm, and deliciously gushing neck.

!Meet the Devil!

by Gary W. Wright

We were casual acquaintances who occasionally ran into each other at the Streetsville library and enjoyed a coffee and a chat at the Tim Horton’s “café” next door, he an ageless and devilishly handsome man always wearing a black fedora surmounting two long and pointed ears and shadowing black eyebrows arching over deep and intense black eyes, a long, white, aquiline nose, and a black moustache and goatee divided by full and bright red lips, me an old, gaunt, gruesome, and garrulous man always wearing a battered baseball cap.  One day he invited me back to his apartment and, having no reason to say no, I accepted the invitation.

Inside was a kitchenette to the left and a small hallway that led straight to a small living room, with a bookshelf along the wall to the right.  A thoughtful look revealed books on religion, particularly Christianity, cults, particularly satanism, and the occult.  Turning away from the bookshelf, I saw a macabrely amusing painting on the living room wall to the left.  Clearly painted on a mirror, it was of a headless figure of the Devil in traditional red garb holding a red pitchfork, and as I approached my own face was soon impishly reflected back at me in the empty mirrored surface above the shoulders of Satan, implying that I was St. Nick.

“Haw!” I laughed at my diabolical self.  “Did you paint this?”

“Yes”, he replied.  “Not that I couldn’t complete it, but I just wanted to have some fun.”

And with that he took off his black fedora for the first time in my presence, revealing an enviably thick head of black hair from which two small red horns protruded.

The Change

by Gary W. Wright

        I had just left the kitchenette and was walking back into the living room when the change came.  I immediately grabbed my head in both hands in agony and keeled over.

        “Nooooowwwllll!” I moaned in a gradually decreasing howl of pain.

        Falling to my knees as my entire body heaved and convulsed, muscles and bones writhing and twitching, veins bulging, skin pulling tightly and then loosely, teeth aching and changing, hair standing on electric end, heart racing, pulse pounding, I soon collapsed on the floor in a moaning and groaning foetal position, hands, arms, legs, and feet twitching and kicking spasmodically until the change finally, mercifully, ended, and I lay on the floor soaked in sweat, gasping and sobbing until my bounding heart and panting breath slowly returned to normal.

        At last stirring from a puddle of sweat, I painfully wobbled to my feet and stumbled to the bathroom.  Turning the taps to a warm temperature, I bent my face down and used my hands to wash my sweat streaked face and head with the soothing water.  With my head lowered and dripping into the sink, I reached without looking to my right and grabbed the towel hanging from the shower curtain bar.  Wiping and drying my face with the towel, I slowly looked up to the mirror and, to my distraught horror, into intense blue eyes over a pale, hair and fang free, and fully human face!

A Dream Called Life

by Gary W. Wright

        I opened the door and left the apartment.  The woman in 205 was leaving at the same time and turned to regard me with her three eyes.  I closed and locked the door, then climbed onto the red and white horse.  We trotted down the stairs, through the lobby, and out onto the street.  Rising into the air, we rode over Mississauga towards Toronto.  The CN Tower became larger and larger and taller and taller.  Riding to the top of the tower, I delivered the tree branch to an older man doing the EdgeWalk outside the observation deck.  A concerned look appeared on his face as he lowered his head to read the message, his fellow EdgeWalkers gathering around to read it with him.  Turning around, the red and white horse and I rode to Toronto Island.  Landing on the sandy southern beach facing Lake Ontario, an attractive young brunette woman in a black bikini sunbathing in the sand rose up on her elbows and asked “…Did you bring the picnic?”

        I woke up in my bed, and lay awhile with eyes closed slowly getting used to existence again.  When I felt ready to take on and take out the world, I resignedly threw the blankets off me, sat up, turned to the right, sat up on the side of the bed, put my feet into my waiting slippers, yawned and stretched.  Getting out of bed, I walked to the bathroom, flipped open the lid of the toilet, and urinated with some relief.  Finishing my ablutions, I made and ate my breakfast.  Gathering my things and putting on my baseball hat, coat, and shoes, I opened the door and left the apartment.  The woman in 205 was leaving at the same time and turned to regard me with her three eyes.  I closed and locked the door, then climbed onto the red and white horse.  We trotted down the stairs…

!FRAMED!

by Gary W. Wright

        I barely had time to push open the door to the stairwell to the left of my apartment door when there was a rustle and whirl of movement to my right, a black clad arm seen scything down out of the corner of my right eye, and something smashing into my head and

        I woke up lying on a hard floor with my head throbbing painfully.  Raising my right hand to the right side of my head, I gingerly touched a large bump and felt my pulse pounding underneath my fingers.  Dropping my hand, I lay on the floor as my head continued to throb away.  Then I slowly opened my eyes and found myself in complete darkness, an impenetrable darkness in which nothing emerged even after several minutes.

Puzzled, I slowly rose to my feet, each stage of the ascent causing my head to throb even more painfully.  Walking unsteadily forward with my right hand out and my head pounding, I soon came to a smooth wall.  Trailing my hand along it as I walked to the left, I soon came to a corner leading to another smooth bare wall.  Trailing my right hand along it as I continued walking to the left, I walked about eight feet until I came to another corner and another smooth bare wall.  I walked down this wall trailing my right hand along it for another eight feet before coming to another corner, and then trailed my right hand along this wall for another eight feet until I reached a corner that led back to the original wall I had first touched on my exploratory journey.

Suddenly a powerful light slammed into me like a freight train.  I cried out in agony, closing my eyes, lowering my head, raising a protective right forearm over my eyes, and turning away from the light all at once, my head pounding painfully.  As I did an unseen man roared with laughter.  The laughter sent a chill through me.  Suddenly everything seemed all too familiar, and I slowly dropped my forearm, raised my head, and opened my eyes. I found myself looking at myself from behind projected on a cinema screen, and I suddenly realized to my horror that I was not trapped in a square room.

I was trapped in a frame of film-forever!

"NOOOOOOOOO!" I screamed in terror as my projected self screamed and the unseen man laughed and laughed and laughed!

The Following

by Gary W. Wright

        Pushing open one of the heavy glass and steel front doors of TIFF after experiencing a film there recently, I stepped out into the covered entranceway and stopped for a while to adjust to the bright summer sunlight, take a sip from my water bottle, and ponder the bustling and noisy parade of pedestrians and vehicles walking, riding, and driving along King and John streets.  Finally screwing the plastic cap back on the bottle and putting it in my hip blue Wal-Mart bag, I stepped out on to the sidewalk and turned left, joining the teeming throng.  Pondering the expressionless faces of ghostly people of all backgrounds through my sunglass-style prescription glasses as I walked along King, I was soon at the intersection of King and John.  Taking another sip from my water bottle as I waited for the light to change and replacing the cap again, I soon crossed John, walking near or over the large pit covered now by asphalt roads where lay hundreds of mouldering skeletons of starving Irish men, women, and children who had died on their journey or shortly after their arrival in the last of the Great Famine years, tossed there by overwhelmed authorities at a time when the intersection was far from the rest of the new and growing city of Toronto, and no doubt moaning in heartbroken and lonely despair deep in the dark of night.

        After crossing John, I continued along crowded King, walking past the popular Starbuck’s that once was a popular Tim Horton’s and then past the colourful one sheets and exiting matinee audience outside the Princess of Wales Theatre, no doubt haunted by the ghosts of performances past.  Crossing Duncan Street, I immediately heard the sound of footsteps behind me as I ambled towards the colourful one sheets and exiting matinee audience outside the Royal Alexandra Theatre, definitely haunted by phantoms of performances past.  As it was a familiar sound while out walking, I paid the footsteps no heed.  In the back of my mind, however, I noticed that these footsteps stopped quietly behind me as I too stopped at sturdy Simcoe Street for another light.  I also noticed that the footsteps immediately began again as I walked across the intersection and became louder as I walked toward University Avenue.  As another red light awaited at the wide avenue filled with many vehicles and cyclists, I stopped again at this intersection and slightly turned my head to the left, curious to see who was following me.  But the louder footsteps stopped yet again right behind me, so I turned my head and looked behind to see who was standing there.

        But there was no one there.

        Staring for some seconds in confused amazement, I slowly turned back to University Avenue, wondering where the pedestrian had disappeared to and how they could possibly have disappeared so quickly.  Shortly after, the white pedestrian signal appeared, and I stepped forward to cross the wide avenue.  Soon after, the footfalls began again, and I whirled around.  The footsteps immediately stopped and, while two expressionless female pedestrians walked by on either side of me, there was no one behind me.

        No one at all.

        Frowning in even greater annoyance and confusion than before, I turned and hurried across the wide avenue, the footsteps immediately beginning again and following me across the intersection.  Reaching the other side, I whirled around again and as I did the footsteps immediately stopped again, and still there was no one behind me.  Staring in baffled dismay, I turned around and walked down King towards York Street, wondering what was going on.  As I did, the footfalls began again, becoming slowly louder and deeper as they did, like a foot pedal pounding a bass drum on a drum kit, bam, bam, bam, bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam.  I whirled around in exasperation shortly before York to look behind me yet again, and yet again the footsteps immediately stopped, and yet again there was no one behind me.

        No one!

        Crossing with the green light at York, I turned to my right to wait impatiently for the light to change so that I could cross King and head down York to Union Station and the green and white rush hour Go Train that would take me back to Streetsville.  As I did the footsteps not only began again, but became louder and louder and louder, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM. 

        Crossing King at the green light and continuing down crowded York, the footfalls immediately began again and became even louder and louder and deeper and deeper with every step I took, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!  It was like my head was stuck in a kettle drum on which a gleefully grinning and diabolic devil indeed was pounding with monotonous and maniacal precision.

It’s like I’m trapped in “The Tell-Tale Heart” or a crazy Screamin’ Stephen King story! I thought wildly.  What is going on?

        Halfway down the block, I whirled around in increasing alarm and despair as the footsteps ceased once more and my distraught eyes beheld no one behind me once again.  Moaning in despair and stumbling across Wellington at a green light in a bustle of pedestrians, I headed towards Front Street, the footsteps following me and becoming louder Louder LOUDER until the whole world shook to the thunderous and deafening quake of gigantic feet as if a gigantic invisible monster was closing in on me BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM! 

I moaned, groaned, mewled, screamed, and fell in a dazed heap at York and Front, unable to take the thunderous cacophony any longer.  Immediately the footfalls stopped, and an equally thunderous and eerie silence rent the world, mingled with an ominous sense that something huge and unnatural was standing behind me.  I lay sobbing and whimpering on the sidewalk for some time, sympathetically ignored by passersby.  After a time, I slowly and unsteadily rose to my feet.  As I did, my rising head peered into the right windows of a taxi waiting at the red at Front and York, allowing me to see that there was nothing behind me, only my wide, bright, feverish, and deranged eyes.