Guru as Ghoul -- a guest post by Shouts from the Abyss

Making Guest Post, Making Guest Post
by Tom B. Taker

Blearily I rubbed my eyes. “Blogdramedy, Blogdramedy,” I moaned. Damn, she was riding me hard. I’d been staring for too long at a blank piece of paper (computer, actually) and a little dude with a pick-axe was busy inside my skull doing God-knows-what just a few inches behind my eyes. His job was to create the pain that gave my prose its trademark crispness that always made it such a pleasure to read. But it hurt like hell.

Why had I accepted this guest blog chore I derided myself for the umpteenth time. The paper was still blank, my head was pounding and hours had been killed. All in all it was turning out to be a most delightful evening.

I glanced at the empty shot glass in my hand. At least the tequila wasn’t drinking itself.

Slowly I peered around the dimly lit room, as if fearing I might be watched. Then I leaned forward and lay my head upon the desk. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to take a break and rest my eyes for the briefest of moments…

The twinkly sound of a harp and wavy flickers of light startled me and I jerked my head up. This was followed by another staccato blast of lightning right outside the rain-streaked window just as deep rolling thunder shook the house.

“Damn,” I muttered. It had been a perfectly clear night. “A storm?”

“No shit.”

No, not familia. That’s Italian for family. I said familiar. Oh, never mind.

I jumped out of my skin when a voice in the room somehow responded to my rhetorical question. I looked over and saw a creature with a pumpkin for a head lurking in the shadows. The pumpkin eyes were staring back at me. Was it just me or was the room suddenly 15 degrees colder? And where did that bank of fog come from?

“Dammit, Jack! You smug bastard. How the hell did you sneak up on me?”

Only an arm’s length away, he was reclining in a chair, exactly like my own. He must have brought it with him my cobwebbed brain attempted to reason. About my height and build, we could have been mistaken as twins but for the size of his grotesque bulbous head and the fact that he was much better looking. The pumpkin that served as his cranium was quite ordinary, bright orange, and had the standard toothy smile and simple triangles for the eyes and nose, but the glow from within was somehow disturbingly wrong. His body, however, was mostly covered head to toe with what appeared to be dirty bandages that were oozing some sort of puss-like fluid. And where you’d normally see skin on a person there was a dark transcendental fuzziness that seemed to be there and not there at the same time. The fuzziness that were his hands were fiddling with a carving knife. Oddly, a stethoscope hung around his neck.

“I told you I’d be back,” he said.

“What do you want,” I cleverly retorted, “and wipe that silly grin off your face.”

He leaned forward and his face slowly slid out of the darkness and into the light. He was indeed glowing but it was not the light of a candle from this earthly world. There was something very unnatural about that glow. On my hand there’s a ridge leading up from the back of the thumb where a vein is close enough to surface that the pulse can be seen in the movement of the skin. Behind his dead glowing eyes I saw moist decaying organic matter. And it was pulsing in that very same way.

“You know exactly why I’m here,” he said, his eye surging as pulpy goo leaked from the corner.

I was shaken. “I told you to never come here again!”

“Then why did you invite me back,” he replied, laughing. “Besides, I’ve been dying to see you.”

“Like hell I’d invite you. You’re mad!” It was quite possible that fear was hurting the effectiveness of my arguments. I tried taking calming breaths but that didn’t help.

My guest merely shrugged, looked at me askance, and, as I watched in shocked horror, casually slid the knife into his left eye and began a hewing motion on the gelatinous mass as easily as if he was spit-shining his shoes. Eventually I realized he was still talking.

“… was all up to you. But would you listen to me? No!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Liar,” he spit at me. I wiped the seeds from my face with the back of my trembling hand.

With a deft flick of the wrist the knife scooped a chunk of something out of his eye. He lowered his hand and held it out to me so I could see. The glob he had just excised was cupped there and somehow it was still pulsing. As if it had a life of it’s own. Repulsed I tried to back away and almost fell out of my chair.

“Look at it,” he commanded. “This is your doing. Remember that. Always remember that.”

He tossed the stuff at me and I instinctively raised my arms in defense. As I did he leaped out of his chair and slammed the knife deep in my chest. I felt it pierce my heart as I lamely shouted in surprise and pain.

Suddenly the world was light again. The night was again calm. The man with the pumpkin head was gone. And I had fallen back in my chair and was now laying on the floor clutching my chest. It felt like my heart had exploded. But I could still hear his voice ringing in my ears.

“Damn fool. My name isn’t Jack. It’s Plaque. P-L-A-Q-U-E. Make a note of it. And I just killed you.” It was the last thing I’d ever hear.

The world faded away and I grew smaller and smaller until my brain twisted inside-out and I was no more.

A ghostly tom(b) taker. See what I did there?

—

It only took just short of 14 months for this to happen. Having Tom B. Taker guest blog on Blogdramedy. I must work on my sales pitch. What should I have done to engage the Guru sooner? Throw money? Booze? Raw meat?

Doesn’t matter. He’s here now. Trapped for all eternity. (Door clangs shut. Key scraps in lock. Something liquid begins to drip. And then the screaming begins.)