Masters of Horror.

Lee Pletzers.

DEAD-ication.

To Lee Pletzers and his crew at Triskaideka Books for the green light; All our masterful contributors (especially Nomar Knight and Harry Mora for letting me get away with literary murder); All at the MASTERS OF HORROR site: Bill W., Chris and Pax Prentiss, Susan Powter, Suzanne LaBatt, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Carolyn Myss, Anthony Robbins, Bill Weider, Bill Phillips, Dean Roberts and the Leatherwolf-pack for the permission...And everyone trying to 'make it back-beyond the black'.

This book is also for K.K. During the formation of this amazing anthology, Ken suffered a brain aneurysm. All the staff at Triskaideka Books and the authors of this anthology wishes you a speedy recovery, buddy.

"I'm on my way To lose my mind...

The situation will never change In a way of a nasty kind!

Once I start, I just can't stop "Control yourself" is what they say, Just take it to the top!

I might start a fight, Just to have a good time...

And if the feeling feels all right, This time you'll be mine.

Too much is never enough...

I want to see the light...

What can I do to stay satisfied?

Too much is never enough!"

--LEATHERWOLF.

foreword.

by Nicholas Grabowsky.

I used to write sober. I swear to G.o.d.

But then I became an adult, and things got complicated.

I used to preach in churches, in front of thousands of people. I was pa.s.sionate. Then I focused on writing Christian stories about monsters. Church folk just didn't like that.

d.a.m.ned if I did, they all said.

People have been drawn towards intoxication ever since the origin of people. It's within our biological makeup to do so, ever since the dawn of anything. It's not our faults. Animals, plants, micro-organisms....anything with a cellular structure and inherent desire to reproduce, it seems, are always looking for a quick fix. So it's not human-exclusive, this obsessive attraction towards feeling the sort of high we can only achieve by an indulgence in substances we must ingest to experience. Koala bears have it made, for example. The stoners of the animal world, what with their psychedelic eucalyptus. I just found out my hamster gets high. Turns out that sunflower seeds have a substance worthy of pet store warnings on pamphlets, not to feed animals too much for fear of substance abuse and dependence. And n.o.body judges them for it. We, as intelligent beings who for whatever reason have knowledge of good and evil and self-awareness and all that jazz, are required to regulate our intake of feel-good stuff for the sake of responsibility and coherence and productivity lest we become addicts and find ourselves featured on A&E's Intervention with our brains gone and teeth rotting in between commercials for products with ways to give our teeth a healthy shine.

It's just not fair that there are consequences for our indulgences. But that's how it is. And it's up to us as a race and as individuals to cope with it. And you know, I'm convinced that the answers to how we deal with it all don't necessarily rely on complete abstinence. Intoxicants are all around us for a reason. If we're so inclined to partake of this or that, and we enjoy it, we are forced to either acquire the discipline it takes to regiment our high times for the sake of our sober ones, or to abstain only because we allow addiction to take over and potentially ruin everything we live for. But we cannot judge others for whatever makes them strong enough to be able to have that beer or light up that blunt and still be in control during the average day, and we have to recognize that the human ingestion of intoxicating substances has helped shape us as a species to the extent that we wouldn't have advanced as far as we have without them. In fact, total abstinence would have stunted our growth, being that humanity thrives on experience and emotion and inspiration and feeling. Let's face it though: we can't all sit atop our heavenly gra.s.sy hills and sniff dandelions and watch the clouds all our lives. We have to live full lives. That is why we're all here to begin with.

Those of us who manage to make the most profound impressions in this world are either the sober inventors of technology or the creative types who get so f.u.c.ked up on substance that what they create has an effect more profound on us as a whole than anything any average abstinent sober folk can hold a lighter, er, candle to. Take music, for example. Or for that matter, poetry, writing, or just plain storytelling in all its many forms, painting, pottery, acting, any expression of self.

I've been writing all my life, and before I did my first drug or took my first alcoholic drink I did just fine with things. Then I turned 18, and I started drinking, indulged in the first type of recreational drug I ever did: LSD. I did a year's worth of research on that drug before I even tried it. During my acid days, I acc.u.mulatively wrote four screenplays, diaries, the greater part of a few novels, and became convinced that G.o.d making us in His own image meant that He creates, therefore we do. I wrote in great length about a G.o.dzilla-sized giant who demolished condemned apartment buildings with his p.e.n.i.s. I've written parts of my award-winning novel The Everborn and many partial stories and ideas on napkins at parties strung out on various kinds of white powders I had to either smoke or snort, and my record of going without sleep of any kind is eight days solid. Once, I constructed a homemade v.a.g.i.n.a out of foam and warm water after snorting a line the length and width of two Twizzlers side by side. I indulged in addictions both alone and with famous people, did everything short of injecting anything directly into my bloodstream...that kinda thing always creeped me out.

Nowadays, with that sort of past more than a decade behind me, the path that life has chosen for me in this business of horror writing just wouldn't be the same without all of the prior outlandish b.a.l.l.s-to-the-wall sort of gritty experience and mayhem and abandon and recklessness I put myself through that I can cash in on now just by merely writing about it. Although my darker and more complicated days of addiction are long since gone, I find that the works I write best are best written when I've got my trusty fifth of whiskey, a good joint, a pack of smokes, and a drive to no end.

I, Triskaideka Books, and exemplary author K.K. present to you this extraordinary a.s.semblage of authors whose outstanding storytelling skills relevant to substance use and abuse are displayed here in all of their shining glory, whether they're written under the influence, about the influence, or both, in one central theme which both entertains and incorporates our universal draw and fascination towards the high life.

John Shirley leaves an Aftertaste which actually gives you a foretaste of what to expect with the rest, highlighting the works of the extraordinary talents of F. Paul Wilson, Lee Pletzers, Carole Gill, and my friend K.K. himself.

When it all boils down to it, according to those who judged me for writing the kinds of things I do...well, yeah, d.a.m.ned if I did.

But in the long run, when I take a look back at all that time I spent writing noteworthy horror stories to an audience so wide as to reach the whole world while under the influence of one thing or another, and someone were to ask me if I'll write that way again or be influenced by it, my answer will always be...

...d.a.m.ned if I don't.

The monstrously addictive power of crack cocaine lies in the intensity-and the brevity-of the high. Within a matter of moments, you're back to normal again (or as close to 'normal' as anyone on crack ever gets) and ready for more. It's also relatively cheap-per dose-and doesn't seem to eat your money as fast as it does, so one month you're paying cash for it, the next month you're selling your last remaining pair of shoes for it. One of my best friends, when he lived in Tampa, told me a story of how a thin, wasted man desperately asked him at a 7-11 to buy a bloodstained baby's blanket for five dollars.

For better or for worse, crack seems to have fallen off the national radar or it's been eclipsed by that other breakfast of champions, crystal meth. Or a prediction has come true...one authority on drugs called the crack epidemic, 'A self-cleaning oven', meaning: 'In a few years there won't be a crack epidemic, because everyone who keeps using crack will be dead.'

Or, as imagined by the amazing John Shirley, WORSE than dead...

AFTERTASTE.

By John Shirley.

8:45 P.M., Sat.u.r.day Night, West Oakland, California.

Dwayne was sick of hearing Uncle Garland talk. The old man would talk about Essy and he would talk about the dope and he would talk about grindin', about everything but his own G.o.dd.a.m.n drinking. Sitting in that busted wheelchair at the kitchen table, talking and sipping that Early Times. Talking s.h.i.t about his angel dreams, too. One more word about the dope. . .

But Dwayne tolerated more than just one more word, because he needed Uncle Garland. He needed a place to stay and some place to run to. So he just sat and listened while he waited for Essy to get up, waited for Essy to get them started again. Essy in the next room, had to crash for awhile, been two hours already. f.u.c.k it. Dwayne could taste rock at the back of his tongue; smell it high in his nostrils. All in the imagination.

The TV was on, with the sound turned off. A rerun of a show with that guy used to be in Taxi. Tony something.

"You listening to me, Dwayne?" Uncle Garland demanded, scratching his bald pate with yellowed fingers. His rheumy eyes looking at Dwayne and not seeing him. Moving with less life than the TV screen. Blind. The old man was blind, but that was easy to forget, somehow.

"Can't hardly not listen, you talking all the time," Dwayne said.

"The dope killing this town, it be killing our people," Garland was saying. "Killing the black man. I'm fixin' to go the Next World, and I'm glad to be goin', Praise Jesus, with the devil eating this world like a pie. . ." Didn't pause to take a breath.

Uncle Garland's place was an apartment in the Projects, in the shadow of the freeway that collapsed in the '89 earthquake. Used to be you heard the freeway booming and rushing all night. Now it was eerie quiet. Or quiet as it ever got in the Projects.

"Tell you some true now," Uncle Garland said, using the expression that always prefaced a long, long lecture. "These are the end times, that the Lord's truth. In my angel dreams, they come to me and tell me it's so. And it's on the news, about the dead people rising. It's in the Bible, son, when the dead rise it's a sign that the Lord is coming for Judgment-"

"You see that s.h.i.t in the Weekly World News or the Star?"

"Radio news, I heard it. A disease in the air, they said, a radiation. The dead rising and hungry for the flesh of the living, Lord, and they-"

"That's complete s.h.i.t," Dwayne snorted. Why didn't f.u.c.king Essy get up? Maybe he wouldn't help him, get him started on the rock today. Cousin Essy think he's a big Grinder now, selling dope, stylin' like a B Boy, but he got nothing to show for it. Not like he paying the rent here. Some grinders, they put their family in a nice house, buy them cars. Essy don't give the old man s.h.i.t, so don't tell me you're the big Fly. Of course, the old man wouldn't accept the money, he'd know it was dope money...

"Tisn't radiation," the old man said, sucking on the pint bottle, "It's the dark wave, the night wave that sweeps over things, son. It changing the world, readying for the end times. People, they do evil to each other and it opens the door for more evil. Evil deeds call up evil spirits and their hunger enters the dead, it's a sickness on the land...

Dwayne couldn't stand it anymore. f.u.c.k Essy. He'd get his materials, one way or another.

He stood up abruptly and headed for the door. Put his hand on the k.n.o.b. Said, over his shoulder, "Uncle, you tell Essy I got tired of waiting. I going to-"

"No p'int in telling Essy s.h.i.t. He dead."

Dwayne felt a cold wave, like that wave of darkness the old man gabbled about, ripping through his gut. "Bulls.h.i.t."

"I feel it. He died, maybe an hour ago. Got some p'ison in him."

"s.h.i.t," Dwayne said again, and opened the door. He wasn't going to go in and check on Essy. Wake him up when he's crashing, he'd go off on you. Anyway the old man was full of s.h.i.t.

But as he walked down the hallway he felt like Essy was dead, too.

In the kitchen, Garland sat up straighter on his wheelchair: he heard Essy stirring. Heard the creak of the bedsprings. Garland had been blind so long he scarcely noticed the darkness anymore. But now, it seemed to take on density and weight; his blindness seemed to thicken about him and chill him like a cloud covering the sun.

Heard the shuffling steps coming. Knew for certain what it was. The dream angels had left him in no doubt.

He reached out, found his cane, forced himself to his feet. He rarely stood anymore, but this time the danger of it, of fracturing one of his porous old bones, didn't matter. He crossed to the broom closet by the old, whirring refrigerator. Moving only a little more slowly than the footsteps coming up behind him from the next room. He felt for the k.n.o.b, found it, pulled the closet open. Found the old pistol where he kept it under the oily rags on the top shelf and drew it out, his hands shaking.

Then thought: What if the dark wave brings me back too?

It wouldn't be Garland, not really him, but . . .

He heard a dream angel whisper: Not you, nor your old body.

He heard the shuffling nearer. Heard no breathing with it. No breathing, not any.

He raised the gun. Raised it to his mouth, pressed the barrel up against the palate, pulled the trigger.

His last thought was: Leaving a kind of gift for it.

Light.

9:57 P.M., Downtown Oakland.

Dwayne knew. He knew even before the white guy got out of his car. You could see it by the way he drove up, the car moving almost spastically, and the way he parked, the sedan slung across two parking s.p.a.ces outside the liquor store, and the way his head moved around like one of those little dashboard dolls that's got a head wobbling on a spring. The white guy was f.u.c.ked up, really f.u.c.ked up, and probably on base. Crack cocaine.

He was opportunity on the hoof.

The white guy had longish red-brown hair, bright blue eyes, and a little reddish mustache. He was driving a tan Acura, maybe a '95, and he had a gold watch on his right wrist. This was looking better and better.

Hobey saw him too. But Hobey was across the parking lot, trotting up real slow. Hobey was too old, too fat. Didn't smoke, drank Night Train instead. Sold the rock sometimes, but never used, and acted like he was ruff because of it.

Dwayne was leaning into the white guy's pa.s.senger side window by the time Hobey got there. "Whus'up," Dwayne said, "What you need, tell me, I help,"

The white guy's mouth was hanging open a little. His eyes dilating, shrinking, dilating, shrinking. A tongue so dry you could almost hear the rasp of it as be licked his lips. Word: it was base.

"Rock," the guy said. 'Crack'. Things white guys called base cocaine.

"How much?'

"Uh-sixty bucks worth."

Man, he was f.u.c.ked up. Not supposed to make a deal that way, people rip you off. They sure do.

Dwayne almost laughed. But he said, "Okay, I take you there."

"Get in."

Hobey was coming around to the guy's driver side, "What you need, chief? I get it for you, I find the best-"

"I got it," Dwayne snapped. "I taking care of it." He gestured briskly to the white guy. "Hobey's a rip-off artist. He gaffin' people all the time. Let's go."

The guy changed gears like a robot and they backed out, nearly plowing into the brick wall on the other side of the lot. Then they were careening down the street, Dwayne hissing, "Yo, chill this thing down, man, you get the cops on us."

The white guy slowed down to a crawl.

1O:15 P.M.

This part of San Pablo Avenue was mostly liquor stores; flyblown bars with the light bulbs burnt out in their signs; adult video stores where f.a.g hustlers cruised the video galleries. Dwayne had worked the video stores doing the tease thing, as Essy called it. Pretending you were a f.a.g, going into the booth with a real f.a.g. He puts some tokens in the machine, some f.a.g video comes on, he's watching it and you're kind of messing around with his d.i.c.k with one hand, distracting him, making a lot of noise about it, then lifting his wallet, going through his pockets while his pants are down. Then you say, "Oh s.h.i.t-I think somebody's coming, they checkin' the booths," and you split. It takes them a minute to discover they are ripped off and- "There it is," Dwayne said, now. "That hotel."

It was an old white wedge of a building, tall and narrow, on a sort of island where three streets almost intersected. The rest of the block was abandoned office s.p.a.ce, rickety buildings from the early part of the twentieth century. Doc was standing in the doorway of the hotel, all in white as usual. A white suit, with a pink carnation. His black Jag was parked just a few feet from him where he could keep an eye on it.

"Tha's the dude," Dwayne said. "Got him a Jaguar XKE, doing this s.h.i.t." Dwayne couldn't keep the admiration out of his voice. That Doc had it together.

"Pull up over there," Dwayne said. "No, f.u.c.k, don't - s.h.i.t!"

The guy cut across two lanes with a screeching right angle turn.

"s.h.i.t!" Dwayne looked around as the guy parked. No cops. Lucked out again.

"What's your name?" the white guy asked.

"Dwayne."