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© 2008 by Larry Michael Garmon
All Rights Reserved.
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For comments, please e-mail MrCreepers@FearyTales.com
HELLo, my Fiends. I’m
so glad you have some
time to visit us here in
Junebug, Oklahoma
74666.
My dear fiends, the
Garmons, said you’d be
dropping by, and they
asked that I keep you
entertained for a while with a couple of stories
from my Feary Tales collection. I’m sure this first
squalid short story will shiver your spine and pimple
your skin with goose bumps. It’s a torrid tale about
a boorish boy who just wants to impress the other
lads of his neighborhood.
Do you think superstitions are, well,
superstitious? Do you laugh when someone throws
salt over his shoulder or crosses himself when a
black cat strays across his path?
All too often the skeptic learns all too late
that what is a silly superstition for one person is a
bona fide bone frightening certainty for someone
else.
Just ask Marvin the next time you see him:
He’ll tell you—a superstition thoughtlessly spoken is
no mere child’s play!
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Feary Tales—Vomit 1
A caveat, though, my dear Fiend: If you are
ever in Junebug and do happen to meander through
Marvin’s neighborhood, don’t disturb Marvin’s
mother! She’s still a little bent out of shape from
the foolishness of her dim-witted son.
Many a dramatic situation
begins with screaming.
“Y
ou’re a big fat li-err!” Nicholas stuck
out his tongue just after the final ‘er’ of liar and
spit out a long, wet raspberry. “That’s just a
stupid superstition.” He then sang, “Li-err, li-err,
3
pants on fi-err.”
“You’re stupid!” was the only retort that
swam up through the dense folds of Marvin’s
brain. “It is so!”
The other boys encircled Nicholas and
Marvin as the pair stood nearly nose-to-nose.
Nicholas’s freckles darkened against his pale
reddening face while Marvin’s hazel eyes
appeared more green than brown. Each was
determined to hold his ground, to prove his point,
to make the other fellow look foolish.
“Okay, prove it,” Nicholas challenged.
“I’ll p-p-p-prove it!” Marvin sputtered in
reply. The other boys laughed, Nicholas the
loudest among them. Marvin hated saying words
that began with the letter “p”. He had been to a
speech pathologist since the age of three but had
shown little improvement in the past seven
years. He also stuttered his Ds, Ts, and Bs,
which left few words that did not sound like a
scratched CD when he spoke them.
Marvin pushed Nicholas aside. “Com’on!
I’ll show ya!” He shoved his way through the
small circle of boys.
His house was two blocks away, and with
each step he kept his eyes on the concrete
sidewalk, careful not to step on any cracks,
whether caused by nature, roots or just old age,
4
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
including the smooth indentations cut into each
slab when the cement was first poured many,
many years ago.
All Marvin had ever wanted was to fit in
with the other boys of his neighborhood — after
all he was born and raised in Junebug,
Oklahoma, and he had known the other boys all
his life.
For some reason, however, Marvin just
never seem to fit in, especially after Nicholas had
moved into the neighborhood — Marvin’s
neighborhood.
On this particular summer morning,
Nicholas had impressed the other boys with a
magic card trick, and Marvin, feeling left out and
ignored once again, told all the boys that he
could do something special — something so
special that no other boy could do.
Perturbed that Marvin had gotten the
attention of the other boys, Nicholas challenged
Marvin to prove his wild boast.
The group arrived within a matter of
minutes.
As he knew she would be, Marvin’s
mother was working in the garden of the large
front yard, kneeling among chrysanthemums,
marigolds, and daisies, her wide-brimmed hat
shadowing her face with a greenish murky hue.
The garden sat at the top of the hill of the large
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front yard, which sloped at a sharp angle
towards the sidewalk.
The garden was his mother’s pride and
joy; she had spent more time ensuring the
flowers were well tended and cultivated than she
had in rearing Marvin during his ten short years.
Marvin’s mother looked up when she
heard the boys’ tennis shoes slapping the hot
pavement. “Hello, boys,” she called out, waving
slightly with her pruning shears. She then
quickly went back to caring for her flowers.
“Well? What are ya waiting for?” Nicholas
demanded.
“Wait a minute,” Marvin whispered
harshly, glancing quickly at his mother and then
back into the six pairs of disbelieving and
taunting eyes of his peers. He looked down and
scanned the sidewalk around him. His
neighborhood was old, and the neglected
sidewalk was creased like the cragged,
weathered face of an old man.
Not just any crack would do. Too small
and nothing would happen. Too large and death
would occur.
“Well?” Nicholas said, folding his arms.
The freckled-face boy looked around at the
others. “See? I told ya: he’s a li-err.”
Marvin pursed his lips, and his face
6
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
purpled. He jerked his head around, looking for
the perfect crack. Then he spied it: about onehalf inch in width, running in a zigzag diagonal
from one corner of the sidewalk slab to the other,
creating two concrete triangles.
Marvin took a deep breath and spoke. The
others had to lean forward to hear him clearly:
“Step on a crack and break your mother’s back.”
He was louder the second time: “Step on a
crack and break your mother’s back.”
He shouted the curse a third time: “STEP
ON A CRACK AND BREAK YOUR MOTHER’S BACK!”
He raised his right foot and stomped on
the crack, his tennis shoe smacking the hot
concrete with a plastic burp.
A high-pitched serrated scream sliced
through the air. The hair stood up on the back of
Marvin’s neck, and his skin went cold. Goose
bumps pimpled on his arms and legs. All the
boys spun around and stared at Marvin’s mother.
She lay prone on the neatly trimmed
grass. She tried pushing herself up, but her arms
were forced to her sides as though someone or
something had grasped her. She screamed again
as invisible hands raised her upwards into a
standing position. A slight, cool wind blew off her
wide brimmed gardening hat. The pruning
shears dropped from her hand.
She tried to turn her head to look at
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Marvin but could only manage to slant her eyes
to the side.
Marvin saw the fear and terror in his
mother’s eyes, and his skin crawled with the cold
stubble of blue fear at what he had done.
His mother mouthed a silent “No.”
She was suddenly snapped backwards
like a collapsing wooden folding chair so that the
back of her skull slammed against her calves.
The cracking and breaking of her spine at the
waist sounded like a large limb being splintered
from a tree. The rounded tips of her pelvic bone
ripped through her muscle and skin and looked
like two small icebergs on a fleshy, bloody sea.
She didn’t have time to scream a third
time as a ball of blood, mucous, and gore burst
from her mouth and splattered upon the
chrysanthemums, the marigolds, and the daisies.
Her eyes rolled backwards, and the irises
disappeared into her skull. Tiny exploding blood
vessels streaked the twin egg-white eye bulges
with rivulets of red.
Her jackknifed body wobbled and fell to
the ground. It slowly rolled down the yard’s
sharp incline, thumping side over side.
The boys parted as her jack-knifed body
tumbled onto the sidewalk, tittered back and
forth a couple of times, and then came to rest,
8
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
face and torso up. Her pink-tinged eyeballs
stared up blankly at them. Her mouth opened
and closed slowly – rasping, wet gurgles bubbled
out like moans of the damned while a trickle of
blood mingled with white frothy foam dribbled
from the corners.
“Cool,” said one of the smaller boys. Then
the other boys offered their congratulations and
slapped Marvin on the back or punched him
slightly in the shoulders.
Marvin crossed his arms and curled the
left corner of his pursed lips into a smile. He
raised one eyebrow at the freckled-faced boy.
“Pew!” Nicholas spit out. “Big deal.” He
smiled and said in a singsong taunt, “Marvin’s
mom is pa-pa-pa-ra-lyzed.” He laughed loudly
and then turned away. “Let’s go. This is boring.”
The other boys, who only moments earlier
had congratulated Marvin for his neat trick, now
laughed scornfully, pointing and making rude
gestures at Marvin’s jackknifed and broken
mother, and, with Nicholas in the lead, went
skipping and laughing down the old cracked
sidewalk.
THE END
9
A Little Too Much Salt
Well, not only did
Marvin’s mom make him
look foolish in front of
Nicholas and the other
boys, but now the garden
has gone all to pot as
well.
As punishment for
bobbing his mother
backwards, Marvin is to
tend to her beloved
garden. I don’t know which is the more pitiful site:
Marvin’s poor attempts at gardening or his bentout-of-shape mother laying next to her once-prized
garden rasping and wheezing curses at her son.
I wish my niece Evilla Satanya were here to
introduce the next tale.
There’s a funeral at 3:30 this afternoon,
and I last saw her skipping down the cracked
sidewalk towards Junebug Hallow Oak Cemetery,
probably to play a little game she calls ‘Hide and
Scream’. She invented the game herself.
You see, about an hour before a funeral,
Evilla buries herself in the mound of dirt of the
newly dug grave. Then, when the ceremony is about
halfway over, she pops up from the dirt screaming,
“Surprise!”
The last time she played it, two little old
ladies attending the funeral of their brother died
from fright.
That Evilla—she’s such a hoot, don’t you
think?
This next rancid story was actually written
10
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
by Evilla.
She was inspired after watching a National
Goragraphic Explorer cooking special on our local
PBS station—that’s Putrid Broadcasting System.
Seems the host of this National
Goragraphic show was the special dinner guest of a
tribe of Amazonian warriors who were thought to be
cannibalistic in the past.
Unfortunately for the host of the show,
the warriors were found to be cannibalistic in the
present as well!
A Little Too Much Salt
by
Evilla Satanya
I’d rather have a lobster in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
I
“
f I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a
thooouuusnd times not to put SALT in my food. I
can’t stand SALT in my food. It makes me choke!”
Don Ray Smith jabbed the fork into the
one-half inch thick, four-inch long, three-inch
wide slice of irregularly shaped oval piece of
11
A Little Too Much Salt
meat and flipped it over. The meat slapped the
black cast iron skillet with a smack. Droplets of
liquefied fat leaped up and then dived back down
onto the hot cast iron skillet.
“Dag-nab it!” Smith shouted as a few of
the hot greasy droplets landed on and scalded
the back of his fork-holding hand. “I’m going to
show you how to cook a dag-nab meal without
putting salt in every dag-nab thing!”
“Don Ray—”
Her voice was weak. She had been sitting
in the chair for over an hour, her wrists bound
with duct tape behind the back of the chair.
“Married fifteen dag-nab years and each
and every day of each and every year you put salt
in each and every dag-nab meal—even
breakfast!” He turned to Olga, pointing the folk
towards her, shaking it at her. “You trying to
poison me? You know what too much salt does to
your heart? Huh? It kills ya! It kills ya, dag-nab
it.” His eyes widened, and he stopped pointing
the folk at her. He put his hands on his hips.
“That’s it, isn’t? You trying to kill me, aren’t ya?”
He didn’t wait for her reply. He spun around to
face the stove again and jabbed the fork into the
sizzling meat, lifted the meat, turned it over
again. “Yeah, that’s it. I thought so. Trying to
dag-nab kill me. WITCH!”
“Don Ray—”
12
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
Olga’s hands and arms were numb from
the tight duct tape bonds around her wrists. She
had stopped struggling against the tape some
time ago, especially when she stopped having
any feeling in her hands, wrists, and arms. Her
mouth was dry, not from lack of water, but from
the screaming and then from the spastic panting
after the screaming had stopped. Her neck was
stiff from being held in one position for too long.
She had held her head in the same
position for the past hour: she had held it in
place herself. Held erect and straight, sweaty
and dirty face towards the opposite wall, wide
round wet eyes staring at the same spot for sixty
minutes. Eyes fixed on a little patch of
wallpaper. Wallpaper she had hung fifteen years
earlier when she had traveled from Russia to
come to America. When she had come to
Oklahoma. Had come to Junebug. To marry Don
Ray. Eggshell white wallpaper with light images
of roses and vines. Red roses. Blood red roses.
“Fifteen dag-nab years!” Smith grabbed
the small pepper can next to the stove, flipped up
the plastic lid and cascaded pepper on top of the
meat. “PEPPER! That’s what I like! Lots of
pepper.” He continued jerking the pepper can up
and down, flecks of black and gray and white
pepper particles diving towards the meat, the
pan, the top of the stove; pepper dust dancing
13
A Little Too Much Salt
and swirling in the air. Smith sneezed loud and
hard. “Dag-nab it!” He set the pepper can back on
the countertop.
A small cloud of pepper dust was caught
by the slowly revolving ceiling fan and glided
towards Olga like a slow cloud on a slow Junebug
day. The pepper cloud hovered over her head,
and then gently nestled into her blonde hair and
onto her dirty sweaty face. The edges of her
nostrils tickled with pepper dust. Her eyes
watered. She twitched her nose. She didn’t want
to sneeze. She didn’t want to move her head. She
didn’t want to look down.
She held her breath. The moment passed.
Smith jabbed the meat with the fork and
then slapped it onto a chipped china plate. He
turned off the burners. He grabbed a large spoon
and jabbed it first into the small pot of boiling
creamed corn, dumped those onto the plate, and
then into the small pot of boiling green beans,
dumped those onto the plate; the liquid from
both vegetables flooded the plate and mixed with
the grease and the blood that oozed from the
medium well-done oval piece of meat.
Smith smiled, lifted the plate, and spun
around. He held the plate chest high, tilted his
head, and breathed in the hot greasy aroma,
hard and deep. His eyes watered from the greasy
steam coming off the meat and the vegetables.
14
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
“Ahhhhhh,” he said softly. “Now this is a
meal I’m going to enjoy.” He looked at Olga.
“Without salt!”
He moved to the table quickly and sat the
plate in his spot, just across from Olga. He
looked at his wife with a slight smile. Then he
frowned.
“Why you twitching your dag-nab nose?
My cooking smells better that any of that salted
crap you’ve fed me for fifteen years!”
He darted to the refrigerator, opened it
quickly, and grabbed the half-empty bottle of
Heinz-57 Catsup and the half-spent loaf of
Wonder Bread. He grabbed a can of Coca-Cola.
He spun around, kicked the fridge door shut with
the heel of his work boot, and announced, “And
I’m gonna have a dag-nab Coke with my meal,
too! None of that hoity-toity hot tea you’ve been
making me swallow. What do you think of that,
Witch?”
He dashed to the table without waiting for
Olga to answer—knowing that Olga would not
answer, smiling that Olga could not answer—
and sat down the catsup, the bread, and the
Coca-Cola. Then he sat himself down.
He bowed his head and mumbled the
blessing.
“Finally,” he said, raising his head. He
grabbed the folded cloth napkin from beside the
15
A Little Too Much Salt
chipped china plate, flicked it opened, and then
tucked one corner into the top of his soiled A teeshirt. He grabbed the peppershaker from the
center of the table, next to the saltshaker.
He stopped. He stared at the saltshaker.
He glowered. He batted the saltshaker with the
back of his hand, sent the saltshaker across the
room where it shattered against the wall, white
salt crystals and clear glass shards falling to the
wood floor. “No more salt!” He glared at Olga.
Then he frowned. “Why the blazes you twitching
your nose?”
Olga sneezed. A sneeze that had been
repressed for several minutes. A sneeze that was
loud and wet and violent, sending nostril and
mouth spray all over the table, all over the just
cooked meal, and all over Don Ray.
The sneeze was so violent that it slammed
Olga’s eyelids shut and jerked her head
downward. She moaned as her stiffened neck
muscles tried to resist the force. Her neck
muscles jerked against the strain, and she felt as
though her tongue was being yanked down her
throat.
“Dag-nab it!” Don Ray widened his eyes,
tittered his head from side to side, and squealed,
“Bles—suuu!” He wiped his face with the cloth
napkin.
When Olga opened her eyes, she realized
16
Feary Tales—Vomit 1
she was looking down at the top of her right leg.
She saw the bloody gouge where skin and
flesh had once been—an irregularly shaped
hollow cut about one-half inch deep, four inches
long, three inches wide. She gasped, but no air
entered her lungs. The staccato panicked panting
started again. Her eyes widened and then
watered.
“Oh, dag-nab it!” Smith whined. “It’s not
that bad.” He stood and leaned over the table to
look at the wound. “I didn’t cut no major arteries,
and look: it’s already fixing itself.”
Olga wanted to take her eyes away from
her right thigh, from the gaping wound, but her
taut neck muscles locked her head into a
downward position. The blood had started to
congeal: black and maroon crusts of hardened
blood crested on the edges of the hacked skin and
flesh and were slowly creeping towards the
center, to seal the wound, to scab it over.
Smith sat and tucked in the cloth napkin.
He picked up his folk with his left hand and his
knife with his right hand. He jabbed the folk into
the seared meat and then sliced off the end of the
flesh. He put his knife down and switched hands
with the folk. He held the piece of flesh in front
of him, smiling. He looked at Olga across the top
edge of the sliced meat. Her head was still
bowed.
17
A Little Too Much Salt
“Now; this is a piece of well-cooked meat.
Without salt.” He put the flesh in his mouth and
began to chomp, smacking his lips with each bite.
He sighed and rolled his eyes at the warm,
slippery taste of the flesh—and the taste of the
grease and the warmth of the small amount of
cooked blood that seeped into his mouth and then
trickled down his throat.
A few moments later, his eyes widened,
and he spewed out the flesh. The chewed bit of
meat shot across the table and hit Olga on the
top of her bowed head.
Startled reflex forced Olga to jerk her
head up. Her neck muscles felt as though they
were being ripped from her spine and skull.
Smith was glaring at her, his face
purpling, red-tinged saliva spilling over his lips.
His eyes squeezed into slits of anger. He jerked
his right hand up, pointed the fork at her, and
jabbed the tines towards her as he shouted:
“You POISONED me, Witch! Dag-nab you!
You’ve eaten so much salt all your dag-nab life
so’s that ya got too much dag-nab salt IN ya!”
The End
18
Feary Tales—Vomit 2
Well, well, well.
Indeed.
One last introduction
before we must all go our
miserable ways.
That bald-headed old
fart to the left is Uncle
Billy. He’s a rather snaglytooth old coot who died
several years ago but was
too stubborn to be buried.
Uncle Billy is actually
the inspiration, or we might
say insipid-ation, for one of our little Feary Tales
Vomit 2, a ditty entitled “Dead Things”.
One day Evilla and Granny Cadavers were
walking in the necropolis behind the house when they
smelled something just god-awful rotten. At first
they thought someone died and wasn’t buried. And
they were right! There he was, Uncle Billy, dancing
on his own grave and cursing the very ground in which
he was supposed to be interred.
Uncle Billy had refused to go quietly into
that good night because he’s a miserly old bastard
who refused to pay the ferryman the required penny
for passage across Styx and into Hades. This really
pissed off Charon,
Which leads to the second sordid story in
Feary Tales Vomit 2,“The Penny Man”.
You’ve heard the old school children’s rhyme:
“See a penny, pick up, and all the day you’ll have good
luck.”
In our hometown of Junebug, Oklahoma
19
Feary Tales—Vomit 2
74666, however, picking up a shiny penny is
anything but lucky, especially when that shiny penny
belongs to the ferryman of the dead, and the
ferryman’s come to reclaim his lost penny!
Forget about declaring the pennies on your
eyes: when the Penny Man comes to getcha, you
won’t have any eyes left in your squalid bloodsplattered sockets.
Until next time, my Fiends—for myself (Mr.
Creepers) and for Evilla Santanya, Granny Cadavers,
and Uncle Billy, I sigh, “Good fright, and pleasant
screams!”
Sinisterly Yours,
Mr. Creepers
Fearytales.Com
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