Cheryl not only felt her eyes leave their sockets… she heard them. The pain wasn’t as excruciating as she feared when they swelled and then shot from her skull to dangle on the sides of her down-turned face. The pain was more of an ache, but the worst part was the pop, pop sound and the cold sensation of air entering her head through two new openings that should never exist.
At first, her vision was like watching a TV with a skipping signal. She saw Gwen, then the sky, then back to Gwen, and then the pale faced onlookers, which she registered as moving her way. When her eyes settled on their stretched optic nerves, thin veins sprouted from the dangling orbs like strands of blue thread and fastened themselves to Cheryl’s forehead.
Her head, still in the upside-down position, stretched away from her body on an elongating neck with a series of snaps, crackles, and pops. She pushed herself up on her hands and feet into a rather ugly, yet well formed crab walk position. Her breasts, now pointing toward the sky from her concave chest, burst open loosing a mass of squirming black tentacles while stiff tufts of bristling hair cropped up on various areas of her body. With her mouth now up and the top of her head down, her hair hung in what appeared to be a blood matted beard.
“Damn Cheryl, you really look like shit,” Gwen said, smirking.
Taffy laughed while the crow offered up an unpleasant chuckle.
Things were not going the way Cheryl had planned... no, correction, that was the understatement of the year… this was a complete fuckeroo if there ever was one, and now on top of everything else, her stomach was rolling like a mother fucker. Shaking it off, she tested her mobility. She took a shambling step and nearly fell in a heap, but managed to catch herself with her newly positioned hands / feet.
“I will have to say, George, that is one of the most ridiculous monsters I’ve ever seen.”
Cheryl twisted her head to see the onlookers from the funeral home join the party. She wondered why these crazy fucks weren’t running home to mamma when she realized they were all semi-transparent and in various stages of decay. The one who called her pathetic had a majority of her face sagging down on the front of her black dress. George, whoever the fuck that was, had a hole in the top of his head the size of a tennis ball like he had taken the chicken shit way out of life.
“That she is Gladys, that she is,” George said, nodding his ruined head. The others joined the nodding and Cheryl saw the nose fall off a rather large black man and into the front pocket of his shirt.
She focused her attention back on Gwen. “You fucking bitch. You brought this on me didn’t you?” A stabbing pain racked her abdomen with such force she nearly collapsed. “Don’t even tell me I’m starting my period. Monsters are not supposed to have periods. They’re supposed-” Another cramp hit her with a vengeance and she felt something swelling in her intestines.
“Unbelievable,” growled Taffy. “What an idiot. Of course, I don’t know why that should surprise me after having to live with her stupid ass for the last five years.”
Gwen reached down and affectionately stroked Taffy’s blond fur. “Come, come Cheryl. How can you say I brought this on when you were the one who just rolled over and went back to sleep leaving me to choke on my own vomit.” As if to emphasize this, Gwen coughed spewing pale orange fluid from her mouth in a chunky spray.
“You’re the one who couldn’t hold her booze,” Cheryl hissed. “What was I supposed to do? Take the drinks out of your hand? Pump your fucking stomach?” Another cramp hit Cheryl and this time it was punctuated with a rather large wet fart.
“And classy too,” Taffy said, rolling her eyes.
“You see Cheryl, thanks to you, my spirit was cursed to spend eternity walking the earth with a throat full of puke. You know how hard it is to pick up a cute dead guy when all you can do is gurgle out puke breath? It’s damn hard.” Gwen coughed again, peppering George’s black suit with flesh colored chunks. George looked down, plucked off the biggest piece and popped it in his mouth. But before his could chew it up, it dropped through a hole under his chin and stuck back on his suit. Cheryl grinned and continued.
“However, all was not lost as I was able to make a deal with someone who has become a very close friend of mine.” She winked at the crow, which winked back. “A sort of two for one deal so to speak.”
“Yeah? Well I think that’s bullshit because if you really had a throat full of puke you would just be gargling away like you did that night I left you laying on your back. You sounded like a damn percolating coffee pot, and I couldn’t wait for it to stop so I could go back to sleep.” Cheryl winced as another cramp hit hard below the navel. Despite the pain she was starting to get a feel for her developing form. She took a couple of quick steps to one side, then the other, her hands and feet making dull thudding sounds in the thick grass.
“Oh, that the beauty of it, Cheryl. Thanks to you killing your little brother I was credited with one of the two hell bound souls needed to complete my deal, so now I’m only coughing up puke every few minutes, which is not bad, but not good.” She smiled as if humoring herself, “You know poor Billy never was one to believe in God and Satan, but I’ll bet he has a whole new perspective on it now.”
Cheryl couldn’t care less if Billy was with God, Satan, or the fucking man on the moon. Right now, her situation was the only thing that mattered. “And what if I don’t kill anyone else? What then?” Cheryl stretched her neck, bobbing her head up and down like an ostrich. She glanced at the suited up zombies who all wore smug grins on their rotting faces. She made a quick move in their direction dissipating two back to whence they came and causing the noseless black dude to knock Gladys down to the ground with a squish.
Gwen laughed. “See, you’re starting to like your new self already, and as far as you not killing anyone else… that’s like saying I haven’t been tasting my last Quarter-Pounder with cheese for the last six months.”
Cheryl was only half listening to her cousin as the pain in her guts increased to near apocalyptic levels. She was reminded of the time she had taken on the Eat the guacamole burrito as big as your head and get it for free challenge and spent the next five hours glued to the toilet. She started crab-walking in tight circles screaming and cursing, all to the amusement of the crowd. Stopping suddenly, she arched her back, which was really her stomach, and pushed.
She had never had a baby but if she had, she felt sure this was worse. Other than the fact this was popping from her ass, what appeared to be the top of a head crowned, stretching her bung strings to an impossible diameter. Something brown and hair covered slipped out, shooting from her ass and passing through the spirit of the black noseless guy before he had time to yell ‘you crazy mofo bitch’. Gwen jumped back stepping on Taffy who cursed her existence, and sending the crow squawking from one shoulder to the other.
Grunting and screaming, Cheryl pushed again, this time resulting in a world class episiotomy ripping its way from her stretched-out bung clear to her swollen mud flaps as Billy’s skull popped out and landed on the ground like rotten gourd. Partially liquefied brains spilled from the eye sockets forming a gray pool around the grinning skull.
Cheryl stared at the expulsion thinking how wrong she had been to ever call Billy a little shit.
“Now that looks rather tasty,” Taffy said strolling over the mess.
Cheryl twisted her head and cocked back her neck. She couldn’t believe this damned cat. Oh Taffy, you’ve made two major mistakes in my book. One is having ever been born, and two-
The fat cat walked up to Billy’s skull, giving it a sniff.
-is getting within my striking distance.
Cheryl shot her head forward while stretching her mouth open as wide as a bear trap. With one great snap, the only remaining evidence of Taffy was its fluffy tail dropping to the ground.
“It’s too bad cats don’t have souls,” Gwen said in matter of fact tone. “or my part in these theatrics would be thankfully over.”
Cheryl crunched up the cat, enjoying the hot juices as they ran down her throat and then swallowed it in two great gulps. Best pussy I’ve ever eaten, she thought, licking her lips. She then focused her forehead mounted eyeballs on Gwen and decided she didn’t give two shits if Gwen got what she wanted or not. After all, her own needs were the most important and although she hadn’t become the monster she had in mind, she was still a monster. The urge to kill and the need to feed was quickly becoming a major priority… hell, it was becoming the only priority, and her first order of business was to finish what she’d been dreaming about when this whole idea was conceived. Do away with her pathetic excuse of a mother.
Turning, she ran with amazing speed through the cemetery entrance and onto the road, her hands and feet pistoning in perfect synchronization. She couldn’t wait to see the look on her mother’s face when she tore her throat out with one big bite. As a matter of fact, she might just-
The sound of an approaching car made her stop.
***
Rita Gadowski, aka Cheryl’s mom, turned on to Bird Road, which ran past Fern Cliff Cemetery. Bob, her husband, road shotgun and looked causally out the side window.
“Where can they be?” Rita mumbled, using a finger to pick a piece of Captain Crunch from her teeth. “I know our Billy wouldn’t be out all night unless that girl of yours put him up to it.” She knew this had to have something to do with Cheryl. Stupid little bitch was always causing trouble.
“Now don’t be give me all the blame for that girl. Hell, as far as I know she’s not even mine. Probably spawn of that damned Charlie’s Chips guy you always had making deliveries when I wasn’t home.” Bob said while picking out his own chunk of breakfast.
“Just shut up Bob and keep an eye out for them.” Rita thought about rebuking his statement, but being as the dumb bastard might actually be right about the Charlie’s Chips man, she decided to leave it lay. She pulled around the curve at the cemetery entrance and wrinkled up her face in disgust. “What in the hell is that?” she asked pointing her teeth-picking finger at the shambling thing on the road directly in front of them. It looked like a giant hair-covered crab, but where in the hell would-
“I think it’s a rabid wolf or something, and I suggest you hit the gas,” Bob said grabbing the dash with both hands.
Rita didn’t think it looked anything like a rabid wolf but Bob’s idea of running the thing down was the first good idea she heard uttered from his pie hole this year. Tightening her grip on the steering wheel, she jammed the accelerator to the floor.
***
Cheryl heard the roar of an engine jumping into passing gear and spun her head around just in time to see her mom’s 1988 Buick Lesabre bearing down on her. You have to be fucking kidding me was Cheryl’s last thought as the chrome bumper hit her at 50 mph.
Her head snapped forward slamming on the car’s hood before whipping down and under the car’s chassis. A sound like a fifty-five gallon drum of Kentucky Fried Chicken being ran through a wood chipper erupted from under the car while inside, Rita looked like she was about to lose her Captain Crunch. Never slowing, the car bounced its way over Cheryl’s crumpled form and sped out of sight, leaving a trail of gore and skin behind it.
The mass of arms, legs, and worm-like tentacles lay glistening in the sun. Dark streams of blood ran across the asphalt soaking into the cracks and crevices as they went. In a flutter of wings, the crow landed beside Cheryl’s broken neck and looked into her only surviving eye. The orb responded by shifting slightly in the crow’s direction. In its reflection, Gwen could be seen walking up behind the crow.
“Well, is she dead?”
“I’d say about one breath away,” the crow whispered. With that, the dark bird beat its wings together expanding and shifting its form. Before Gwen stood a man wearing long black robes. A heavy hood cloaked his features.
The last ray of life bled from Cheryl as the man in the dark robes reached down a taloned hand and ripped the girl’s black writhing soul from her body. Her essence screamed and squirmed but made no escape from the man’s claws. He tilted back his head and sucked it into his mouth like a cancerous smoke.
“Hey,” Gwen exclaimed, running her tongue over her teeth. “My mouth tastes great! So what do you say Mr. Crow, or whatever your real name is, you doing anything the rest of this century?” She ran her tongue over her teeth again, this time a little slower.
The crow man grinned. “Mr. Crow is fine, and as tempting as that sounds, after making my delivery I need to meet with a couple of teenagers tired of carrying around their heads, which were decapitated in a drunk driving incident. I think they might be interested in a little deal I have in mind to make the man who killed them pay for surviving the accident.”
“Your loss,” Gwen said winking and then shimmering out of existence.
The crow man observed the mess on the road with the look of an artist backing away from one of their finest finished paintings. “I do love my job,” he said. Then in a rustling of robes, he turned back into the crow taking flight over the tall pines stretching up from the cemetery grounds.
