The October Featured Story is by Larry Green

Please feel free to email Larry at: imhi2@pgtc.com

A NEW DAY

by Larry Green

(a sequel to the story A Bad Day)

Alice's eyes snapped open and her breathing stopped as she listened, ears straining in the darkness, searching for the sounds carried to her in the night. Cursing under her breath she reached to the nightstand, trying to find her lamp, but in the rush she knocked everything else off onto the floor.

Finally, groping in the darkness, her fingers found the base of the lamp, and she felt her way up under the shade to the switch. Light flooded her bedroom and she looked at the mess she had made. The clock was there, underneath the phone, which was now off the hook. She could hear the recording telling her to hang it up like she was some kind of an idiot who did not know any better.

Looking down at the floor there was still one thing she did not see that should have been there, but was not, her teeth. Slowly Alice climbed out of bed, and leaning against it she managed to get down on her hands and knees to look for them. As a last resort she flipped up the side of her bedspread and there they were. Her dentures, and the glass she cleaned them in, had rolled under the bed when everything had taken a spill. And now Alice was horrified to see her teeth sitting in one of her old slippers.

"Of all the places they could land, now I will have to go to the doctor because I will get some kind of fungus in my mouth," she muttered out loud to nobody. Leaning down, she reached, stretching her arm under the bed until she felt the teeth with her fingers. When she pulled them out she looked at them in the light from her lamp. When she was satisfied they were not covered in lint, or something even worse, she put them in her mouth.

Almost at once, Alice's face began to contort and she stuck out her tongue. Looking down her nose she could see a hair, just sitting there, moving up and down as she breathed in and out. Quickly she reached up and pulled it off her tongue, noises of disgust coming out of her throat, and she wiped it off of her finger onto the floor.

"Oh my God," Alice said as she retched, her voice slurred by the loose fitting teeth, "I am going to have to clean under the beds again."

She sat down on the floor, leaning back against her bed, and let out a sigh as she picked up the phone. The recording was over and now the phone was making that irritating noise, over and over again, that the phone company said was supposed to let you know the phone was off the hook. She had called them up one day and asked why the phone made that noise, and that had been their answer. They had been shocked when she had told them that some people left their phones off the hook on purpose, and did not want to hear that noise any more than they wanted to hear the phone ring.

Putting the phone down a little harder than she should have, Alice could picture Edward's face in her mind's eye. It was complete with the little look he always gave her when she was having her "tiff" as he had liked to call them. Poor Edward had been gone for almost two years now and she had not missed that look one bit since he had gone. Alice thought of him and how he had always insisted they have a phone even though she hated the thing, and he always refused talk on it. It served him right having that heart attack out back in his garden when nobody was there to call an ambulance. Yes, she thought, the old bastard lived his whole life and never once talked on a phone. She hoped he was happy with that.

Through her window Alice heard the noise again, howls somewhere out in the night, and she knew it had to be the Keegal's dogs. They had woke her up more nights than she could count, and considering she had just had her eightieth birthday, she thought that was a good indication of how many ruined night’s sleep she could count. She picked the phone up again, banged it back down in the cradle with a smile on her face, just for Edward’s benefit in case his ghost was somewhere watching, and then she dialed a number.

“This is the Jefferson County sheriff’s office,” said the voice from the other end of the phone line.

“Yes this is Alice Dreyton from out on Willowbrook Lane. I would like to report a disturbance.”

“Hello Mrs. Dreyton, what seems to be your disturbance tonight?” asked the voice from the other end, sounding as though he were trying to hide the laughter in it.

Everyone knew everyone in this small community, and sometimes that could be annoying. “Don’t you take that tone of voice with me young man, I pay my taxes, and that pays your salary, do you understand me?”

“Yes Ma’am, and I am sorry Ma’am; what seems to be your problem tonight?”

“It is my neighbors, the Keegals, or should I say their dogs. They woke me up howling. Usually it is their barking at all hours, but this time it is their howling. I need a car to come by at once.”

‘Yes Ma’am, right away. It seems we already have an officer out in that area. I will see to it that he gets to your house as soon as possible. Is there anything e...”

Alice smiled as she slammed the phone down, even harder this time. She could imagine the operator jerking his headphones off of his ears, howling in pain like the dogs from the squeal that they always showed in the movies when you did that.

Satisfied now, and with nobody else to torment, Alice slowly got back up on her feet and put on her housecoat and went into her front room. Staring out of her picture window, Alice watched the road for headlights. She knew the officer would not be out here any time soon, they never were when she called, and it never changed, no matter how often she complained. As she stood there, Alice heard the howls again, and this time they were closer.

Alice smiled again, grimly this time. She lived in the country and that meant she could shoot a gun. That was one of the main reasons she had liked living in the country in the first place. At least Edward had had enough sense to buy them some land to go along with their house. With ten acres of woods, she should not have any trouble finding a place to hide a couple of her neighbor’s dead dogs.

She crossed her living room to the closet by the front door and opened it. There in the back she saw what she was looking for. A tall gun case stood hidden behind coats and Edward’s golf clubs. One of these days she needed to remember to take them into town and sell them. She had always hated golf.

She picked up the gun case and unzipped it. A heavy double-barrel emerged from the case in her hand; the receiver and barrels were finely engraved with a hunter and his dogs out shooting birds. She thought it would have been a much nicer engraving if it had been an old woman shooting her neighbor’s dogs, but nobody ever listened to her.

On the stock, right under where her chin went was a band that wrapped around, held in place by elastic straps, and it held shotgun shells. She broke open the gun, checked the barrels for any obstructions, and then slid two shells in. As she loaded the gun she made sure the shells had two zeros side by side. She did not want to end up using squirrel shot tonight, she thought to herself with a laugh.

By the door she flicked the wall switch and the light in the front room went out. Outside the window she could see her front yard, lit up by the bright pole light at the end of her house. She had to make Edward get that, too. He said he thought a flashlight was good enough for getting around outside at night.

The howls came again, and this time they were right out in front of her house. She could hear the dogs moving through the brush now. From the sound of it, she knew the Keegals had to have gotten some new dogs, some really big new ones.

Alice quietly went to her front door, opened it carefully, and stepped out into the cool evening air. Her eyes followed the sound through the trees in front of her as she raised the shotgun to her shoulder. With the gun in place, she braced herself with the wall of the house behind her and she waited. Suddenly the dog in the woods quit moving.

Alice lifted her head, looking down the barrels out into the woods when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She saw a dog coming at her mid leap as it flew through the air. She whirled, faster than even she thought she could, and pulled both triggers at once.

The roar of the blast from both barrels filled the night. Alice heard the dog yelp as the kick from the shotgun knocked her off her feet and sent her sailing across the porch backwards. She realized when she turned, the house was not there to block her any longer. Trying to brace for impact, Alice felt her feet hit the ground, dragging along as the rest of her body dropped down to join them. The wind was knocked out of her, but she did not hear any pops, so she did not think anything had broken.

Lying on her back, Alice wondered if the stars she was watching were really in the sky or if they were in her mind instead. She tried to sit up, moaning in pain, worried about where the wounded dog had gone. Before she could even move two inches she heard paws on the porch. When she looked up she saw two yellow eyes staring down at her. She thought they looked like two yellow piss holes in dirty snow, but she was amazed at how big the teeth were when the dog opened its jaws wide, closing them around her face.

*****

Officer Ronnie Johnson drove down the county road as slow as he could. The call had came in just a few minutes before that he needed to head over to Mrs. Dreyton’s place because of some dogs howling. He knew he was in for a good hour-long argument about why he could not shoot her neighbor’s dogs and he was not overjoyed with the idea.

With his headlights off, he went as slow as he could, and he could already see her driveway in the moonlight. He looked up, craning his neck so he could see the silver disc floating high in the sky above him. He thought he would rather be up there, with all of the risks of space travel, knowing he had a better than good chance of dying and never seeing home again, than arguing with the damned Dreyton woman. He worked nights because they were easy. At least they had been until Mrs. Dreyton’s husband died. He remembered the old man was supposed to have had a heart attack. Officer Johnson knew that it was not a heart attack that had killed the old man. The old woman had bitched him to death.

Pulling out on the headlight switch, all the while hoping the old bat was not up there watching him from her front room window, Ronnie turned into the drive. As soon as the headlights washed over the porch, Ronnie saw two of the biggest dogs he had ever seen in his life take off running. He thought they had been eating at something.

When he shined his spotlight on the porch and realized they had been eating Mrs. Dreyton, he radioed in for backup. His eyes never left the old woman, her shotgun lying there beside her, her mangled body covered in blood. He thought the dogs had carried off pieces of her when they had run. Ronnie locked the doors of his squad car and hoped he would hear sirens soon. Far away in the woods, he could still hear the howling.

*****

Melanie woke up, the morning sun was bright in the sky over her, and she winced when she moved. She knew she had to be more careful when the change came upon her, because even she was not invincible. She looked at her stomach, the fresh scars from the bullet wounds still bright and pink on her skin. She hoped they faded soon because summer was almost here and they would play hell with her bikini and tan lines.

She remembered eating the old woman but she did not feel bad. After all, the woman had shot her. Then she remembered the man lying beside her. She looked at him, still asleep, and she thought he still looked quite handsome lying there considering the night they had had. When he woke up she would have to find out his name and she hoped he would stay with her a while. It was lonely sometimes being a werewolf, but this was a new day and anything could happen.

Larry Green is an aspiring writer and the editor of Death Head Grin when he is not taking care of his day job, which is painting houses. He lives with his three dogs in Northwest Arkansas where he has written off and on for most of his life, but has never pursued it seriously until recently. He has always been a fan of anything horror, growing up reading anything he could find from Stephen King to Edgar Allen Poe, and watching movies like Jaws in the backseat at the drive-in when he was supposed to be asleep, which made him terrified of the bathroom at night when he was five. You can find him online at www.deathheadgrin.com or on Myspace.