FICTION BY L.D. JORDAN

L.D. Jordan writes across genres and frequently makes space for her special interest in horror as a representation of societal complexities, and her work has appeared in print and on stage over time with various handles. She maintains a preference to focus on the present moment, including her projects.

Aside from writing, her greatest joy has been mothering two sons and being a devoted wife. All three are amazing gifts that have been a true source of growth and inspired living. She is a member of the HWA.

TRESPASS OF THE LOWER MIND
by L.D. Jordan

The early morning darkness cast shadows into the kitchen. A near-empty whisky bottle slipped from Victor’s hand and spun on its side before halting, neck pointed in the direction of...those things.

Victor squinted as four misshapen figures became more human in their ascension from inside the backyard. They each clutched garden tools he had left in their place for months in the zinnias, shriveled from neglect and relentlessly scorching from the sun.

In his haze of memories of his precious Josephine before she passed away, he missed their arrival on his deck. With an involuntary shuffle, he knocked over the dish of near-spoiled sympathy casserole. He almost slipped in the mess as he reached to open the drawer where he kept his knuckle-knife. Once Victor slipped his fingers through the grip, he met eyes with a sallow-skinned, gangling hoodlum flanked by lackeys.

They leered as their smirks spread into wide, rotten-toothed grins. Victor rattled his head and blinked as he focused on the shortest, whose appearance made him doubt his sanity. The creature’s intimidating muscular build was a temporary distraction from the boils that dotted its face and the stitches over its crusted eyes.

What the hell is it?

Victor traipsed through mounds that swelled from neglected chores.

Where did I put my phone?

Under the pressure of impending doom, he searched through the clutter. He heard them plod on steps. They were coming for him.

“Alexa, where’s my phone?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

Ugh, stupid tech.

Victor bickered momentarily with the device, trying to get it to respond to his need, only for it to ask him if he wanted to call Josephine. His frantic movement gave way to a moment of dry drowning. There was no breath. He entertained the possibility that in this complex universe, Josephine might actually answer if he let the device call her. Her name hung on the tip of his tongue, and his heart squeezed until he had lost another fragment of his soul. The sound of a palm slapping against the patio door brought him back from the dark space.

What am I doing?

“Alexa, call Victor.”

“Calling Victor’s mobile from Josephine.”

He cringed with the solacing crush of hearing her name. The phone rang from upstairs. There was no way he would figure out where it was.

“Alexa, Call 9-1-1.”

“Please call emergency services directly using a phone.”

Shit. What am I supposed to say? Think. Think.

The intruders stabbed at the glass panes of my sliding glass back door with pruners, shears, and a trowel. Victor jumped. His knuckles whitened as all his strength diverted to the knife he still held as his savior.

“You’d better get out of here! I’ve got a gun, and I’ll use it!”

If only I really had my gun. I shouldn’t have agreed to give it to Paxton...wait, that’s it!

“Alexa. Ask my buddy to send help!”

“Okay. I sent an alert to Paxton.”

Victor exhaled as his eyelids lowered and his shoulders dropped a notch.

The villainous hammering strength resounded. Victor’s lumpish one-two step got him closer to them. He decided to assert himself.

“Did you hear me? I will—”

The glass crackled into a pattern of a large face staring back at him.

How?

Victor’s brow furrowed. His mouth was agape as he stumbled back from the glass door, expecting its spectacular burst. And burst it did.

The shards of jagged glass bit into him like thousands of hungry mosquitoes. Victor stood, suspended in the moment, with his palms facing upward as he studied the fragments protruding from his forearms. When the fogginess cleared, he swung the knife without a clear target.

A debilitating stench filled the air. Victor gagged and heaved. He had never smelled anything like it. His aggression withdrew from him at every lurch. Victor inadvertently disarmed himself as a mixture of creamy potato chunks, cheese, and spirits fountained out of his mouth.

Did Paxton get the alert?

“Alexa, ask—”

The short monster with stitched eyes raced toward him with feet thudding like an elephant, trembling the house. He tackled Victor, and they both fell to the living room carpet while the other creatures cheered. Victor could not figure out what it was that had yanked him to the floor. Every move Victor made was equally matched, even though with eyes stitched shut, the thing could not see.

Echoes of Victor’s name whispered throughout the room, distracting him from his attacker.
The stitched one homed in and palm-struck Victor. He fell atop a large vase, contorting awkwardly and yelling when it broke beneath him. The already wilted flowers scattered while the acrid water seeped into his clothes. A kick to the face, and Victor was out.

*****

Once Victor was awake, he wished he were dead. It was an empty wish he had made many times since the loss of Josephine, but this time, he felt it wholly. He was a captive, bound in a chair by what he knew was his own paracord from his shed. He wondered just how long he had been out, on the floor of his own living room, surrounded by monsters.

There was nothing human about them. They were reminiscent of Bubba Sawyer, each wearing suits that Jame Gumb would design. Much of their ashen skin was a trypophobic’s worst nightmare. It was porous and foul. The things’ lurking and leering made his heart race.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

They lurked around him with baleful laughter. One by one, they said their names and nothing more, satisfying his inquiry while drawing blood from his ears as each utterance came along with layered wraithlike screeches. The scraggly female declared her name to be Dolores. The stitch-eyed one announced himself as Éala. The other two fetid ogres announced their names as Osloc and Ghadab.

Victor realized no help was coming. He had not heard his phone ring once. There were no visitors. The torture was cyclical, always launched or stopped by Dolores’s finger snaps. He grew weaker each moment, and every time his head bobbed to a fainting spell, they struck him.

And then something weird happened. In the madness of what eventually became hallucinations and fever, he found familiarity with them and the pain they inflicted. A certain numbness had set in amid the atrocities. He felt listless and was no longer consumed by fear. He wondered if this was the beginning of acceptance. He suspected he was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, where, in his agony, he had begun to oddly relate to his captors.

He sat, unmoving, in the chair, still bound by a cord. Sunrise came and then sunset, misery unrelenting; and then a cough set in. His pants had become urine-stained and padded with feces that dried over and created an intolerable itch.

After a while, he seemed to find his bearing once more and his reasoning returned. He was not one of these creatures! The stress of sitting in his own bodily wastes woke him from his numb drifting in and out of consciousness.

He begged relentlessly for mercy to clean himself. His petitioning drained his energy. Victor hacked until purulent sputum escaped his mouth and landed on a stack of support group pamphlets that accumulated in torn strips and crumples whenever he rejected them.

Through blurred vision, he watched Ghadab squat down and tilt his head like a dog to stare at the mucus blob before sniffing it and whispering to the others. Ghadab looked at Dolores, who nodded to approve mercy. Ghadab and Oslac unbound him and brought him to standing. They forced him in the direction of the half bath.

“No, not here. Please. A shower. It’s upstairs.”

Dolores nodded.

Only after smacking him on the back of the head did Ghadab lead in obligation. Once upstairs, the four stood in the bathroom, barely giving Victor space to move. He held his limbs stiff as he removed the tainted clothing.

I don’t understand what this is about. They don’t seem to want anything. They could have just killed me by now. Is it only to see me suffer? Haven’t I suffered enough in this life?

He turned on the shower and stepped in. The hot water cascaded over him, and he plucked out the glass fragments still lodged in the eldritch patio door destruction. Blood dribbled from the wounds, fading from crimson to blush in the swirls down the drain.

Victor reached for a towel in illusory safety. Dolores gave a shrill, inscrutable command. The four seized him and licked the lacerations, the blood smearing their faces as they lapped. 

The creatures’ tongues felt like winter-green alcohol in its red-hot duplicity, trapping him in escapable needling. His eyes rolled back to white as his body stiffened in rejection of the warm tongues that saturated him with gelatinous froth. He scrunched his nose and contorted his lips as the leachate odor escaped their mouths.

In an effort to make it all stop, Victor struggled against them, yelling out in the hope of rescue from all the neighbors he had been rejecting out of his life. But Dolores opened her mouth to reveal rows of sharp teeth. She chomped into the muscle of his chest just over his heart, instantly shutting him up. It was a pitbull grip, opening flesh, drawing blood…inviting death.

A spike of adrenaline surged through Victor. This was it. He had to fight or flight, but hopefully both. He recognized this as his very final opportunity.

He yanked his arms free and shoved his way out of their constriction. His thudding heart deafened him while his eyes flitted through the room, in search of a saving grace.

The hair scissors glimmered on the sink. He grabbed them and swung them so wildly that his arms whiffled. They jumped away from him in the small space. Éala and Osloc collided and tumbled backward into the tub. Ghadab turned into a deer in the headlights as he observed their folly.

It left Dolores wide open for Victor to deliver a Haymaker. His barreling punch knocked her into the wall, crackling along the imprint of her head. Invigorated by the upper hand, Victor plunged the scissors into her soft belly.

There was an explosion of sound from all of them. He tumbled back briefly, observing the spectacle of them wailing together as if they were each stabbed.

Is this how I can take them out? By killing Dolores, does that somehow cause the others to experience her pain? Is something collective going on here?

Victor yanked the scissors from Delores’s abdomen and stabbed her over and over, each wound puckering and sucking back the blade until it oozed Stygian blood. She slid to the floor, looking into his eyes, almost human, as though she were deserving of empathy.

A maggot wiggled from one of the wounds. Its grubby body undulated in an attempt to crawl out into the world. The larva was soon joined by others, creating a flowing off-white color moving across the monster’s skin.

It was Victor’s breaking point. His mouth grew moist as his stomach somersaulted. He placed the back of his hand to his mouth as though it had the power to prevent the dance of his uvula-expelling gastric juice. The stomach acid spewed forth and landed on Ghadab, and steam rose from the creature and it began to disintegrate, crumbling in small pieces onto the bathroom floor tile.

It was Victor’s chance!

He fled out of the bathroom but tumbled hard in his rush down the stairs. Pain drilled through his body as he rose and escaped through the patio doors. The crushed glass burrowed into his soles, further turning his effort to run into a hobble.

He stood in the yard and turned back to see if the creatures were following.

What am I doing? I made it out alive; am I going to just stand here and let them come to get me once again?

That thought slapped him in the face and prodded him into motion once again. Victor made it out into the neighborhood street in front of his home. “Help! Somebody, help me!”

Neighbors surfaced. He saw their appalled expressions as they shouted insults at him. Some hurled objects as they commanded him to cover his naked body.

Why isn’t anyone helping me?

He covered his crotch with both hands.

“Somebody, call the police. They’re coming!”

A few continued to stare without action, but one man with friendly eyes emerged from his home with a blanket and wrapped it around him. “Geesh, Victor! You’re a mess! Let’s get you back home.”

Victor felt apprehension, but this was his neighbor, his friend, so he tried to explain. “Paxton, there was a break-in. They tortured me and—”

“It’s okay, I understand.”

“You understand what? I’m telling you, there are these creatures—”

Paxton spoke slowly, almost condescending in his tone as he repeated, “It’s okay, I understand.”

“They almost killed me!”

“Here, Victor, why don’t you and I both go to my house? Let’s talk about it.”

“I’m not one of your psychiatric patients! I’m telling you, there are monsters in my house!”

Paxton kept a safe distance as he trailed behind Victor who cut through his yard, climbed the steps, let himself inside Paxton’s front door.

Victor sat on the couch without being invited and grabbed the nearest bottle of liquor with a few ounces remaining. Victor chugged. Paxton’s shoes crunched over the debris as he made his way inside.

Paxton continued to probe for answers until Victor further swaddled himself in the blanket and sputtered out the whole story. Then he told his friend to get his gun and give it back.

“Victor, we had an agreement. You may never talk to me again, but I cannot give the gun to you. Not after last time. Josephine would not want—”

“You do not get to do that. You have no idea what she would want. She shared a life with me, not you. And you know what she would want me to do? Shoot those monsters dead.”

“There was no one out there chasing you. All I could see was you, in the raw, causing a scene. We need to make the call. You said you would go if it got worse at any point. This is worse.”

“No one ever listens to me anymore. What is the point!”

Victor stood, dropping the blanket, once again exposing his naked body. He pointed in anger at his injuries.

“If I am making it up, where did these come from, huh?”

Paxton stared at the broken patio doors. His eyes affirmed his insinuation of self-inflicted injuries as he instinctively took his phone out and dialed.

“9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

Victor wrapped himself back up in the blanket and sat rocking angrily as he listened to the spiel. “You are wrong. It was not all in my head! I am not delusional!”

Paxton ignored his friend and continued to talk to the dispatch operator.

“Look!” Victor suddenly screamed. He pointed to the sliding glass door across the room.

Two creatures filled the patio entry with their strange figures. Paxton dropped the phone as he caught sight of the remaining two monsters.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Paxton said while glancing around the room for something to defend himself with.

Dolores bellowed, “Your turn.”

The four extended their arms toward Paxton with palms facing up. Small holograms projected open eyeballs in their hands. The images emitted from them showed Paxton during his childhood. The flashbacks were hypnotic as he witnessed his mother caring for him and loving him over time.

“This cannot be real. I must be dreaming,” Paxton stammered.

Paxton narrowed his focus and looked at the Éala’s hologram, which was on the same day. It showed him leaving to help Paxton, but also showed the inside of his home where his mother suffered a heart attack, and his wife was frantically giving CPR.

A siren blared in the distance, taking his attention off of Éala. Paxton’s phone displayed a call notification from his wife, blocked by the ongoing emergency call. The projections from their palms stopped.

Paxton’s face was red and beaded with sweat as he attempted to make his way to the front door, but the two monsters blocked his way. The operator’s voice penetrated through the noise of the shoving match that ensued, asking if Paxton was still there.

“Don’t hurt him!” Victor cried to no avail. The two creatures jumped and took Paxton down in a raging attack, penetrating his flesh like vultures. Without so much as a blink or a flinch, Victor watched the wounds gape as Paxton fought his way out the door, calling out for his mother. Once he made it out, the creatures did not chase after him but they feasted on what parts they had already taken.

Maybe the monsters will remain distracted. Maybe I can make my way out the back door. Hell, even a window would do.

But he knew it was over. He had nothing left in him to fight. They approached and Victor felt an odd wet on his cheeks before he realized they were tears. He was numb. He looked over at a photo on the wall of him and Josephine. A smile crept across his lips as he drifted off.

I surrender. Whether it be in heaven or on earth, tomorrow will be a new day.        

*****

Weeks had gone by since Victor declared himself to have survived the unexplainable. He stood in a clean home, dressed in his good clothing that he had not cared to wear since Josephine passed. He moved with humility as he collected himself in the ritualistic support of Paxton in the loss of his mother. Not blinded by his sorrow, he picked up the heavy casserole he had ordered from the grocer and a generic greeting card with all the right words that he was not equipped to say.

Victor left his house and made his way down the road, towards his street, thinking of all the ways he could avoid cliché condolence statements. When he reached Paxton’s home, all four creatures were standing out front like Royal guards, except Victor could not see them. He didn’t know that the wounded creatures had regenerated because he couldn’t remember them. They were invisible to him.

He caught a chill as he passed Dolores and frowned at a slight stench he detected. Unsure of what it was, he chose to shrug it off. He rang the doorbell several times, but there was no answer.

“Paxton, I know you are in there. I am just going to leave this out front for you, okay. Call me if you—”

Don’t you dare say that. Be better.

“I’ll call you soon,” Victor stated in self-correction.

He placed the items down and started to walk back home when he heard the door open behind him. He caught a glimpse of Paxton taking the casserole. He looked possessed. Victor gave a slight wave before the door slammed shut. He understood all too well and took no offense as he crossed the street.

Another neighbor saw Victor walking and greeted him before blabbing on and on about community happenings, probing him about why he had not been out in so long, and suggesting it would be good for him.

Filled with rage, Victor cursed his neighbor and shoved him before walking away. When Victor went back inside his own home, he slammed the door behind him. Ghadab was inside his home, cackling as though he had been waiting for that moment forever. Before Victor could open his mouth to scream, Ghadab assailed him and dug his teeth deep into jugular, tearing it away.

Months later, during a wellness check, the authorities found Victor’s body decayed and riddled with vermin. It was declared a suicide.