New Book Cover reveal.

 

First in the Aristotle Anderson series.

Aristotle Anderson, private investigator, bounty hunter, paranormal victim. Due to a childhood ordeal, he is able to travel into the ether between worlds to tackle those creatures which prey on mankind – demons, ghosts, unknown evils. And while his personal life is a disaster area, no one can fault his dedication toward his profession. He, along with his assistant, Jasper, and his black cat, Malice, work to rid the world of evil – for a reasonable price.

A murder and an anonymous client bring the investigator to the idyllic town of Cardinal Point, PA, a place of absolute happiness and joy, where everyday life is a breeze and the best of everything is available to everyone. However, the core of this perfect society is rotten, and Aristotle quickly becomes wrapped up in a plot by a demon to kill the families of several key members of the town. On his journey, he uncovers one ghastly revelation after another and begins to question whether or not the demon should be allowed to continue. Maybe these people deserve their fate. 

Time and Time Again Part 5

 

Time and Time Again Part 5

  by Rex Hurst

And here Schultz was again, looking frantically for his keys, feeling the same panic he endured while in his early 20s. It over-road everything, making him sloppy in his search, cut corners, and ultimately come up with nothing. 

He knew the damn things were still in the house. They had to be, the car was still out front. But his house was a twisty weird design full of small nooks and narrow hallways. Added to that, Schultz’s wife enjoyed collecting knick-knacks, gewgaws, baubles, grimcracks, ornaments, little figurines, bric-a-brac, bibelots, and various other trinkets and displaying them all over the house, adding another hundred odd little places for his keys to be misplaced behind. 

This is going nowhere, he realized. Schultz could spend the next eight hours looking for his errant keys and still not find their hiding space. He needed to think differently. It was time to take out the big guns. He opened the closet door and looked upon a thing of beauty.

And they told me it would be a waste of money. 

He pulled for its hook a twisty piece of metal, wide at one end with a handle grip on the other, and a large display grafted onto the metal just below where it was gripped. Wires coiled up and down the main shaft. 

It was the Bonjourno AT Max Metal Detector. It sent an electromagnetic field from the search coil into the ground. Any metal objects within the electromagnetic field became energised and retransmitted an electromagnetic field of their own. He had paid extra for waterproof coils in case he ever made it to the beach and wanted to scrounge - that was three years ago and he hadn’t made it yet. A bargain at only $399.99, plus tax. It had come with the added bonus of a plastic trowel to help scoop out whatever garbage he found buried in the sand and a baseball cap with the company logo which didn’t fit his head. 

Worth every penny. 

True, this was the first time he ever had an occasion to use it. But being forward thinking was how a person solved problems that hadn’t occurred yet. He flipped on the device. Let those keys try and hide now!

Schultz hefted the metal detector and flipped it on. A menacing, high-pitched, beep cut across the room. This machine meant business and it was letting everyone know it. No key was safe from being sniffed out. Schultz began waving it wildly around the room, nearly knocking over two lamps and an ugly vase his mother-in-law had regifted them for a wedding present. This was all due to jitters. Who didn’t get upset when they were about to lose control of their vehicle. Eventually he calmed down and began a solid sweep of the house. 

Room by room, he surveyed the area, breathlessly waiting for the metal detector to do its magic. Naturally, he ran across a host of false positives. Pennies jammed into corners. Bent paper clips fallen between cracks. Some loose staples. A turquoise toe ring Schultz had bought his bovine wife for their fifth anniversary. An actual ring to fit keys on. All this but no car key. 

Schultz checked the kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room, that little alcove which lead into the backyard, the closet which they called a laundry room, their extremely narrow foyer - if you even call it that. It was empty. Clean of keys. Schultz was flabbergasted. He banged the machine around, making sure it was on the highest setting. Was this thing even working? It must be if it picked up staples. 

No, the fault was not in his stars, but his stairs. The elusive object must be lurking on the second floor. Schultz leaned against the bannister and tiptoed up the steps. He crossed himself as he did so. Were he to wake up the wife or kids, things were going to get bloody. 

Creak, creak, creak. Schultz tiptoed up the stairs. The awkward metal detector seemed determined to bang into something with every step. Little scuffs and tears in the wall paper appeared up along the bannister route. Every sound was amplified in his nervous condition. 

If the kids and wife were woken up, he would have to hear about it for the next month. But car keys trumped family. They were essential for modern daily life, right next to bread and water, so he would have to risk waking the beast in his pursuit of lost treasure. Still the stairs seemed an insurmountable object to overcome this morning. 

After an Ice Age he departed the well-worn stairs and arrived on the second floor landing. The carpet was brown and grungy. Little specks of dirt and ash lay cloistered between the fibers. It was Schultz’s son’s responsibility to vacuum the place each week. A job which shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes and for which the Little Boy Schultz was paid the princely sum of $20 a week - $15 dollars more than the allowance Schultz himself had been given by Grandpa Schultz back in 19-whenever. 

Unfortunately, Little Boy Schultz wasn’t very enthusiastic about the amazing business opportunity presented to him. In fact, he refused to comply, stating that he was being forced to do it and that his father was a Nazi and Fascist for trying to make him. This exploded into an argument, whereupon Schultz told his son he would do his assigned chores or he wouldn’t receive any money. Little Boy Schultz countered that he was fine with that and would make do on his own. 

So far it had ended in a stalemate. The carpet was un-vacuumed, but Schultz had not had to shell out a dime to his ungrateful son.

 

           

 

 

 

Time and Time Again Part 4

 

Time and Time Again Part 4

 

By Rex Hurst

            With the oddball red beet and yogurt pancakes finished, Schultz flipped one after another onto a plate, and dragged a jug of maple syrup from the fridge. Often in the past when he had made pancakes, his family had grown angry over the time it had taken for the pancake to be done, to when they were actually served. This was because Schultz had a specific system of distribution of butter and syrup. It was vitally important to him that the bottom pancake received just as much syrup as the top one. A feat very few people can accomplish. 

            Each pancake was placed on its own individual plate, until the batter ran dry - usually averaging about five to a stack. The butter was then taken out and placed cut into slices of ⅛ of an inch. He had gotten into heated arguments in the past with his bovine wife over the exact placement of the butter. 

            Schultz preferred the butter to be at room temperature, and thus sitting in a covered butter dish on the pantry ledge. At this temperature it would spread easily and lovingly over the bread, just like in the commercials. His wife preferred it to be refrigerated, so “it would last longer”. But when cut and spread, it cruelly ripped the bread, making the entire meal a travesty. Being much larger than him, his wife won in the end and Schultz was forced to soften his butter in the microwave - which was always a mixed bag. Half the time it wasn’t thoroughly softened enough. The other half, it melted into a runny mess. Once the pat was ready, he smeared one over each of the red pancakes using a circular motion. 

            Next came the syrup. It had taken much experimentation over the decades, but he found that exactly four tablespoons, each heated with a bic lighter under the spoon and dripped over the cake, was the perfect amount. After this was administered, each pancake was slipped from their plate onto another, until the stack stood on a singular dish.

The repast proudly displayed before him, Schultz wolfed it down with the abandon of a condemned man’s last meal. With all the care he put into the eggs, the pancakes, and the coffee they were all mushed together in his mouth as he zipped from one to the other. The flavors barely able to make an impact across his taste buds, before being stuffed down his gullet. 

            Not that he didn’t want to sit and savor the food. But he had realized that he was not at a critical juncture. So much time had been spent on food prep, that he had topractically inhale the repast or his wife would be right. 

            He’d be late for work. 

            And that couldn't happen. 

            Schultz dodged about the bottom floor, trying to juxtapose eating his meal with all the other little chores one had to do just before leaving the house. Find the car keys. Chow some eggs. Straighten the tie. Slurp down coffee. Double check the papers in the briefcase. Nosh a beet red pancake. Shine the shoes a bit. Another pancake. Make sure his fly was zipped. Chug the rest of the coffee. 

            A single massive belch later and he was ready. Or so he thought. His reflection in the strategically placed mirror by the door, caught him up short. He stared deep into it. Crumbs. Crumbs everywhere! Red ones from the pancakes. Yellow ones from the eggs. What was he to do? This delay might make him late for work. 

            He remembered from his childhood home, Schultz’s mother would keep  a small brush by the door for just such an emergency,  but time had eliminated those little touches of home life. Schultz was forced to use the kitchen floor broom, an instrument rife with dust bunnies and various bits of unidentified crud. As he swept himself, Schultz noticed he was simply replacing the food particles with other weird little bits, making him look almost like a hobo. 

            What else could he use? 

            The vacuum!

Schultz, still covered in little bits of food from breakfast, grabbed the vacuum from the hall closet. Unfortunately, it was a wet vac - those vacuums designed to clean up liquid spills and wet debris, along with dry dustand dirt. A slick salesman had conned Schultz’s wife into buying it for three hundred dollars a few years ago.  

The thing actually worked pretty well, but it had to be disassembled into fifty pieces, filled with water, and screwed back together for the vacuum to fulfil its manufactured raison d’etre. Then you had to move the thing about carefully, or there was every chance you could accidentally pull out a house or detach the base from its wheels. He preferred the devices where you only had to flip a switch and all the dirt was sucked away into eternity.   

He used to have a dust-buster for these minor jobs but had broken it one night when he used it to chase a mouse which had taken up residence in their home. While trying to shoo the animal out of the back door, Schulz had tripped on a loose rug and fallen face first into a wall, cracking the dust-buster in half. When he stood back up, it looked like the device had been given a bad nose job.

He dragged the apparatus into the kitchen and awkwardly fitted the vacuum’s bowl under the tap. One had to fill the chamber with water, the dirt was then sucked into the chamber, and it made for easy removal from the vacuum. Unfortunately, the chamber didn’t fit properly under the sink tap and half the water that came out splashed all over Schultz’s clothes. After the awkward connection of the chamber to the base and the insertion of the hose to the chamber, and then the connection of the nozzle to the hose, Schultz was at last ready to clean himself up.  

It took two seconds to accomplish, as opposed to the ten minutes it took to put the vacuum together

 

 

Trapped Below

 

Trapped Below

by Rex Hurst

Sheila didn’t want to be in there. It was a rotted pine box eighty four inches long, twenty eight inches wide, and twenty three inches tall, essentially the size of your standard coffin, buried five feet below the surface of the earth. And she was its main occupant. 

The things we do for love. 

The love for a child. A beautiful eight year old boy. The bright shining light of her life. Her reason for being. And now the object of her torture. A trickle of loose earth sifted in between the box’s slats. Sheila's throat constricted in terror. 

Calm yourself. This is what they want. 

Indeed it was. 

They say not to use the Ouija board by yourself for that opens your soul to demonic possession. They never mention that sometimes the place where you cast about for spirits was just as deadly. Her son had gotten into the board games and, wedged between the old Mystery Date game and a Stratego set with twelve missing pieces, was the infamous Hasbro iteration of the mystic device. Her son had taken it into the backyard one night, playing with it under the new moon on one of the soft places of the Earth. 

The whole of the Unseelie Court was opened. The creatures of Beyond who creep under the bed and feed upon the fear and suffering of humanity. Since he had opened the way, unknowingly or not, her son was theirs by ancient compact. Theirs to frighten and torture for all eternity. Sheila had arrived as their ghoulish fingers clutched her son, pulling him back screaming into the bleakness of their world. 

She caught the hem of their robes and pulled the Unseelie back. Roaring and threatening, then pleading and crying. She offered everything for the return of her boy. The Unseelie could never resist a challenge. The corrupt fae tasted her fear, aged as a fine wine, and wanted more. They accepted. 

A wave of a clawed hand. Sheila found herself in the box. A little pixie light accompanying her, just so she could see how cramped it was. 

“Save your sanity. Save your son,” they told her. 

That would not be easy. These monsters knew her weakness.

Most people characterize claustrophobia as only an unyielding fear of enclosed spaces. In reality it was more the idea that she was trapped someplace, with no way out, which set off Sheila’s panic buttons. While enclosed spaces like a rickety coffin were easy triggers. It had happened to her on an airplane, at the top of a rollercoaster, or when she was wedged on the inside of a diner booth next to someone too fat to push out of the way.  

Calm. Calm. Breathe in. Breathe out. 

Sheila could feel them snickering on the edges of her soul. She would fail. They were sure of it. Despite an initial shock, Sheila steadied herself and distracted her mind by counting her fingers over and over again. 

One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.

Was the box shrinking? It seemed like a dip had formed in the casket’s top. Did that mean the wood wasn’t strong enough? That the box was about to crack and completely bury her in dirt? 

NO! NO! Don’t think about it. Concentrate. One….

If the box broke, the dirt would pile in, pinning her down, filling her throat. Alive, but trapped the most absolute way possible. A fly in amber. A dino sucked into the tar pits. Sheila under the ground. No way out. No way out. 

There’s nowhere to go! There’s nowhere to go! I’m trapped. Slowly buried!

She wanted to tear at her eyes. Claw that throat out. Rip holes in her face. Tear the box open. Dig up through five feet of earth. Anything to relieve the pressure, to distract her from the knowledge that there was no way out. 

I’ve got to get out of here! I’ve gotta go! I’ll be crushed! The worms will eat me! Oh God! OH GOD! Please help me!  

But God said no that day. Sheila would have to create her own salvation. For herself and her boy. 

I don’t care. I don’t care. Just let me be free.

She knew these thoughts would push herself onto further panic, but couldn’t get them out of her head. The worst part of her mental illness was recognizing just how insane she was behaving, but being unable to stop herself. She lingered there at the cusp of a panic attack, about to lose her sanity, about to lose her son. 

Her son. Her beacon in the night. Her holy grail. 

There it was. The one thing she could latch onto. The still point of her soul. Sheila’s mind flooded with visions of the boy. The color of his eyes. His goofy smile. His little toes. The time he cried while getting his first haircut. His favorite toys. His favorite bedtime book, which she’d had to read aloud over a hundred times.

No matter how much the box constricted, she clung to the memory of her son. The madness subsided. Calm claimed her. 

Time and Time Again Part 3

 

Time and Time Again Part 3

By Rex Hurst

 

Now that he was relatively clean, Schultz descended to the first floor and graced the kitchen with his presence. There was no applause. His wife and children were still fast asleep. But had they been in the room, Schultz knew they would appreciate his being there. Demonstrating it with smiles, if not laurels and applause. It was time to start breakfast. 

His wife could bellow about Schultz being late to the office, but he would not be deterred from this morning ritual. A decent breakfast was the only way to start a day properly. Because missing the morning meal would put him off on the wrong foot, and from previous experience that foot would eventually get stuck right in Schultz’s big mouth, causing much pain and embarrassment all around. It was better to take a few minutes and fry up some eggs. 

He didn’t start with chicken embryos though. Like many people Schultz was near-paralytic until after that morning cup of coffee went searing down his throat. Sure, he could do basic things like wash himself and dress, but advanced skills like counting or saying “Good Morning” were beyond his power until the java made its magic. 

The problem now lay in what kind to make. Back in the bachelor days, Schultz would just toss a handful of instant crystals into some lukewarm water and chug it down on the way out. His wife had cultivated in him a love for the finer blends. He opened the honest straw bag of fair-trade coffee, gathered by the meekest of Guatemalan peons, and lovingly tossed into sacks. The aroma of the beans themselves nearly knocked him out. 

He dumped the beans into an automatic grinder and reduced them to powder, filling the whole room with its intoxicating funk. He ran his fingers through the blend, making sure all the beans had been uniformly ground down. Schultz then produced a French press and popped the coffee into the top. The perfect cup was made from a medium grind.  Very coarse grinds clogged the press’s filter, while very fine grinds passed through the filter, muddying the results. He heated some hot water, added it to the pot, waited for them to mix, then slowly pressed the plunger down, exerting steady pressure. Another minute and he took a sip. 

Perfecto. 

Folgers just couldn’t compete.   

With the coffee pressed and quaffed, Schultz could turn to the meat of the meal, in this case, it would be eggs and pancakes. These things were important and each needed to be taken in turn. One may think that the preparation of eggs was a simple matter. Crack the shell and dump it into the pan. That might be all well and good for the plebs, with their lowest common denominator taste buds. But Mathew Schultz had higher aspirations and a more exclusive palate. 

            One could not simply scramble the eggs. They must be pampered, fluffed, and anointed with specific oils. One could simply not do proper scrambled eggs in less than twenty minutes. Schultz took four eggs and emptied them into a porcelain bowl. A titanium whisk was produced and he proceeded to beat the eggs, and beat them, and beat them until the yolks and white combined. He paused for a moment to add generous portions of salt and pepper to the mixture, then beat them into the cream. 

            “You’re gonna be late,” came bellowing down through the heating vents. 

            Not at all. Not at all. Any decent boss would understand the importance of eggs and breakfast. Schultz was sure of it. 

            The burner was set to medium heat. He let the non-stick skillet lay on the blue flame for a minute before adding two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. He let it simmer for a moment, before turning the heat down, and dumping the eggs into the skillet. 

            “Scrumdiliumptious!” 

            He pawed at the mixture with a wooden spoon, slowly teasing it around and around. At first it seemed nothing of note was happening. Runny eggs in a small skillet. Then little by little, over the precious minutes, the eggs began to form curds. With ruthless efficiency, Schultz broken them up as they form, crushing big curds into smaller curds, until the skillet was nothing but a mass of edible, squishy curds. 

            He yanked the skillet from the stove and slid the mass onto a plate. A forkful was stuffed into his mouth. It was as Schultz expected. 

            Perfection again.

You’re gonna be late,” came again and again from upstairs. Schultz ignored the bellows of his porcine wife. Even though he knew she was probably right, coffee and eggs simply are not a proper breakfast. More was needed. Specifically starch. To fill him up and keep the body regular. He knew no better way to add starch to his breakfast fete than - PANCAKES! 

            Like a child again, he ripped open the cupboards, gathering bowls and powders. Then tragedy struck. What was this? What was this? No flour! Gods, above. What was he to do? Not wallow in self-pity is what? He kicked himself in the tucas. If there was no flour at hand, he’d simply make pancakes without it. 

            What did he have? 

            A package of instant oatmeal, red beets, yogurt, applesauce, and some other generic baking items. Guess it would have to do. Nothing would beat Schultz out of a damn fine breakfast of his own choosing. 

            He dumped the oatmeal, some baking soda, and a handful of salt into a blender, then ground it down into a fine powder. He poured it all into an alabaster bowl, then set it aside. After cleaning the blender, he tossed everything else into it. Two eggs, a half cup of strawberry yogurt, some spoonful’s of vanilla extract - to make the medicine go down - a sliced up red beet, three globs of applesauce, and the dregs of the vegetable oil bottle. Then whirled it all around until it was all an ugly red paste. 

            Schultz heated up another non-stick pan and let the paste flow, until it nearly covered the pan's surface. He cooked until small bubbles formed the pancake’s top. Then he flipped it over and cooked the other side. In the past, he’d always tried to do that trick where one tosses a flapjack in the air and catches it flip-side in the pan. It always ended with disastrous results and splattered hot batter over everything and everyone. 

            He resisted the urge this time.

 

Time and Time Again Part Two

 

Time and Time Again Part 2

by Rex Hurst

            Now that the delicate matter of facial hair had been dealt with, Schultz had the difficult matter of showering to deal with. There are many philosophies on the topic and most violently contradict the other. Schultz was of the opinion that one had a long shower hot show, allowing the room to fill with steam. Get the pores opened up and really let the soap in to scrub the suckers clean. 

            His wife however, was of the school that such a long shower rotted the wood behind the walls and weakened the dry rot, which would eventually cause all bathroom walls to fall in upon itself. If Schultz spent more than three minutes scrubbing himself under the water, she would bellow and rage from below stairs. Screaming that he was single handedly destroying the property value of the house and if he didn’t watch himself a lynch mob from the Home Owners Association would storm their home to string him up. 

All the properties are connected after all. If one went down, then so did they all. That’s why everything mattered so much. Lawn maintenance, garbage can placement, the color of the venetian blinds. If one element was out of place, it was a slippery slope towards the whole neighborhood becoming one of the worst slums settlements in a third world country. 

The wife seemed a little drowsy this morning, maybe Schultz could sneak in a few extra minutes... 

“You’re taking too long!” came the familiar roar from the other room.

              The inevitable time came for Schultz to step into the shower. A moment, he dreaded every single day. One he wished he could avoid. Ever since he was a child the blast of water on his skin, sent shockwaves of revulsion down his body. The problem was, the water was never quite right. First, there was always that frigid blast of near-frozen water, then the hot water which followed was always too hot, nearly scalding him to death. It was like being tortured in an old time asylum. 

No amount of planning or fiddling had ever given him the upper hand in this shower feud. He had tried standing to the side, out of the tub, and adjusting the water. But he had always been splashed by both ends of the water extreme, which rebounded out of the tub. He tried hiding behind the shower curtain, but that never worked because he still had to stick his hand in to alter the water flow. Baths were out of the question because he could never get himself up early enough to draw a proper one. 

No, the crushing reality of his life told Schultz that he would have to endure this torture day after day for the rest of his life. It was almost enough to make a man weep. But, like a trooper he endured. Shultz disrobed and leapt into the tub. He sighed then turned it on. 

FREEZING! 

His hands rubbed about his body, rubbing vigorously to keep the blood flow moving. The water changed again. 

HOT! HOT! HOT! 

After the ordeal of the shower, Shultz liked nothing more than to wipe himself down with thick, fibrous, items suited to such up as much moisture as the laws of physics would allow. The majority of people found that bath towels were the most effective in this area, Schultz was not among this group.

No towel he had ever found did the job properly. Or, to be more exact, as quickly as he wanted. He had tried them all from the flimsiest dishrag stuffed under the rancid mattress in one-star flophouses, to $200 a pop Hotel brand thick towels - the type which most people fell into a deep coma of ecstasy the moment one touched their skin. Comfortable as it may be, it did not absorb all the liquid on his body in one gulp. 

His salvation came at his neighbor's house when he accidentally tripped on their cat, spilled a cup of coffee on himself, and fell face-first onto their shag rug. As he scraped his cheek across it, he noticed the rug had completely dried his face. He rubbed the rest of his body in a similar fashion across the carpet to gauge how it handled moisture on clothing. Perfection! 

The neighbors never invited them over again, but Schultz didn’t care. His problem was solved. Instead of towels, he used carpet samples from shag rugs. What would take two minutes would now take two seconds. Schultz was satisfied. 

“You’re gonna be late!” his porcine wife bellowed a third time.

That reminded him of a quote by Confucius, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”  

And he would learn how bitter his boss could be, if he didn’t get to work on time. But first breakfast!

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Time and Time Again Part One

 

Time and Time Again 

   Part One

 

“Where have you been?” were the first words screamed at Mr. Mathew Schultz upon entering the school. 

            “What do you mean?” 

            “Classes started three weeks ago. You are supposed to be in there teaching right now!”

            Schultz swooned. Panic gripped his innards and yanked them down hard, while a freezing chill blasted through his body. Three weeks ago? Where had he been? Why hadn’t he known? Why did nobody tell him anything? Everything was fuzzy. None of it made sense. The screaming administrator briefly seemed to have three heads, each berating him for a different malfeasance. 

            Things hadn’t even begun yet at his new job and it was already falling apart. First impressions already ruined. His incompetence proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Students, colleagues, and other random people started to gather round, laughing at this poor shrimp of a man. 

 His life was falling down in a giant puddle of absolute failure. Soon his wife would go, his children would disown him, he’d loose his house, and end up a bum on the streets fighting rats for hardened cheese stuck to the top of discarded pizza boxes.  

            “And not only that, you’ve forgotten your pants.” 

            Schultz looked down. He had been in such a rush to get to work that he had indeed neglected to wear slacks. That’s when he woke up and all the stress evaporated. Schultz’s wife hit him in the face with a pillow. 

            “Get up,” she snorted into a pillow. “Don’t want to be late.” 

            At that he had to agree. Following the lyrics of the old Beatles song, he got up, fell out of bed, and dragged a comb across his head. That last part took the longest. 

Having a rapidly thinning top, Schultz worked a complicated weave around his skull to double and triple flop the hair on top of each other. His hair was incredibly thin, but there was a lot of it, so Schultz had grown it out very long on his left side, in order to bend it all back over the spots nature had cursed with baldness. Once the complicated do was balanced on his scalp, he used an entire bottle of hairspray to keep it all in place. 

He stood back to admire the results and gave himself two thumbs up. 

“Still got it,” he lied to himself. 

“Hurry up,” his wife snorted from the other room. 

But now he was no longer dragging. After the hair ordeal, Schultz was always fully recharged and ready to go. For some it took a hot shower. For others a steaming cup of coffee. For Schultz, he was never as awake as when he had cemented in his deceptive hairdo.  

Now that the hair was cemented into place, Schultz needed to finish up all the other gross stuff one needed to go through to make a middle-aged man beautiful. All that unsightly ear hair was poking out like punji stakes in a Vietnamese jungle. He got in there with the electric ear and nose trimmer and rooted out most of the brush, then wielded a pair of tungsten steel nasal scissors and surgically snipped out the stubborn loners who refused to vacate, bending his nostrils in odd angles to achieve this. 

He repeated the process in his ear canals. First the right, then the left. He slipped a few times and splotches of blood stained his ears, making it look like his eardrum had perforated by listening to too many Roy Rodgers yodels. 

Now came scraping off the rest of the stubble off his skin. Schultz filled the basin with warm water and slapped it against his face. He disdained shaving foam. A complete waste of money. A nice soapy lather from a regular bar did the trick as much as any amount of weird whipped cream like foam. He had spent hours discussing the problem with his wife. 

“It’s all propaganda from Big Foam and they’re tied in with the media. Whenever a man is shown shaving on TV, what do you see? A big face full of foam, like they’re paid off to. You never see the alternative. Just hot water and soap! It’s a conspiracy!”

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst

Pierott & The Beast of Bodmin Moor - Flash Fiction

 

By Rex Hurst

It was Pierott's own fault. Being top clown had gone to his head. Carlisles’ Frontier Wild West Circus was making its 1923 debut tour of England and Scotland. Nine train cars crammed full of colorful props, miles of rope and canvas, and the exhausted men who put up and ripped down the entire circus every few days rattled over the English countryside. 

The week previous the top clown died of an exploded appendix, and Pierott was promoted to the high position. He was known for comic flailings of his limbs, for juggling six balls with perfect skill, and to make a perfectly pitched tumble look accidental, then pop up in complete control. Now that he had the responsibility of keeping the other clowns in line and making sure their performances were perfect, Pierott made the mistake of expecting more pay for the position. 

He approached the owner midway to Truro and demanded a raise for the onerous demands placed upon his available person, hinting that unless paid the show might not go on. The owner laughed, spat a thick dose of tobacco juice on Pierott’s feet, and had the man redlighted - a nasty circus tradition where a person, usually one who is owed money, is tossed from a moving railcar in the middle of nowhere. The recipient either died or was so damaged he couldn’t catch up to seek revenge. 

Luckily, Pierott was tossed out at a crossroads. One of those mystical places where boundaries between worlds were hazy at best. The momentum of the toss threw him straight from this world into the next - where fairies and elves still romped and all sorts of mythological mayhem occurred daily. 

The bramble he hit did not break his bones, but cushioned him like a lost lamb. He bounced up and down on it, trampoline style, for several minutes before bounding onto the dirt of Elsewhere. Ten minutes earlier, he had been at the top of his career. Now he was a stranger in the strangest land imaginable. Pierott checked his pockets, apart from his makeup, all he had was a bag of juggling balls. 

The ground was covered in carnage. The guts and mangled limbs of men lay everywhere. Blood, not water, ran freely down creeks. Organ meat fed the foul lichen native to the rocky moor. Cries of pain and the dashed dreams of glory peppered the air. Broken spears and smashed swords, ruined chariots and decapitated horses punctuated the aura of danger pregnant in the wind. 

He saw the cause of this misery on top of a hill, the Beast of Bodmin Moor. A giant black cat with flashing green eyes. Two hairy tendrils ending in a poison-dripping scorpion sting sprouted from the beast’s neck. They whipped about the monster with terrifying speed. 

A knight encased in shining armor approached. Weapon ready, shield afixed, he charged the beast. One-two, one-two, his blade shown through. The beast, now bloodied, jumped back and crouched as if readying to pounce. The knight braced himself, but instead of leaping, the beast’s tendrils planted their stingers between the joints of the knight’s armor. The would-be hero fell to his knees in paralyzed pain, and the beast leapt, taking the knight’s head off with one fluid bite. 

The knight’s equipment flew all over, including a slender dagger, a misericorde, which flew at Pierott’s feet. The clown quickly picked it up and stashed it away in his bag of balls. The beast batted the knight’s head about as cats will do with rolling things, until it spotted Pierott, then arched its body and hissed. 

“Who then challenges the Beast of Boudin Moor?” said the huge cat. “Know that none before have come close to defeating me. Cuchulain’s unnamed son tested my power.  I sliced off half his face and sent the boy wailing back to his witch mother. Sir Persant of the Round Table came sniffing after my lair, thinking I held the secret to the Holy Grail. I watered the earth with his carcass. Conn of the Hundred Battles would’ve made a hundred and one had I not stolen the life from his lungs before he could scream his battle cry.” 

“Oh, I, sir?” said Pierott. “I am a humble clown. A tumbler and a juggler. A character to amuse, not to conquer.” 

“Your blood will taste as sweet."

The creature paced forward. 

“But look upon my skills, oh mighty one,” replied Pierott. 

The clown danced back and produced his juggling balls. Throwing one, then two, then a third in the air. Keeping them in perpetual motion before his face. The beast stopped and sat, transfixed by the brightly colored balls in the air. Its poisonous tendrils looped about, in time with the cat’s eyes. Occasionally the beast lifted a shaking paw and tried to bat one of the balls out of synch, but Pierot was too skillful and maneuvered easily around this clumsy interference. 

He stepped back and added a fourth ball. The beast quivered at the sight, nearly panting at this hypnotic display. Another step and a fifth was added. The monster didn’t know where to look, all about him were the beautiful orbs, the wonderful objects to hit and chase. Instead of the sixth ball, Pierott slipped in the misericorde. So many other things were going on, the cat didn’t notice. 

Pierott stepped back again and appeared to slip on rock. He tumbled backwards, grabbing items out of the air. The spell was broken. The beast raised its poisonous tendrils to attack. Pierott popped back up with perfect balance. 

He threw three objects. A red ball knocked away the right tendril. A blue one hit the left. And the dead knight’s dagger went straight down the middle, embedding itself deep in the monster’s eye and killing it stone dead.  

Pierott picked up his balls, brushed himself off, and walked away to discover what other wonders awaited him in this land of fables. 

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

The Doomed Man - Flash Fiction

 

The Doomed Man

By Rex Hurst

Peppermint smoke twisted in the air. The man writhed through the folds of space and time, shredding through the layers of existence like onion peels, tearing into the great unconsciousness of all humanity, into the very core of the zeitgeist where dwells all the archetypes that pester mankind, whose incarnations occur over and over throughout history. 

And there she was. The object and the goal. Glimmering like sunlight through a rare jewel. The Fatal Lady - or Femme Fatale to you noir lovers. Not just a fatal lady, but the Fatal Lady. The definite article if you will. The archetypal concept from whom all others are minor reflections. Her radiance, her mere presence towered above all nearby. Every feminine charm was in full effect. The air was intoxication itself.   

He had felt her all his life, without knowing who she was. Every interaction, every business decision, every romantic dalliance seemed destined to bring him within her sinister grasp. Even when he thought he was protecting himself, running from a half-seen destiny, he ended up rebounding back to where he didn’t want to be.  

After the shrinks told him he was nuts and attempted to load him up with lithium, the man had turned to the mystics, the hypnotists, the wise people who had caught glimpses of another reality on the edge of this one. They touched his spirit and sent him back over and over through all the bodies his soul had inhabited.

Understanding grabbed him, for he saw that each previous incarnation was a reflection of the Doomed Man - the one who is deceived and used. For the Femme Fatale must have her dupes. Over and over he saw himself cast as the victim, the idiot, the betrayed, the destroyed. Worst of all, once he had been used and his husk cast away, no one gave him much thought. One more sucker in a long list. 

Forewarned was forearmed. The circle must be broken. So he sought out the old man with the endlessly black eyes. For a steep price, the old one had spun a song from his clay pipe, rending the world a jelly of crimson and snowy film that he punched through until he found her. The axe must be aimed at the root. 

The Femme Fatale and the Doomed Man together as was destined. He was armed with the masculine weapons of war and she manifested all the feminine ingenuity to make him throw everything away and forget his idiot plan. 

Every generation hails its fatal lady. She was Eve offering the apple; Circe turning men to swine; Jezebel purging the prophets of Israel; Cleopatra charming with a coiled asp; Mata Hari dancing with a pocketful of stolen secrets; Rita Hayworth in Lady from Shanghai “Make hay while the sun shines”- All of these and more. 

You knew what I was when you picked me. She was the poison in the tea, the adder's bite, the scorpion’s sting. I can't help my nature. A Charitist necrophile. Agreeing with everything, but believing in nothing. 

And before he knows it, they are embracing. Her lips are sublime. Her scent is the finest alcohol. Her touch, pure magic. And before he knows it, he is completely beguiled. He has never felt this fulfilled before. Never before has he been this alive. She completed everything missing in his life. She gave a jolt of energy to his dimming soul. 

 

It was there. He felt it. The deadly dagger of the fatale female, angling at the nape of his neck. It was exciting. 

Every second before the dagger plunged was the greatest of his life, where danger tingles between agony and ecstasy, and the planet becomes ever more vibrant. And the Doomed Man realizes why he fails over and over. Because that final moment is just too delicious, too sexually pure, and it promised to bloom into everlasting joy. Maybe this time it’ll be different. He’s at the narrow precipice of everlasting orgasmic relief. Relief. Joy. Bliss.  Just one more micro-second before ultimate pleasure. 

And then it’s ripped away. 

And then the dagger plunges. 

And then the Doomed Man once again fulfills his destiny at the hands of the Fatal Lady. 

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.