Showing posts with label Rob Bliss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rob Bliss. Show all posts
Skull Collection
By Rob Bliss
The boy found a sun-bleached sheep’s skull in a farmer’s field. He turned it over in his hands and gazed at it in awe. A revelation. He had seen skulls on television, but never really understood where they came from.
He began seeing the skulls beneath the skin when he looked at his parents and friends, everyone. It was all he could see. Saw it too in the mirror. He loved skulls, wanted to collect them.
He wandered the country roads on his bicycle, eyes on the ditches for anything that gleamed white. Took excursions through fields and forest, was often late for dinner.
By the time he finished high school, he had collected the skulls of racoons, skunks, cats, dogs, mice and rats. His parents dismissed the strange collection, called it curiosity. Maybe he would become a paleontologist, reassembling dinosaur bones.
He studied taxidermy. Loved the animals he had reassembled for his clients. Life-like, but not alive. He preferred the dead to the living.
He once picked up a hitchhiker along one of his country drives. An old man, grey beard, smelled of body odour and whiskey. The man had a heart attack before he had reached his destination.
The boy, now a man, dragged the old man into a copse of trees at the side of the road. Some taxidermy tools in the trunk of the car severed the man’s head from his shoulders. The head came home with the boy, its flesh scraped off, hairs burned, acid used to clean the skull to shining white.
The boy stared at the skull, a rarity, his first human. Sat it on the shelf next to the sheep. Admired the perfect contours that only nature could form with bone. Made the boy feel ancient, tribal, a man lost in primeval jungles.
He worked and waited, and no reports in the paper detailed a rotting corpse missing a head. It gave him ideas. He still had so much shelf space left. His collection comprised of so many species. And now he had the greatest species of all. It empowered him.
Every weekend he went for a country drive. His car slowed when he saw a rarity of rarities. A young girl by the side of the road, her thumb out. Early 20s, cute. He never thought he would ever see the day when one of them would need a ride.
He slowed beside her, a heavy pack bending her body forward. She got in, slumped the pack to the floor between her sunburned knees, her muscular legs. They barely started off down the road when she asked him to go back, she had forgotten something in the ditch.
As he looked over his shoulder to reverse, a Bowie knife plunged into his neck. The girl grabbed the wheel with her free hand and stomped a hiking boot onto the brake. She waited for the driver to bleed out.
Her feet were padded with burst blisters and old callouses, legs sore from so much walking. She saw the tools in the trunk, didn’t understand them, so she threw them into the ditch on top of the body.
The police eventually connected one thing to another, and stood in horrified awe at the collection arranged along the shelves.
Many skulls, five of them human. Serial killer status.
- - -
I have a degree in English and Writing. I have been, or will be, published in Schlock Webzine, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, microhorror, and SNM Magazine.
By Rob Bliss
The boy found a sun-bleached sheep’s skull in a farmer’s field. He turned it over in his hands and gazed at it in awe. A revelation. He had seen skulls on television, but never really understood where they came from.
He began seeing the skulls beneath the skin when he looked at his parents and friends, everyone. It was all he could see. Saw it too in the mirror. He loved skulls, wanted to collect them.
He wandered the country roads on his bicycle, eyes on the ditches for anything that gleamed white. Took excursions through fields and forest, was often late for dinner.
By the time he finished high school, he had collected the skulls of racoons, skunks, cats, dogs, mice and rats. His parents dismissed the strange collection, called it curiosity. Maybe he would become a paleontologist, reassembling dinosaur bones.
He studied taxidermy. Loved the animals he had reassembled for his clients. Life-like, but not alive. He preferred the dead to the living.
He once picked up a hitchhiker along one of his country drives. An old man, grey beard, smelled of body odour and whiskey. The man had a heart attack before he had reached his destination.
The boy, now a man, dragged the old man into a copse of trees at the side of the road. Some taxidermy tools in the trunk of the car severed the man’s head from his shoulders. The head came home with the boy, its flesh scraped off, hairs burned, acid used to clean the skull to shining white.
The boy stared at the skull, a rarity, his first human. Sat it on the shelf next to the sheep. Admired the perfect contours that only nature could form with bone. Made the boy feel ancient, tribal, a man lost in primeval jungles.
He worked and waited, and no reports in the paper detailed a rotting corpse missing a head. It gave him ideas. He still had so much shelf space left. His collection comprised of so many species. And now he had the greatest species of all. It empowered him.
Every weekend he went for a country drive. His car slowed when he saw a rarity of rarities. A young girl by the side of the road, her thumb out. Early 20s, cute. He never thought he would ever see the day when one of them would need a ride.
He slowed beside her, a heavy pack bending her body forward. She got in, slumped the pack to the floor between her sunburned knees, her muscular legs. They barely started off down the road when she asked him to go back, she had forgotten something in the ditch.
As he looked over his shoulder to reverse, a Bowie knife plunged into his neck. The girl grabbed the wheel with her free hand and stomped a hiking boot onto the brake. She waited for the driver to bleed out.
Her feet were padded with burst blisters and old callouses, legs sore from so much walking. She saw the tools in the trunk, didn’t understand them, so she threw them into the ditch on top of the body.
The police eventually connected one thing to another, and stood in horrified awe at the collection arranged along the shelves.
Many skulls, five of them human. Serial killer status.
- - -
I have a degree in English and Writing. I have been, or will be, published in Schlock Webzine, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, microhorror, and SNM Magazine.
Black Widow
By Rob Bliss
You have seen her already, and possibly forgotten her within the hour. She has the signs of beauty from head to toe: long hair, oval eyes, plump lips, small nose, and the slightest shadow showing the cleft in her chin. Her breasts are large enough but not too large. Slender waist, curved hips, long legs, and feet that could only be sculpted, they couldn’t be real.
She hides her eyes when she can, knowing they’re dangerous to both sexes. Her beauty is a weapon if she wants it to be. Her words only exist in a whisper because more is said with a tilt of her chin, the flicker of an eyebrow, a momentary crease in her brow.
The source of her power found her – or she found it – when she was eight years old. When her hair was a different colour, before she realized her appearance could be moulded into a variety of personas.
She knelt before Christ crucified in her family church, his painted wooden eyes staring down at her, blood waxed to his hands and feet, a dripping gash down his ribs. She vowed to always be pure for him, to fear him, to be his bride. No man could compete with her god.
Her first husband died in a tree. Thrown there when his car slammed into a concrete barrier. She imagined him soaring through glass, trailing a vapour of blood, until the limbs of the tree held him aloft, displaying him as a glorious death.
She loved the black she wore, the dress of fine thread, the veil of lace hiding her eyes, mouth and cheekbones better than any costume she had ever donned. The mirror showed her a persona she had never seen before, but one which fit her skin perfectly.
The insurance of her first husband made her wealthy enough to retire from the world. She shunned whatever friends she had accumulated, mere accessories to whichever persona she had worn during her married life.
She bought a small farm house away from every neighbour, surrounded by forest, her long driveway closed in by snowdrifts and an electronic fence. People forgot about her, which was her desire. She never shopped in the nearest town, but in towns distant, driving for miles there and then home.
Of course, she felt the loneliness from time to time. A short-lived, but intense, craving that possessed her, had to be satiated before it would wane and vanish, allow her to resume her life. She would venture into the city, dressed as one of her old selves. Her eyes left unshaded.
Her expertise at sex kept each man, convinced him to stay, to forego his old life, his friends, wife and children. His property became hers. So too his life.
Once she was finished with him, she knew she could go at least another year without the craving directing her purpose. But when it returned, she knew what to do. Prepare herself for its satiation. Driving to the city once again.
Now, years later, the urge has waned after having slowed down, years between cravings passing until desire no longer walked the long driveway to rap on her door.
Tucked into the forest surrounding her quiet home, on tree after tree, there hangs every one of her husbands, affairs, conquests. Some with only threads of sinew still clung to their bones, others crucified skeletons.
She wanders occasionally, around the lonelier holidays, into the forest to look at the men she once loved. Or, at least, those whom asked for, and received, the words, “I love you”.
A parting blessing – she only said them on the day before each of them died.
- - -
I'm a Canadian writer with a degree in English and Writing. My stories have been, or will be, published in Black Petals, Horror Sleaze Trash, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, Blood Moon Rising, and Microhorror.
By Rob Bliss
You have seen her already, and possibly forgotten her within the hour. She has the signs of beauty from head to toe: long hair, oval eyes, plump lips, small nose, and the slightest shadow showing the cleft in her chin. Her breasts are large enough but not too large. Slender waist, curved hips, long legs, and feet that could only be sculpted, they couldn’t be real.
She hides her eyes when she can, knowing they’re dangerous to both sexes. Her beauty is a weapon if she wants it to be. Her words only exist in a whisper because more is said with a tilt of her chin, the flicker of an eyebrow, a momentary crease in her brow.
The source of her power found her – or she found it – when she was eight years old. When her hair was a different colour, before she realized her appearance could be moulded into a variety of personas.
She knelt before Christ crucified in her family church, his painted wooden eyes staring down at her, blood waxed to his hands and feet, a dripping gash down his ribs. She vowed to always be pure for him, to fear him, to be his bride. No man could compete with her god.
Her first husband died in a tree. Thrown there when his car slammed into a concrete barrier. She imagined him soaring through glass, trailing a vapour of blood, until the limbs of the tree held him aloft, displaying him as a glorious death.
She loved the black she wore, the dress of fine thread, the veil of lace hiding her eyes, mouth and cheekbones better than any costume she had ever donned. The mirror showed her a persona she had never seen before, but one which fit her skin perfectly.
The insurance of her first husband made her wealthy enough to retire from the world. She shunned whatever friends she had accumulated, mere accessories to whichever persona she had worn during her married life.
She bought a small farm house away from every neighbour, surrounded by forest, her long driveway closed in by snowdrifts and an electronic fence. People forgot about her, which was her desire. She never shopped in the nearest town, but in towns distant, driving for miles there and then home.
Of course, she felt the loneliness from time to time. A short-lived, but intense, craving that possessed her, had to be satiated before it would wane and vanish, allow her to resume her life. She would venture into the city, dressed as one of her old selves. Her eyes left unshaded.
Her expertise at sex kept each man, convinced him to stay, to forego his old life, his friends, wife and children. His property became hers. So too his life.
Once she was finished with him, she knew she could go at least another year without the craving directing her purpose. But when it returned, she knew what to do. Prepare herself for its satiation. Driving to the city once again.
Now, years later, the urge has waned after having slowed down, years between cravings passing until desire no longer walked the long driveway to rap on her door.
Tucked into the forest surrounding her quiet home, on tree after tree, there hangs every one of her husbands, affairs, conquests. Some with only threads of sinew still clung to their bones, others crucified skeletons.
She wanders occasionally, around the lonelier holidays, into the forest to look at the men she once loved. Or, at least, those whom asked for, and received, the words, “I love you”.
A parting blessing – she only said them on the day before each of them died.
- - -
I'm a Canadian writer with a degree in English and Writing. My stories have been, or will be, published in Black Petals, Horror Sleaze Trash, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, Blood Moon Rising, and Microhorror.
