Monthly Archives: April 2011

Horror/Supernatural, Victoria Falls

The Suicide Tree

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Victoria Falls being the home of so many ghost stories, it stands to reason that its graveyard is an immensely popular tourist attraction. Strangely enough, its most famous occupant isn’t buried here, but is actually a tree! The so-called “Suicide Tree” stands almost in the exact center of the graveyard, a nearby headstone placed almost perfectly to allow someone to climb on it to tie a rope around the tree to hang themselves with. Local legend states that this is exactly what a young widow did on hearing the news that her husband had been killed in World War I.

It’s said that when you stand under the tree’s branches at night, you can hear the poor widow’s sobbing. However, after five teenagers were found dead, hung from the tree the morning after a full moon, the Victoria Falls Police decided to place an officer near the tree at night to dissuade any other potential suicides or vandalism, and do not allow anyone to approach it. They of course deny that you can hear sobbing under the tree. If you ask almost any of the officers though, most will admit that they’ve been too scared to try it for themselves!

Horror/Supernatural

Everybody Wants to See the Eyeball Kid

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We were on our way to see someone Todd called the Eyeball Kid. I don’t know how he found these people. While most of us were cowering in fear at the nightmare we’d seen the world become, Todd seemed to thrive on it. It’s like Freak had only confirmed what he already knew about the world, and now he’d thrown himself full-heartedly into the weirdness.

We pulled up to an apartment complex. A pretty shitty one, too. Todd led me to room 27 and knocked on the door, which opened immediately, still on the chain.

“Who is it?” a voice called out.

“It’s me, Todd,” he said, smiling.

The door shut, then reopened, revealing a haggard-looking young woman, early twenties at most. Her sunken, tired eyes told me that she, too, was a Freak user. She glanced at me suspiciously.

“It’s alright,” Todd said. He pulled a bottle of pills out of his pocket and handed them to her.

“He’s in the den,” she said, wearily, stepping back into the shadows to let us pass.

“What was that?” I hissed at Todd. “Did you just give her Freak?”

“No,” he said, “There’s no way she’ll ever take Freak again after what happened to her kid. They’re sleeping pills. She has a hard time sleeping, understandably.”

“What happened to her…” I began, then stopped, gasping. We’d entered the den. Sitting at the table was a young boy, about 6 years old. What shocked me was his eyes. They were too big for his face, bulging out so far his eyelids couldn’t even completely shut around them when he blinked.

“Hey Teddy,” Todd said, pulling a piece of paper and a box of crayons from his pocket. “It’s me, Todd. You remember me, right? Want to draw a picture for me?”

The kid nodded, grasping blindly in the air in front of him until Todd put the crayons and paper into his hands.

“Don’t worry,” Todd said, stepping back and standing next to me, “They’re fake eyes.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“His mom used Freak when she was pregnant. He was born without eyes. Just empty sockets.”

I shuddered.

“And you wouldn’t believe how expensive kid-sized glass eyes are,” Todd said, shaking his head, “You have to get ‘em custom made.”

“Why are we here, Todd?” I asked.

“Turns out Freak’s got some literary sensibilities,” he grinned bitterly. “It took the kid’s eyes, but he can see the future. And if you bring him a piece of paper and some crayons he’ll draw it for you.”

“Todd,” I said, “If he was born without eyes, how does he know what a nod means?”

“I try not to think about it,” he said.

By now, the kid had finished drawing. He waved the paper in the air to get our attention. Todd stepped forward to take it.

“Thanks, Teddy,” he said. “You can keep the crayons.”

The kid smiled at him, showing a full mouth of very sharp teeth.

Todd stepped back and glanced at the picture. I craned my neck to see, but he held it away from me.

“Come on,” he said, “What if I’m having sex in it or something?”

It would have had to have been some really messed up sex, though, because as he looked over the picture, all the color drained from Todd’s face. Wordlessly, he passed it to me, and I could immediately see why.

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Cubensis

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Her name shone up at him from the reflections of neon lights in the puddles. He waited on the curb as the cars raced by, screaming threats and promises of violent, fiery, metallic death if he came too close. Crossing the street, he paused at the door, the wood grain twisting and shimmering invitingly. He might have stared at it forever, lost in his thoughts, but eventually the cold fingers of the rain running down his back convinced him to go inside.

He squinted against the bright, accusing lights. The technicolor chaos of the city outside was hard enough to handle, but this penetrating glare was almost too much. His eyes flicked rapidly across the posters on the back wall, searching for relief. On one of them, a buxom blonde woman with tears in her eyes offered him a cold beer. The caption read “It’s never too late.” On the next poster, a stylish man holding a martini — surrounded by three beautiful woman desperately grabbing at him — stared at his own reflection in a mirror. This one promised that “Things are only as bad as you make them.” Finally, on the last poster, a beer bottle sat embedded in the sand on the beach as the caption beneath broadcast the sage advice “Don’t forget the difference between can’t and won’t.”

The bartender nodded to him familiarly as he sat down at the bar alongside the others. He nodded back. All was silent for a moment, and then the others began to speak.

“My wife and daughter died in the fire I caused when I fell asleep smoking.”

“My uncle molested me when I was young, and now I can’t trust anyone.”

“I was changing the station on the radio in my car, and I hit and killed someone’s dog.”

“Nothing bad has ever happened to me, and I feel incredibly guilty about it.”

It surprised him that the others accepted this last statement without judgement, but he quickly recovered. Considering it, he came to the same conclusion they must have reached long ago — pain is pain, and it hurts just the same, no matter how stupid or pointless it might seem from the outside. Everyone had spoken now, except for him. He remained silent, unsure of whether or not he wanted to bare his soul to them tonight. They accepted that too. They’d all been here before; some of them came here every night. They knew how it works. He didn’t. But he was willing to learn.

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Of Memes and Men

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Harold Zweckis was the world’s most accidental celebrity, and he didn’t even know it.

Harold was photographed by the Google Maps Streetview Van as he walked through Times Square, captured in full panoramic glory yelling at his business partner on his cell phone. Thing is, Harold wore one of those Bluetooth headsets, and it was on the side of his head away from the street, so it looked like he was just yelling at thin air.

Neither Harold nor anyone he knew was the type of person to waste time looking at Google Street View of a place they saw almost every day, so he never noticed he was there.

But the rest of the world did.

Times Square being a popular choice to look at using Street View, it didn’t take long for people to notice the yelling man in mid-step outside the Sbarro. Pretty soon “Angry Google Guy” was a full-fledged Internet phenomenon, photoshopped into hundreds of pictures (of weddings, crying babies, libraries, walking in on people having sex, etc.).

Tourists recognized Harold and ran up to him demanding his autograph. He shoved them out of the way and didn’t even listen. He was a busy man, he had places to go!

Stephen Colbert referenced “Angry Google Guy” on his show, as did Saturday Night Live (two months later). Again, Harold was a serious man, and he only knew serious people, so nobody ever saw it to mention to him, and he certainly never saw it himself.

Pretty soon people started selling bootleg T-Shirts of the “Angry Google Guy,” both in New York as well as online. Harold wasn’t the type to pay attention to the stupid T-Shirts people wore, though, so again he never noticed.

Eventually, the furor died down when someone discovered a YouTube video of a baby in a sailor suit playing “Chopsticks” on the piano, and Harold once again became just another guy, never even having realized he was anything else.