* * *
October 19
My attorney wanted me to go for an insanity plea. I fired him and got myself another lawyer with a less attractive track record.
I keep telling them what I want, but they don’t seem to take me seriously.
I want to fry.
I want the juice to surge through my body until my veins pop and I begin to sizzle like a slab of raw meat on a hot griddle.
* * *
October 31
Bedtime story. Part Four.
My, Grandma, what big eyes you have … lying in the palm of my hand.
* * *
November 4
Boy, do I miss Nam. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep, I miss it so.
I volunteered to go, you know. Not because I was patriotic, but because I heard there was a lot of weird shit going on over there. Some of the other grunts thought I was nuts for signing up, but they didn’t understand. They all hated the Nam, while, for me, it was pure paradise.
The first day there, the platoon sergeant took us cherries out behind a quonset hut. There were four dead gooks lying in a ditch, riddled with bullet holes and flies. The sarge made us get down into that ditch and kick them in the head. He said it was to drive the squeamishness out of our systems before he turned us loose in the jungle. He made us kick and kick and kick until their skulls split open and their brains covered our combat boots.
Some of the guys puked their pussy guts up. I would have been down in that ditch all day if they hadn’t pulled me out.
Be all that you can be …
* * *
November 8
Yesterday, some big guy named Alfonso tried to pull a caboose on me in the jailhouse showers. I was all lathered up and too fast for him, though. I backed him into a corner and, finding him to be an attentive audience, did one of my favorite impressions to entertain the sonuvabitch.
By the time the guards got there, poor Alfonso was lying on the wet tiles of the shower stall, clutching at himself as he bled to death. Me, I just stood there and watched with a bloodstained smile as they searched for the missing part of Alfonso’s anatomy … one that they will never find.
You know, I do a lot of neat impressions—Bogart, Cagney … the Donner Party.
* * *
November 11
Bedtime story. Part Five.
Hey, kids, let’s pretend that it’s Christmas time!
That pine tree over there can be the Christmas tree and we can decorate it, too … with pieces of dear, old Mom.
We can use her fingers for tinsel and her organs for ornaments. It’ll be lots of fun, just you wait and see.
Deck the halls with bowels of Mommy …
* * *
November 28
After coming back to the World, I spent some time in Mexico, smuggling drugs and wetbacks across the border. The money was good and kept me in tequila and cheap whores. Then I met up with this guy and we started making movies.
We would lure some chick off the street and take her back to our motel room. We would get her half drunk and give her a snort of coke laced with Spanish Fly. By the time my partner had his camera set up, she would be hot and ready.
Then I would come out of the bathroom, naked except for one of those weird, leather bondage masks. I would then proceed to make love to her. When she opened her mouth to scream in ecstasy, I would take the linoleum knife and, reaching between our heaving bodies …
I had that snuff film stashed somewhere in my van with all my other scrapbooks and trophies, but I didn’t have an 8mm projector to watch it with. I once considered taking it to a Fotomat to have it transferred to DVD … but I chickened out at the last moment.
* * *
December 1
Bedtime story. Part Six.
How about a nursery rhyme for the children?
This little piggie went to the market.
SNAP!
This little piggie stayed home.
CRACK!
This little piggie ate roast beef.
SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!
* * *
December 13
I robbed a gas station in Tucson once and made the attendant eat a turd out of the men’s room toilet, promising to spare his miserable life if he would only perform that one, simple act.
He did.
I didn’t.
* * *
December 22
Bedtime story. Part Seven.
Oh, did I forget to tell you? The All-American family had a baby with them.
I was going to let it live, honest I was. But then I figured, hey, what kind of life is the kid going to have if I do? He will probably be shuffled off to some sleazy orphanage and be adopted by sadistic parents who will beat and abuse him and he will grow up to be a sick bastard … just like me.
So I took him down to the campground trash cans and left him there.
You know, where all the hungry bears hang out for breakfast.
* * *
January 7
Well, it’s official now. The jury handed down their verdict and the trial is over. The death penalty. I get off just thinking about it.
In some states it is lethal injection, in others the gas chamber. Here in Tennessee it is Old Sparky … the tried and true electric chair.
As for my journal, this will be the last entry. The wire that I pried from the springs of my bunk is getting dull and the words are barely legible now. For, you see, the exploits I have penned have not been committed to paper … but to human flesh. I am a living tome; all my sins and atrocities have been carved into every inch of skin, or at least the places that I could reach.
Perhaps, following my execution, the grisly accounts of my life’s work will be made public. Perhaps some unscrupulous individual will bribe a morgue attendant into letting them take photos of my body and they will end up in a sleazy tabloid or on some off-beat website. Then all the world will be privy to my pursuit of barbarity and perversion.
So, if you are browsing the internet during the late hours of the night, and come upon me … please, indulge your morbid curiosity.
Come … read my diary.
Abed
Elizabeth Massie
“Abed” first appeared in Still Dead, edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector and published by Bantam Books in 1992.
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Elizabeth Massie is a Scribe Award-winning and two time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of horror novels, short fiction, media tie ins, historical novels, contemporary mainstream fiction, and units and features in American history textbooks, among other things. Her first love is horror, and since 1984 she has had over 100 horror shorts in numerous magazines and anthologies as well as 5 horror collections and 7 horror novels published by Berkley, Simon & Schuster, Carroll & Graf, Leisure, and others. Recently, some of her works have begun appearing in e-book form through Crossroad Press and Necon E-Books. These include her Stoker-winning Sineater, her collections The Fear Report and new collection Afraid, and a new mainstream novel, Homegrown. Currently she is hard at work on a new zombie novel (as of yet untitled) set in the wild mountains of western Virginia. Beth lives in the Shenandoah Valley with the talented illustrator Cortney Skinner. She loves hiking, camping, chai, and World’s Softest Socks. She thinks cheese is the food of nightmares. I mean, come on. It’s old, rotted, coagulated milk. What’s not to fear? Her website is: www.elizabethmassie.com.
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“Abed” has had a rather controversial life. Following the initial publication in Still Dead, it was rejected for a later zombie anthology (as a reprint) because the publisher (not the editor) thought it was too graphic. Twice, independent movie makers had to shelve it because others who were to be involved with the production got cold feet and said they just couldn’t go that far. Now, however, it looks like it may be made into a short film … fingers crossed. (My preference is that most of what goes on in the story will happen “off stage”; you’ll know what I mean once you’ve read it.) Personally, I see it as a sad story of isolation, despair, and resignation … but it’s all wrapped up in a pretty graphic package. :) In a recent interview, John Skipp said, “Elizabeth Massie’s ‘Abed’ is probably still the hardest-punching zombie short story I’ve ever read.”