by Al Drinkle
The following work of fiction contains language that some readers may find offensive. Please note that Metrovino does not condone the use of curse words, nor do we approve of running, heavy metal, Dario Argento films, or smoothies.
It had been an unseasonably beautiful October. The nights were cool, not cold, and the days were glorious explosions of vivid autumnal colours and welcome warmth, the low sun emitting enough heat for comfort in T-shirts at midday. With the approach of Halloween, Mike had been fully immersing himself in horror, as he did every year. The Misfits, the Cramps or Black Sabbath were constantly spinning on his turntable; his free evenings were spent smoking joints and watching classic horror films; and he began each morning by reading a Poe story with his coffee. "Too much horror business,” perhaps, but he loved it all as much as most people love Christmas.
As the day’s final exhalation erupted in the sky like only October sunsets can, Mike read "The Cask of Amontillado” outloud with his wife while they themselves sipped Tio Diego, gazing westwards at the acute beauty that concentrated behind skeletal trees. When the sky eventually darkened, they set fire to a jazz cigarette and watched Suspiria for what seemed like the thousandth time.
Mike had always been an early riser, and was in the routine of going for a run shortly after 5:00 in the morning. So few people were active at this time of day that he could safely run down the middle of his neighbourhood roads, thus avoiding any late-season skunks who were very much active at such an hour. He hummed Roky Erickson's “Stand For the Fire Demon” to himself as he made his way through the dark streets, leaves falling around him like the snow that would soon be inevitable. Veering around a corner with his eyes at ground level in apprehension of the small, striped evil that might be lurking, he was startled, almost mortally, by a bedraggled figure that seemed to appear out of nowhere in his path.
“Cover your ears!!!!” the man bellowed in a voice like Blind Willie Johnson's crossed with Satan's. “Cover your ears to the sound of the souls collapsing!!!!”
“Jesus Christ!!!” blurted Mike, so shocked by this unexpected aural assailant that he almost literally shit his pants. The man was dressed entirely in black, looking like a vagrant of bygone times with his threadbare pea coat and a fedora that might have been purloined from a scarecrow. His daemonic eyes were like lumps of smoldering coal.
“Cover your ears! Cover your ears to the sounds of the souls collapsing!"
“I'll cover my nose,” Mike muttered as he changed paths and regained his pace. “Your breath smells like the devil's asshole!”
The man continued to holler his cryptic warning as the lights of a few houses began burning — slumbering denizens of the neighbourhood being roused by the racket, no doubt. Mike had to run several blocks before he was out of earshot of the fiendish shouting, but he was still shivering with the initial fright.
He eventually came to a street on which two or three cars were heading downtown for an early start to the work day. He ran on the spot to keep his pace up, waiting for them to pass when an intricate and sinister-looking advert on a posterboard caught his eye. It was promoting a metal show on Halloween, and the top of the poster was emblazoned with the warning, “COVER YOUR EARS!". Mike stopped running, but his heart was pounding harder than ever. He worked his way through the barely-legible band names, scrawled in fonts that were simultaneously symmetrical and diabolical. There was “Pentagram Cock Ring", “Foetus Harvest”, “Satyr Diarrhea”, “Discharge Jacuzzi” and “Cranium Shrapnel", but it was the name of the headliner that sent chills all the way to his fingertips — “Souls Collapsing".
Still shivering, Mike nervously smiled to himself as he began running again. “Just a coincidence,” he muttered, “just a strange coincidence. I wonder if Satyr Diarrhea is any good…”
He eventually arrived at a gorge that led down to the river on the edge of downtown. The morning was still dark but otherwise clear, yet the fog over the river gave it an eerie, Styx-like appearance as it wound its way through the valley. Mike was approaching a small homeless camp where an illicit bonfire was blazing for warmth. There seemed to be more activity than one would expect at such an hour. As he got closer to the hapless gathering, the conversation of the vagrants became clearer and clearer until one of them screeched, “alright, motherfuckers! Cover your ears!!!” Mike froze in his tracks. A gangly woman in the group was holding a lit firework upright in a filthy towel. It cracked like terse thunder as a rocket of orange light blasted skywards. The group made noises of enthrallment and as Mike decided it was time to run straight back home, he heard one of them croak, as if through a throat encumbered by gravel, “marvelous, marvelous! It's like the sound of souls collapsing! AAAAhahahahahahaha!!!!”
Mike had never run so fast in his life. He took a circuitous route to avoid the bedraggled hollerer, from whom he only heard faint wailings peppered with the sounds of approaching sirens. He finally arrived on his street with his cozy home in view. The seasonal orange and purple stoop lights that he had left on for himself were glowing, and he felt a hint of calm for the first time in almost an hour. He noticed that the kitchen light was on too, feeling further relieved that his wife was awake. Following such a surreal and unsettling fitness session, he could use a comforting dose of reality.
Entering the house and removing his running shoes, Mike realized that he was drenched in cold sweat. He rounded the corner to the kitchen where his wife stood next to their ancient blender, about to noisily mix a smoothie. Her movements seemed stilted, her smile strangely vacant. “Good morning,” he managed, just prior to noticing her timeworn, ill-fitting nightshirt — it mostly caught his attention because it was unfamiliar to him. Boasting faded but graphic and horrifying Dantean artwork, an all-too-familiar font read, “Souls Collapsing”.
“Cover your ears!” she all but screamed before starting the blender on what looked like a blood smoothie. Maybe it's a soul smoothie, Mike thought as the floor rushed towards him. Everything went dark…
Happy Halloween!!!
