F i c t i o n - $8.00 Within these pages you’ll find Gravediggers and Ambulance Drivers. Doppelgangers and Mirrors. Deep Wells and Shivering Ducklings. Life may not exist without horror, and the short story may not exist without Nicholas B. Morris. “Nicholas Morris lures us into the rural backwoods of his imagination, where pastorals are flipped into the macabre and we are left masterfully disorientated . . . looking over our shoulder with every step.”
Nancy Stohlman, author of Searching for Suzi “Nick Morris’ previous book Tapeworm resurrected my affection for the short story, and in this new collection he returns with the force of a Mortal Coil Fomented Sun! Masterfully shedding his gracefully crafted light upon the various horrors that hump humanity, Morris illuminates the weirdness involved with all this too brittle act of existing.”
The Boy in the Well
Rob Geisen (aka Get in the car, Helen), author of The Aftermath, etc.
ISBN-10 098860776-X ISBN-13 9780988607767 50800
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780988 607767
m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e ss
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Nicholas B. Morris
The Boy in the Well 6 Tales of Horror
Nicholas B. Morris
M onkey P uzzle P ress H arrison , A rkansas
Copyright Š 2013 Nicholas B. Morris
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America. Cover & Interior Design Nate Jordon Cover Photo Philippe Alès via
Wikimedia Commons
ISBN-10: 0-9886077-6-X ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-6-7
Monkey Puzzle Press
424 N. Spring St. Harrison, Arkansas 72601 monkeypuzzlepress.com
For Alyssa, my friend and partner.
Table of Contents A Lesson for Ducklings
1
Mirror
2
The Ambulance Driver
4
Doppelganger
5
Gravediggers
11
The Boy in the Well
17
Acknowledgements About the Author
The Boy in the Well
A Lesson for Ducklings Beautiful early spring afternoon. Quiet Sunday park. The locals smell the apple blossoms and the catalpa trees, bouncing from one to the next like bees longing for pollen. The sun beams and the dogs take long overdue sniffs of everything they can find. A baseball game plays on a distant radio. The pond hosts a brood of ducks; eight ducklings and a mother. The babies swim beyond their nest’s safety for the first time. They zip back and forth, dipping down for bugs in the water. The people on the banks, potential predators in a previous incarnation, adore them. The ducklings spread out, exploring this new territory, and enjoying the attention of the small crowd stopped to watch. Mama duck gives a short quack, and seven baby ducklings fall in behind her, their movements rippling the mirrored water’s surface. The last baby duckling, not eager to give up this recent freedom, swims off in his own direction. Mama duck swims to the errant baby duck. She lifts him with her beak, slams him beneath the water. She pushes him back under when he surfaces. She snaps her beak onto his head, tries to hold him under. The baby duckling screams when the water in his throat will allow. His siblings watch, terrified. The couple on the bank, who had stopped to admire Nature in all her majesty, stands frozen, powerless to stop the horror occurring before them. Mama duck stops her thrashing. The baby duck moves to her side. She grooms him until he no longer shivers, then gives a quiet quack. Seven ducklings swim behind her as they make their way to the nest on the far bank. The chastised duckling swims next to her, glad to have survived, his mother’s lesson understood.
1
Nicholas B. Morris
Mirror I like motels. You can make one hell of a mess and not worry about wasting your time clearing out incriminating evidence. No one who works at these places asks questions; they take your cash and look the other way. The bathrooms alone make the cost worthwhile, particularly the mirrors. The large well-lit mirrors in motel bathrooms allow you to see from every angle, so you can assess yourself with maximum efficiency. I will not stay in this particular motel again. The police have started investigating certain crimes, and while they cannot yet prove my involvement, their inquiries might hinder my freedom to move about as I please. And so I find myself staring at my reflection, contemplating what makes me recognizable, wondering how I can remedy it. The scissors I use feel sharp enough, but they still pull at the roots of my hair. It falls into the sink, with an occasional bit of white skull meat on the ends. My head takes on an uneven shape—an egg wearing a cheap wig—but I still look too familiar. The scissors move from the top of my head to my jaws, snip-snipsnipping away at the beard I grew last winter. I put a new blade on my razor. Fill my palms with foam. My hair turns white before my eyes. I pull the blade across my face, the crown of my head. My skin turns soft beneath the cold scrape of sharpened steel. Lines of blood well up, slide down my cheeks. The white foam on my face turns pink. Soon, only the eyebrows remain. Sooner still, they disappear. I look nothing like my former self. I have become a new man. But the old man still stares back at me from the mirror. He kept my jawline, my lips, my nose. I wash the razor. The sink clogs. A giant pile of hair fills the drain, trapping bloody, foamy water. A graveyard for identifying features. I go to work again. The skin takes a long time to peel, and much careful slashing, but muscle slowly reveals itself. The blade dulls, so I reach for
2
The Boy in the Well another. I slice my finger replacing it, three perfect horizontal cuts spilling rich, thick liquid from beneath the surface. Soon both lips drop into the sink. The cartilage of my former nose joins them. I feel no pain. Cold water tingles from every exposed nerve, sloshing through my teeth as I take a drink from my cupped hands. I examine my face in the mirror. Beneath the gore, I still recognize myself. I am not yet appropriately anonymous. My eyes betray me. If I can recognize myself in my eyes, then others can recognize me as well. I bend the razorblade to my will, aim it into the corner of my left eye. When I finish the deed, no mirror, no matter how brilliant or well-lit, will recognize my face.
3
Nicholas B. Morris
The Ambulance Driver The ambulance driver was new on the job. He’d spent months driving sweet little old ladies to dialysis appointments, all the while craving real action, the kind that saved lives and earned commendations from the mayor. His first lights-and-siren call came just after dusk from a bad part of town. Adrenaline pounded in his temples as cars pulled over and red lights turned green for his bus. The veteran chattered in code on the radio from the passenger seat, said “turn right here,” then “left by the gas station.” The girl, no more than eight, wore a yellow sundress drenched in blood, a darker shade than the driver had ever seen. Her grandmother wailed, calling out to a god who paid no attention. Some of the bystanders tried to comfort her. Others stared at the pavement or the sky. The ambulance driver lost his dinner in the sewer grate near the road, wiped his mouth, and wondered what he would tell his wife in the morning when she asked about his big day from the other side of the bed. The veteran finished his cigarette before zipping up the bag.
4
About the Author
Nicholas B. Morris was born and raised in southwest Arkansas, splitting his childhood between small towns and farms. He was educated at Arkansas Tech University and Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. His first book, Tapeworm, is also available from Monkey Puzzle Press. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his partner Alyssa Piccinni.
other books from
Monkey Puzzle Press After the Orange Glow by Mark Spitzer
Spitzer has written a humping, yowling, brow-beating memoir. After the Orange Glow is a must read for anyone who cares about poetry, passion, The Beats . . . apparitions. Memoir / 266 pages ISBN-10: 0-9826646-1-3
Culture of Flow
by Tim Z. Hernandez Hernandez puts us in the flow of history, the poems spill into us like a chant or a drum beat that opens into older ceremonies, cultures and peoples flow into each other, the connections of the world are alive within him. Poetry / 100 pages ISBN-10: 0-9851705-5-7
Tapeworm
by Nicholas B. Morris Morris’ fourteen stories move from backwoods Arkansas to concrete jungles, churches to prison cells, from delusions to truth. Fiction / 126 pages ISBN-10: 0-9826646-3-X
F i c t i o n - $8.00 Within these pages you’ll find Gravediggers and Ambulance Drivers. Doppelgangers and Mirrors. Deep Wells and Shivering Ducklings. Life may not exist without horror, and the short story may not exist without Nicholas B. Morris. “Nicholas Morris lures us into the rural backwoods of his imagination, where pastorals are flipped into the macabre and we are left masterfully disorientated . . . looking over our shoulder with every step.”
Nancy Stohlman, author of Searching for Suzi “Nick Morris’ previous book Tapeworm resurrected my affection for the short story, and in this new collection he returns with the force of a Mortal Coil Fomented Sun! Masterfully shedding his gracefully crafted light upon the various horrors that hump humanity, Morris illuminates the weirdness involved with all this too brittle act of existing.”
The Boy in the Well
Rob Geisen (aka Get in the car, Helen), author of The Aftermath, etc.
ISBN-10 098860776-X ISBN-13 9780988607767 50800
9
780988 607767
m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e ss
.
c o m
Nicholas B. Morris