Child's Right
A gruesome short horror story
Hi!
~Gilgameshs
~Dogs
~Child’s
Gilgamesh: Eternal Collected Edition is fulfilled!
The final package for the Gilgamesh: Eternal Collected Edition Kickstarter was mailed out on January 31.
If you backed it, you should already have it!
If you don’t, email me at camikbooks@gmail.com and we’ll try to figure out why you don’t.
If you do, sick, I hope you like it.
I Like Dogs
My favorite song, for going on 10 years now, is “Dogs” by Nouns.
And it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why. But I know it's got a lot to do with this refrain:
“I like dogs much better than people will ever be”
Which may very well be my favorite combination of words ever. Again, for a long time I was unable to say why.
But the song came on for me on Spotify for the first time in a few years the other day, and it got me thinking about it again. I brought it up to a friend of mine and they pointed out it that was similar to a garden-path sentence, but it wasn't one.
From wikipedia:
“A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning.”
Some examples:
"The old man the boat.”
"The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.”
"The horse raced past the barn fell.”
Likely, you had to read these each twice to parse their meaning correctly.
And though “I like dogs much better than people will ever be” is not a garden-path sentence, I think a similar, maybe even inverted, thing happens as we read it.
A garden-path sentence initially invokes meaning and sounds grammatically incorrect, but is grammatically correct, so we read it again to glean the correct meaning.
“I like dogs…” immediately invokes meaning and sounds grammatically incorrect, and it is grammatically incorrect, but when we read it back we find we've gleaned the meaning correctly the first time.
And I think that starts to explain why its such a beautiful sentence. It's a subversion on a subversion, like the ending of Scream. And it reveals an interesting aspect of language: That meaning can be more easily parsed from a grammatically incorrect sentence than a grammatically correct sentence could ever be.
Short Horror Fiction
TRIGGER WARNING: Child harm/death, torture, gore (Story starts around 01:39:55)
“Child’s Right” originally appeared on “The NoSleep Podcast” as a bonus story for premium members (I believe a premium subscription is about $5).
The text below is not a transcript of the story as is appears in the episode, but the story as it was submitted to NoSleep. Whether you read it or listen to the full cast production featuring Graham Rowat, Erin Lillis, Atticus Jackson and Mary Murphy, I hope you enjoy it and/or are thoroughly grossed out!
Child’s Right
by Cam Kerkau
“The number you have dialed is unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep.”
“It’s Jackie. I’m calling from the office phone since you blocked my number. I don’t blame you for not answering for anyone, but I think you’ll want to hear this. I need you to hear it. I meant what I said, I don’t consider you a brother anymore. I have no forgiveness for you. I’ve spoken to Pastor Daryl about it and I just can’t. But maybe you could. Maybe you could forgive yourself if you would just–”
…
I can’t go to work today. For the first time since I was a teenager, I don’t even want to. I always joked that only a tragedy could make me take the day off. A terrible joke to make. I was awake before sunrise, but I woke up tired, my head aching. I almost tripped on my way down the stairs but caught myself on the handrail. Living in that house for my whole life, I should’ve gotten used to the crooked step, fourth from the top. But I never have, and none of us ever had the courage to complain to my father about it. He was very proud of the house. Built it himself. Wanted us to “fill her up with grandkids.” Now it sits empty, save for me. It probably should’ve gone to Jackie. Not that it’d make a difference now.
Crossing the kitchen island I saw through the window that the garbage men had arrived. Last week they left a soda can in my yard. I watched them work as I made coffee and drank it while they progressed down the block. Once they were gone, I could no longer ignore the writing on my calendar.
“Go hunting today!” I wrote, in big red letters across the date, and “Don’t back out!” in even larger letters below that. I wrote it after a particularly valuable appointment with the therapist, when I was in a much better mood.
I stopped for a second cup of coffee and a cheap egg sandwich on my way to Harris’s property. The old hermit hadn’t raised any objections to me hunting on his land, though I hadn’t asked lately. My father had taken me out there since I was a boy. Be strange to ask now.
It was a late start for me, and I squinted against the sun driving down the eastward dirt road, keeping my bearings almost on memory alone. But as I swerved to avoid a pothole, something ran out of the trees and right into my path. I slammed on the brakes, kicking dry mud up on each side. Coffee spilled on my jeans and heated them uncomfortably against my leg. I swiped at it before it could burn. I had expected whatever found itself in the road to have already run off, but there it was as I looked up.
A child. I frowned, my foot cramping tighter on the brake pedal. He stood with his back toward me. No older than eleven, his hair was black and his skin sickly pale. I rolled my window down.
“Could you move on?” I wasn’t polite. He didn’t respond. I waited a minute, breathing air heavy with the slow, low sound of the engine idling. Then I honked my horn and he walked off at a perfect pace, no faster than natural, into the woods again. I was still a ways off from Harris’s woods, and there were houses in the direction he was headed, so I thought nothing of it, despite the strangeness of his movements.
There’s something wrong with kids today. I don’t know what. Their attention span is shot, I guess. They’re being raised on TikTok and YouTube. Peter was different. He wanted to work. A little helper since the day he could walk. He was the best man I had when he… I used to love kids. Now I can’t help but feel sick when I see them. That’s the thing Jackie doesn’t get. We’re all mourning.
The investigation had shut the company down and left me with nothing to do but wait. I did my best waiting in the woods. I reached Harris’s and started down the trail, but didn’t get far before the coffee twisted my guts in the wrong spot. They say walking is good for digestion. I ducked behind a tree and kicked something like a hole in the ground. Harris wouldn’t mind, he never makes it out here. Course, I didn’t have any paper but my sock did fine. My bare foot stuck clammy against the sole of my boot for the rest of the walk.
It was good to be out of the house. I’d been spending a lot of time indoors. Going into town had been strange. It used to be that folks at the bar would chat my ear off about anything. But they stopped coming over to my table, and they were short when I went to theirs. Couldn’t blame them. The police were shaking my business up and down. I thought it’d be cleared up soon. Then every dummy in town would be asking for a job again. I situated myself in the deer blind and opened a beer. I did scope the clearing every so often, but mostly I sat. Dad never got to sit and it killed him. I was probably closer to ending up like him than I thought. I told myself, when this whole thing passes over, I swear to sit more often.
Something in the field caught my eye. I grabbed my shotgun and aimed, finger on the trigger too quickly, but when my vision focused I saw that it was only two kids playing in the grass. The same boy from before, and a girl with similar black hair and pale skin. I cursed. Where the hell are their parents? How did they get all the way out here?
Cupping my hands over my mouth, I yelled, “Hey!”
They showed no sign of hearing me and kept chasing each other around with sticks.
“It’s dangerous being out here!”
Still nothing from them but laughter. I wasn’t the only one who hunted on that land. I thought I’d better scare them off before some quicker marksmen took a shot. I aimed my gun in the sky to the south and fired a round. It echoed and shook the birds from the trees. Sure enough, the kids took off. Except they didn’t seem scared. They just kept on laughing as they ran.
Somehow, the further they got, the closer they sounded until it seemed they were right behind me. Then it was quiet. Surely it was some trick of the woods, but it chilled me to the bone.
I was certain I wouldn’t be seeing any deer and was out of the mood to be shooting anything anyway, so I sat back and resolved myself to kill my six-pack instead. Somewhere in there, I fell asleep.
The sunlight rested red on my eyelids and I dreamt of sirens.
Something cold hit my arm and I almost fell over. I gaped in every direction to find where it came from before ever seeing what it was. There was a small giggle in the distance. I am not a man to humor fools. Lucky for them, they were out of sight. Finally, my nose brisked, and I looked down, where a couple of flies were already buzzing around my dirty sock.
I calmed down on the long drive home. Though I never got a good look at their faces, I was confident I didn’t know those kids. Maybe they were friends of Peter’s, though he’d be some years older. He was always nice to younger children. Could be they were just taking some mild revenge on behalf of the town. I’m used to being blamed for what happened. Everyone needs an outlet, and I can take the ribbing. Deep down, everyone knows that it was a damned, dirty accident.
My stomach sank as I approached the house. Jackie’s car sat in the driveway, a bad omen. I pulled into the garage, cut the engine and sat, occasionally scratching an itch that wouldn’t leave my earlobe. I watched the shadows of trees sway on the street in the rearview mirror, delaying until the delay felt worse than the doing.
I entered through the adjoined garage door and dropped the keys in the mail pile on the console table. Reaching the end of the hallway, I considered going left up the stairs, pretending not to notice her. I turned to the kitchen instead, to find her sitting at the island, which had always been too large for the room. We did not say hello.
“You smell like shit.”
“I was hunting.”
I savored her look of disdain as I passed her and went to the liquor cabinet.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
“Still have a key.” She took a sip of water and laced her fingers together, shifting slightly in her seat. “You weren’t returning my calls.”
“How’s Ken?” I said, trying to prolong the small talk.
She stifled. “As good as he can be.”
“I’m surprised he let you out alone.” She didn’t take the bait.
“I wish you’d answer the phone. Return my voicemails…”
I stared at the backsplash above the counter, thinking I ought to deep clean the kitchen soon. “I couldn’t listen to them.”
“You couldn’t listen to them?” She parroted, adding scandal. “What, was it too hard for you? Do I not deserve a moment of your time?”
I scratched against the grain of my stubble. “I can’t give you what you want. What would you have me say?”
She stood, twirled in frustration and leaned both hands against the counter. “How about, ‘I’m sorry?’”
Silence settled and unsettled between us until it became unbearable, but she wouldn’t budge.
“Jackie… It was an accident. You know that. You can press your charges and it’ll play out how it’ll play out with the judge and the jury. But right now, between brother and sister… Don’t put that on me.”
She forced a frustrated sigh and shook her head. She’d never cry in front of me. “How about, “I’m sorry for your loss.’ For God’s sake, I lost my boy and you never came to me. Never offered any comfort, any…anything. You’re so afraid of accepting responsibility for what happened that you forget how to be a person. I know Dad did that to you but, damnit, we’re grown now. Dad’s not here.” She grabbed her keys from the island and folded her arms. “I’ve been calling to tell you I’m going to recommend against jail time–if you plead guilty.”
“For the record. I do blame you. I hate you. I can’t help it. I never want to see you again. But you were always Peter’s favorite. He loved working with you–he did. So, in his memory, I’m leaving you with this. A way to heal your soul. Because as much as you don’t want to look at it, your soul is rotting.”
…
I woke up to the sound of a buzzsaw and felt wet. My clothes clung around my neck. My blood pressure was erupting. I held my chest, cursing myself when I realized the sound came from the television. It had auto-played an old horror movie. My sleeping brain tried to keep up with the sounds of the room and gave me a nightmare. I turned the movie off and the room went dark. My body still felt as though it were in danger. Skin prickling, cold sweat. I breathed through it. Had it gotten so late? The sky was twisted red and blue as the sun lowered beyond the neighborhood. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
It helped, a little. They say when you feel seasick you should keep your eyes on the horizon. I looked out of the window for comfort.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I said under my breath.
They were out there, a block or two down the street. The same damned kids. Did they live in the neighborhood? Were they following me? Harris’s was miles away. I stomped out of the front door and hollered at them.
“Hey!”
No response. Their faces were hidden, their shadows pulled long by the sunset.
“You two! I want to talk to you!” I pointed.
Nothing.
I waited a moment and swallowed. Raising my voice this time, I cupped my hands around my mouth to amplify it, but couldn’t get the whole call out.
“H–!”
They had already changed course. They had been walking aimlessly before, like kids do when they have nowhere to go. Now the whole rendering of their small bodies had shifted. They walked a straight line to me, mechanically, moving with hunger but without passion, like ants to sugar, matching each other's pace perfectly, relentlessly. It stunned me.
I knew they were only children but I couldn’t help being unsettled. Frightened. I tried to shake it off, but it worsened as they came, the minutiae of their features revealing themselves. I thought I was in the nightmare again, my mind awake but my body painfully arrested. Then I saw the color of their eyes, and I knew I could not let them any closer. I forced myself inside and latched the door.
The quiet was unnatural. Even the constant humming of the powerlines was absent. Still, with the door shut I had forgotten my panic. I was jumping at shadows. Projecting anxieties onto children. I checked the peephole. The porch was empty, as was the street behind it. They must have run off. I walked to the right, into the kitchen, and still couldn’t find them outside. The sky was a flat midnight blue, and it was getting darker fast. Laughing at myself, I thought I’d better sit down. I walked into the living room, passing the larger window above the couch.
Their faces were nearly pressed against the glass. They were smiling, waiting for me, the muscles of their cheeks bundled tight. Straight little teeth like calcified maggots. And their eyes–
“You’ll want to let us into the house, Dave,” they said.
And dammit, despite the terrible shapes of their scant bodies, the bizarre sheen of their moonlight skin, so much paler now, and despite the blackness of their eyes–Yes, their eyes did sit black in their heads like pools of ink, it wasn’t a trick of the light–despite all that, I did. I wanted to let them in. There was something pulling within my chest, some compulsion completely foreign but within me nonetheless. And when I noticed it, when I had to remove my hand from the latch on the door to keep myself from opening it, they laughed at me.
“You’ll want to let us in,” the boy said, alone and more conversationally. Only, I truly heard his voice that time. The low, thin cliffs of each word. It was a man’s voice, except no man’s voice had ever made me feel so hollow. I felt strongly then that these were not children. I knew I couldn’t afford to believe their camouflage any longer. The sun was going down.
“Get away from my house!” I tried to put authority into my voice.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” said the girl, frowning. She tapped her fingertips on the glass. They were black and purple, like they had been crushed in a car door.
“You did call us over here,” accused the boy, with humor.
“Why the hell have you been following me?” I demanded.
“We thought you might need some work done,” said the boy. “We heard you were down an employee.” His sister snickered at that. “Let us in. We’ll talk about it.”
I hit the wall, shaking the window in its plane. “Get away from my house before I call the police.” The words fell limp from my mouth.
They wheezed an unblinking chortle, each breath plunging their chests in harmony. I felt flat, folded. Still a voice in the back of my head told me I was ridiculous, that these were kids. That I was being a little girl.
“Or maybe I’ll just shoot the both of you for trespassing.”
The girl tilted her head, forcing a puzzled expression. The boy smiled.
“Sure,” he said. “Go get your gun.”
It was out in the bed of the truck. Coming home, I was so focused on Jackie that I hadn’t packed my things inside. Hadn’t even shut the retractable door. It was perfectly accessible to them, if they wanted it. I wished I could perceive the situation clearer. Whatever they were, their disguise, while unbelievable, made me question everything. How much trouble was I in? Would they shoot the door down to get to me? Then I remembered walking into the house, the door I used… I backed away from the window slowly, refusing to take my eyes off the children.
“What’s the matter, David?” he asked. The sun had gone down. “Did you forget to lock the door?
I ran, crashing into the wall nearest the garage door, knocking a family photo down from where it hung. I caught the doorknob and twisted. It didn’t move. I had locked it. Fine then, The house was closed off to whatever waited outside. So what had they found so funny?
I backed away and headed to the front of the house, reluctant to face them again. From beyond the staircase, I could see at once the living room, the front door, and the kitchen island, but I could not see them. Where they had stood framed by the window there was now only breath on the glass. But unseen did not mean gone, I knew that much. As unsettling as it was, I told myself I was safe as long as they were outside. I stepped forward, cautiously. The floorboard creaked.
The front door stirred gently. It was open, just a touch, hardly noticeable. I jolted forward to shut and lock it again. Then I prayed for the first time in years. Prayer always seemed worthless. I preferred to put my faith in material things, like bolts and latches, but the material world had failed me.
“Boo,” they said together. I had expected it, but still I jumped.
I turned slowly. They each held a knife from the kitchen. I tried to wet my cracked lips. “How did you get in?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Dave. We never needed your permission.” They stepped forward. I stepped back.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, checking the sharpness of the knife against her fingers. “He was nice to us.”
They had backed me into the corner, Dad's grandfather clock close behind and clacking pendulum ear to ear. Tigers in child skin brandishing teeth. Beside them, I was locked in by the couch, the lazy boy, and the coffee table between.
“Do you know how fast a table saw spins?” The boy asked. “Four thousand times a minute. If we called one spin a cut, that’s… sixty-six cuts per second.”
My ears throbbed with heartbeat, matching pace with the clock, each knock a step toward the edge of a cliff. I hiccuped phlegm and it stuck in my throat. My voice shook and shattered with each word.
“It… wasn't… my–”
“How long was he on the table saw, David?”
I sputtered.
“How long before you noticed?”
I shrugged, “T-two minutes.”
He nodded, lifting his knife like a ceremonial sword. “We’re going to cut you one hundred and twenty times.”
They pounced, blades swinging in crescent flashes. I jumped back and the girl's knife cut my shirt. My back slammed into the clock and I bounced forward and shifted to the right. The boy’s knife caught me barely on the shoulder, not enough to feel past the adrenaline. “That’s one,” he said.
I kicked off the coffee table and over the couch, falling headfirst behind it. “Two!” the girl cheered, and I felt my ankle split. Fighting through the pain, underestimating the damage, I tried to stand but tripped again. I just needed to make it to the garage.
But they were in front of me again. They moved slowly, with command, and lashed at my back, counting in rhythm.
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
I rolled over and tried to block their strikes with my arms while kicking away from them. They caught my face, down the side of my hand, my elbow.
“Eight.”
“Nine.”
“Ten.”
They herded me in the opposite direction of the garage and I had nowhere to go but up the stairs. I was able to get to my feet several times but fell again with each deep cut. The floor and walls were sprayed and slicked by blood.
“Fifteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen.”
I used the handrail to help myself up and made good progress, going nowhere, until the girl jumped and clung to my back, her arm cold and tight around my throat. She cut down my chest in a near perpendicular slice but I kept myself up against the handrail. Blood dripped as I fought against her fluttering weight and reached the next step. The crooked step no one ever told Dad about. I slipped. Fell backwards. Landed hard. Her body cracked beneath me like plywood and we rolled down the stairs, taking her brother down with us and crashing through the banister posts at the last step.
My perception was of blackness and teeth, a feeling of warmth running everywhere. The cuts had mostly been shallow, but with every heartbeat I could feel myself becoming less and less. When the ringing in my ears quieted and my vision cleared, I saw him standing over his sister’s body. I must’ve blacked out, but couldn’t know for how long. I wanted to crawl away but my right knee wouldn’t bend. It seemed the girl's knife had found itself stuck just above the patella.
Her head was caved in, and her humerus bone had broken skin. He dangled her limp arm at the hand to confirm she was truly dead.
“Another one. You can’t seem to quit killing kids, huh?” he chuckled. When I looked into his eyes I saw that they welled with tears.
“It wasn’t my fault…”
He hovered over me, a vulture high on the sun-scorched breathing dead. I was powerless.
“You can tell yourself that. I know you will. You can tell your sister and the newspaper and the government. You can even take a hike upstate and visit your daddy, tell it to his gravestone.”
He kneeled beside me, grabbed my jaw and turned my head. His breath was hot gasoline.
“But you can’t tell me.”
I damned him to hell, in words and spirit. I was no longer a Christian man, but I prayed there was a place for him off this earth. Someplace where he had no power, whatever he was. He ignored me and tore what was left of my shirt away. I couldn’t bear to look at my own body. There were certain cuts that I knew were there but couldn’t afford to make real by sight. The longest was the straight line which ran from the top of my sternum to the bottom of my belly.
He stepped on my shoulder, dirt-caked foot on an oozing cut, and leaned down. “You’re going to kill me for this,” he joked. “But I lost count.”
“Please…” I murmured.
“I know, I know. I’ll have to start back at one.” But he no longer held a knife.
Bare upon my heaving stomach, he placed his nail and dragged up. Upwards across my gut and chest, his black finger traced the longest gash, deepening it. “One.” He brought his finger to start again and dragged a tearing sound out of my flesh. “Two.” “Please,” I begged again, “It wasn’t my fault.” He wouldn’t listen, he just kept counting his score. “Three.” He paused to pick chunks of my body from beneath his fingernail. “Four.” Time moved strangely. The pain had enveloped my senses so that I reached a strange kind of clarity. I could not hear but felt the vibrations in my ears, could not see but felt the light against my eyes. “Seven.” His nail was gone, stuck somewhere in my upper epidermis, and he had taken to stripping me away with his dull and bleeding fingertip. I felt him reach into a layer of fat, a latticework of squashed grapes popping out of place in quick succession. “It wasn’t my fault,” I spoke quietly, whimpering between screams. “Sixteen.” Connective tissue snapped like frozen wire. The muscles in my shoulder tightened as he strummed the sinew of my chest. “Eleven.” My arms spasmed, and my hand hit something hard on the ground next to me. The wood post from the stairs, splintered and broken. “Twelve.” Somewhere, a table saw started and stopped. Started and stopped. “It wasn’t my fault,” the words stretched into wailing. “Fourteen.” I became increasingly aware of my sternum, and my intestine further down. He would find them soon, and steal them from me. “Twelve.” His finger struck bone. The pain was different there, a dull and cold marrowed nausea. It felt like the end. But it wasn’t my fault.
I gripped the banister post from the ground and swung it upwards onto his head between cuts.
“Twenty–”
The oak stake pierced his eye with a spurt of pink and broke the socket, widening his face and planting in his skull like a tree. He took two steps back and started to cry, hovering both hands in front of his face, as though the wound would worsen if he let it breathe. “Is it bad?” He asked with genuine fear in his remaining eye.
I turned and crawled away from him, my belly to the floor, hoisting myself forward by my elbows. The blade in my knee dragged against the hardwood. My skin stretched strangely with each movement, haphazard crimson tracery freeing it to pull in new ways. I left a trail of blood on the ground like a gruesome snail, but it was hard to tell how much against the blood which had already fallen. I got to my feet, hauling my dead leg as I strived into the garage. I could hear him struggle behind me, a squelching sound as he uprooted the post from his face.
“All’s f-fun and games…” he laughed.
The night air fought against my fever as I used all that was left of my maimed musculature to throw myself into the bed of the truck. The gun was in its bag, just past the zipper, the safety still disengaged, but I could hear his footsteps gaining on me. I unzipped the bag. It stuck in the middle and I had to tear it. He reached the truck and lifted himself, raising the steak to plunge it down.
“Last chance to heal your soul, David!”
In one movement, I pulled the gun from its bag and cocked it, aiming it at him just as the tip of the stake was driving toward my head, and I fired. “It wasn’t my fault!”
Red mist ejected in each direction as his little body was lifted into the air and sent careening from the bed of the truck. When he landed against the exposed wooden beams of the garage wall, he was missing most of the left half of his body. His face was in tatters where stray shells shredded it, and his jaw hung clearly from a single strand of fibrous tissue. I leaned against the wall of the truck bed, my head over the edge. Everything was red. Then blue, blinking on and off all around us.
The light of life left his eyes and was replaced with the light of sirens. The police. Medics. I breathed. I had been so far past hope for survival in his domain. A place made only for dying. Only for guilt. I couldn’t believe the outside world had found us. And what the hell took them so long? I had the impulse to chuckle, but it came as a cracked wheeze. A bright wave fell over me and, deliriously, the pain in my body had cooled. I believed then that I would live.
“Fine then…” he said. I lifted my head just enough to see him, slumped against the wall. Not dead just yet. He struggled to speak through his blasted disfigurement. He raised his eye to look into mine, one last time. Just as Peter had.
“Live with it.”