FICTION BY TOM FOLSKE

Tom Folske lives in Minnesota with his wife, five children, and three black cats. He holds a BA in Creative Writing and has had nearly sixty published stories—in print, e-book, and as audio recordings—on several different continents. He writes everything from splatterpunk to children’s horror, science fiction, fantasy, horror comedy, and he has even dabbled in erotica.

When not writing, he likes to hike, fish, read, watch movies, see plays, play video games, play cards, and spend time with his family.

You can find Tom HERE and HERE

EMMA RAVEN
by Tom Folske

Emma Raven watched as Merrick steadied the stock of his shotgun against his shoulder and pulled the trigger, blowing the face off the security guard. Too late, Emma thought, because the guard had already shot her in the abdomen.

She clamped her hands tightly to her stomach. Hot blood seeped out from between her fingers and soaked her groin and thighs with runny, warm stickiness. Pike ran to Emma as he grabbed a large black duffel bag that bulged from every angle slung weightily over his shoulder. He waved an Uzi in the air as he screamed for the people in the bank to stay down.

When he was close enough, Pike looked at Emma’s wound and all the blood that had so suddenly pooled around her. His face went ghostly white as he gestured to Merrick for help. How could this have happened? The three partners had planned it all out so well!

Merrick lowered his shotgun and picked Emma up off the ground, carefully cradling her in his big, muscular arms, and trying to make his embrace as gentle and painless for her as possible. He then started to run for the front door of the bank with the wounded Emma. Pike followed behind them with his back to Merrick’s and watched to make sure none of the people on the ground were going to get up.

Outside of the bank, their get-away car was illegally parked on the curb right in front of the entryway. Merrick quickly placed Emma gently down in the back seat then jumped into the front passenger seat. From the waist down, his black leather trench coat was soaked in the girl’s blood; he quickly tore it off and threw it to the floor of the car. He was only wearing a beater underneath.

Pike came around to the other side of the car. He opened the door and threw the duffel bag onto Merrick’s lap before hastily jumping in and starting the car. There was a loud screeching sound and the smell of burning rubber filled the air as Pike ripped down the road and away from the bank.

*****

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Pike kept repeating as he ripped off his ski mask, his Irish accent showing through in his rage to match his fiery red hair. He was steering the car erratically down the road. Pike’s face had turned beet red, the way it always did when he got pissed off and he slammed the palm of his fist against the rim of the steering wheel a couple of times.

“We gotta get her to a hospital, man! She’s gonna die,” Merrick said worriedly. Visible beads of sweat seeped out onto his forehead. He was no longer wearing the red bandana around his mouth, but he kept the sunglasses on.

Merrick cautiously turned around and looked in the back seat. Emma was lying on her side holding her stomach; she was still wearing her costume, which consisted of a curly blonde wig, a blue bandana and a pair of white-rimmed heart-shaped glasses she had picked up at the dollar store. Merrick carefully removed the wig, exposing Emma’s naturally black hair, and then bandana and the glasses.

Emma’s face had gone ghastly white, and her eyes were closed. Merrick took off his own glasses and gazed at the large pool of blood forming under Emma’s wound and staining the soft gray of the seat cushioning underneath her. It looked like she was barely breathing.

Emma opened her eyes weakly, and she looked at Merrick. “That went well,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“What the fuck happened?” Pike asked, trying to look back at Emma and drive at the same time.

“I didn’t see him until it was too late.”

“They gonna be on our shit like white on rice,” Merrick said. “I just killed a fuckin’ cop.”

“You did what was necessary,” Pike said. He turned his head to look back and saw all the blood collecting on the seat. He quickly turned his focus back to the road and started to mumble the word “Fuck” over and over again under his breath.

“I’m saying no hospital. I’m not going to jail over his,” Emma said as sternly as she could.

“At least prison ain’t dead,” Merrick told her.

“No. N. O. No.”

“What the fuck am I doing? The turn for the hospital is coming up,” Pike almost shouted. He was getting very nervous and jittery. “Make up your minds right now!”

“Please Emma. Me and Pike’ll find a way to bust yo’ ass out. I promise.”

Emma still resisted. “I’m not having that on my conscience if something happens to you guys. Listen to me! No thank you.”

Pike decided for all three. “Emma you’re about to fucking die. I’ve never even seen that much fucking blood come out of anything alive. I have no fucking clue how in the hell you’re still alive right now. We have no people out here to fucking help us. We have to go to the fucking hospital.”

He turned right onto the road that led to the hospital. The way he was driving, either they would be there in less than ten minutes or all three of them would wind up dead in a crash.

When Pike got into the urban area of the city, he had to slow down. It was dangerous just being in this car and he didn’t want to attract any further unwanted attention to them by speeding. Merrick had been looking back and checking on Emma every thirty seconds or so for the entire drive. Merrick said that she appeared to have gone to sleep.

Both Pike and Merrick were scared shitless.

Merrick looked back and this time his heart sank. Emma no longer appeared to be breathing. He started to reach back toward her when suddenly she gasped and drew in a deep, laborious breath. Emma’s breathing resumed again afterward, but it was so shallow that Merrick had to physically put his hand on her chest just to make sure she was taking in air.

“How is she?” Pike asked.

“Not good.”

“Is she going to die?”

“I don’t know. We gotta get her to the hospital fast.”

“I know. I’m going as fast as I fucking can.”

Neither man spoke after that, which led to an uncomfortable silence. The presence of death filled the air like a pungent odor. This was not a new scent to either man, but it was a scent neither of them would ever get used to.

Pike was angry at the situation. Merrick could think of nothing other than the pale, black-haired woman dying in the backseat who he was certain was going to pass away any second now. Both men felt personally responsible. How had their careful plans turned into such a clusterfuck?

“We ain’t never should have brought her. She gonna die at twenty-four; her life ain’t even started yet. This some stupid ass shit man. Money ain’t worth this kinda shit,” Merrick said sadly.

“Well, we did bring her, and she got shot. She’s not going to fucking die though because we are almost at the fucking hospital. You just lean back there and tell her that right now. Tell her that we are almost at the hospital.”

Merrick leaned into the back seat and grabbed Emma’s hand that wasn’t clutched to her stomach. He held her petite fingers in between both of his big bear-paw hands. Emma’s eyes fluttered, opened slowly and she looked up at him. Her eyes were red and glossy; it looked like she was really high. He watched her try to lift her head. She started to rise ever so slightly off the seat cushion before a look of pain shot like lightning across her face and she let herself fall back onto the seat.

“It’ll be okay Emma. We almost there. You gonna be jus’ fine. The hospital only a couple mo’ blocks,” Merrick said as cheerfully as he could, feigning hope.

Emma smiled up at him. Her pearl white teeth were stained with ruby red blood, presumably from the back of her throat. It looked to Merrick like her gums were bleeding. It was the most upsetting thing Merrick had ever seen in his life and he had just blown the face off of a police officer not even ten minutes ago.

Then he happened to randomly glance up. He looked out the rear window. Behind them—about two car lengths back—was a black and white police car.

Emma’s eyes were closed again. Merrick turned around slowly and faced the front. Pike looked over at Merrick. He looked like he was about to shit himself from fear.

“Oh god she’s dead, isn’t she!” Pike shouted.

“No,” Merrick said shaking his head.

“Well, what’s the problem then?”

“We got company.”

Pike looked into the rear-view mirror. “Fuck!”

The cop car kept its distance. Pike just continued to try to drive normally. His hands were trembling on the steering wheel and his knuckles were white; he wished he had smoked the last of the crack to take the edge off. That was the problem; there were no drugs left. That was the reason for the armed robbery of a bank.

Merrick slowly reached down and put his hand around his shotgun and his finger on the trigger. The light in front of them turned from green to yellow to red as they approached it. They stopped at the light. The police car pulled up into the turn lane beside them.

Pike made eye contact with the cop and nodded just as any innocent driver would; real friendly-like. But the cop’s face was stony and hard, and kind of resembled Clint Eastwood. Worse, the cop didn’t smile back.

Pike turned his head back to face the light. He could see the officer staring at him out of the corner of his eye. His bladder felt like it was going to explode, and he was beginning to sweat all over. He saw the cop move his arm inside the cruiser. Pike knew the cop must be either typing their plates into his computer or he was calling for back up. Either way Pike saw it as bad. Very bad.

The light changed. The officer turned right, and Pike went straight. He took one last look in his rearview mirror to make sure the cop was really gone. He couldn’t believe it. He let his breath out in one long exhale.

“Fuck, that was close!” Pike said.

“Hells yeah. I ain’t tryin’ to get in two shoot-outs in one day. Fuck that noise,” Merrick replied as he moved his hand away from his gun.

Merrick looked into the back. The blood from her mouth had spilled onto her lips and it looked like she was wearing blood-red lipstick.

Emma didn’t say anything; her eyes just kept looking at the window. Almost all of her clothes were soaked in blood.

Pike came up to the stop sign and let the car come to a complete stop. Emma suddenly sat up before Merrick could stop her and opened the back door. Emma fell out of the car, to both Pike and Merrick’s utter surprise. Somehow she found the strength for a lopsided run toward an abandoned building.

“What the fuck is she doing? How the hell did she manage to get up?” Pike asked. He pulled the car around the corner and parked it. Merrick threw the duffel bag in the back, trying not to hit any blood spots and then he opened his door. Pike opened his own door and both men ran into the building after the sweet, young, black-haired Emma Raven.

*****

Pike and Merrick followed the thick dripping blood trail Emma had left after jumping from the car. There was too much blood spilled on the ground for how fast she was moving. This wasn’t good.

The scarlet-spattered trail led the two men through the smashed and splintered wood of the front door of the decrepit brick building and into a huge empty room with trash and debris beginning to devour the emptiness from all sides. In one corner, there was a piss-stained mattress. In the middle of the room, in a dirty spot on the floor, Emma was lying on her back with her legs together and her arms spread like Jesus. She was staring intently up at the ceiling. Blood was rolling down out of the corners of her lips. She didn’t acknowledge that Merrick or Pike had entered the room.

“Emma,” Pike called. She wasn’t breathing.

“She’s dead, man. She’s fucking dead. She wanted to die alone. This is so fucked up,” Merrick said.

“Emma?” Pike called one more time, moving closer to her.

“What the fuck are we gonna do?” Merrick yelled. It echoed through the empty room.

“We can’t help her now. We have to leave.”

*****

Suddenly the two men could hear a loud sizzling sound that filled the room and kept getting louder. It was like the sound of pouring ice water onto a burning red stove pan. Merrick and Pike crouched to the floor and held their ears, looking around for the source of the sound.

The sizzling seemed to be coming from Emma. Both men stared at the dead girl. Suddenly her torso shot forward into the air making her body into an “L” shape. The sound was so loud now that Merrick’s nose started to bleed.

Emma’s body suddenly started to smoke. It was as if it was coming out of her pores. The smoke was white, almost clear. It filled the empty room quickly. White fire licked the air around Emma’s lips as it shot out of her mouth, like she was breathing gasoline. Her eyes melted and ran down her cheeks as fire erupted in her eye sockets.

Emma’s torso fell back down onto the floor, her face still on fire. She then thrust her stomach up into the air in a violent spasm, making her back arch in an extremely impossible way.

The smoke that was still shooting out of her pores turned into flame. Emma’s entire body was swallowed in the impossibly white fire. Merrick and Pike were forced to turn away from the intense brightness, staring at it was burning their retinas.

Even with his arm over his closed eyes Merrick could sense the fire getting brighter. It was heating of the entire room. Merrick was starting to sweat. He moved back against the wall.

Pike stripped off his jacket and joined Merrick against the back wall.

After a few moments the light dimmed, and Pike and Merrick were able to look again. Emma’s body was burned into a mirror ash effigy of her former self. Every tooth, hair, and nail was perfectly preserved in the gray-white ash from the God-white fire. The flame of the fire was still burning bright in the middle of the ash idol. It began to grow taller and soon erupted through the ash.

Both men forgot that they needed to leave because they were so mesmerized by the sight of a young woman who was suddenly self-combusting.

The pure white flame then opened itself, folded itself and formed itself. It made arms and legs. It sculpted a head and a face. The flame formed delicate fingers and toes. It formed Emma’s nude body in serene white flame. Then the flame formed individual strands of hair, nails and teeth. The fire began to diminish again. It became tolerable to look at. Its light faded further still into black hair, porcelain white skin, pink lips and blue eyes.

Merrick felt the fire go out. He lowered his arm. Directly in front of him, entirely nude and standing over the remains of a human-shaped mound of ash was the girl he knew as Emma. He could see that the gunshot wound was no longer there, but she looked different in other ways too. Her skin looked softer, fresher, like the skin of a newborn. Her face also had a look of newness to it, of flawlessness. Merrick thought he remembered a small scar below Emma’s eye that seemed to not be there anymore.

“Merrick…” Emma said weakly.

Merrick stood up and walked to her, not knowing what else to do.

Pike stumbled over to Emma in disbelief. “What the hell are you?” he asked in a whisper.

“Hell is the right word,” the Emma-thing said. “I’m reborn from the fire below. Now I’m just as evil as you two.”

Merrick nodded at Pike’s coat that he was still holding in his hand. Pike handed the coat to Merrick, and he draped it over Emma’s naked body. It covered her quite well.

“Thank you,” Emma said and the three of them left the building. “Let’s spend the money. I could use a hit and then we’ll plan what to do next.”