IN THIS TWILIGHT - tales of lost gods and fragile transformations

IN THIS TWILIGHT
tales of lost gods and fragile transformations

This collection of 13 stories transports you to a world where both dreams and monsters lurk in the shadows, where love and forgotten rituals fight for control of the human heart, and where the madness of eternity can be glimpsed in a single segmented eye.

This anthology collects some of the best stories from Al Bruno III's website and includes the novellas 'Chad's Oracles', 'Fully Vested' and 'The Mask Collector', available for the first time anywhere.

Teasers for IN THIS TWILIGHT

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American Monster

by

Al Bruno III

When they hoisted me up from the bottom of the well, I almost found myself mourning the silence and the darkness. The wooden cross I had been lashed to had long since rotted away but the weighted chains were still about my limbs. They rattled as my long dormant limbs shuddered and flexed; with each blink of my eyes my vision returned and became more precise.

There were four people in the basement of the abandoned Georgetown manor. The two closest to me were a tall woman and a little man. They wore pale blue hospital gowns, caps and surgical masks that puffed in and out with every word or breath. Rubber gloves covered their hands and thick, brown-stained aprons with pockets that hung heavy with the tools of their trade. They looked me over with clinical fascination and spoke as though I was some kind of long lost heirloom.

Which I suppose I am.

The two men near the door were tall, detached and statue still, they both had handguns hidden beneath their black suits. I recognized them as Agents of the Pharos project immediately but all that meant was that they were just new breeds of a very old kind of dog.

They always think I am helpless.

I let them examine me for a time, poking and prodding but all the while I could feel the trembling in my limbs weakening. An hour into the assessment put them to the test.

Rust and time had left my bonds weakened, with a single motion I pulled my right arm free. Links of rusted steel scattered everywhere, clattering on the floor and bouncing off the walls. The woman shouted, her surgical mask puffing out comically. My hands tore into the soft flesh of the little man's throat. Robbed of his voice he could only beg for mercy with his eyes.

And how he begged!

I tightened my grip feeling the blood well up around my fingertips. With a final pull the cartilage snapped and came away. I let the man’s body fall to the cellar floor, all the while leering at the woman.

The two Pharos Agents drew their weapons and fired. The woman was caught in the crossfire; bullets tore through her flesh to bury themselves in mine.

So many years, so many bullets.

Pulling free of the last of the chains I raised myself up to my full height. One of thembellowed for me to surrender. I made swift work of them, bending their bodies and twisting their limbs. I let one of them twitch for a while as I tried to assess what fresh surprises this new administration might have in store for me.

Then I made my way to the top of the stairs. The door was locked but it tore off the hinges easily enough.

A figure greeted me at the top of the landing; a tall, slump shouldered figure, with thick mismatched arms and undersized legs....

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The Fat Guy Gets the Girl
By
Al Bruno III

Dedicated to Francis Hogan

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

Does that light have to be so bright? Yeah. Yeah. For the cameras… I get it. No I don’t need a lawyer. I’m just sorry you guys couldn’t wait until I get out of the hospital.

Where do you want me to start? But you know that already. …right the video record.

Ok. Ok. My name is Adam H. Drahm… I’m 18, almost 19 really.

I know I look older; it’s the weight, the only good thing about pushing 300 pounds is that I never get carded… I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that to policemen… I mean a policeman and a woman…what I mean is a policewoman and a policeman … I mean police detectives… sorry.

Yes Detective Connelly I am ready to go on… I’m just kinda… it’s kind of jumbled in my head but I know what happened. And I’ll tell you everything. I don’t want there to be any questions or doubts about what happened. So let’s get started.

There were six of us. There was me, Kev and Jenny, Laurie and Mark, and Alice. We were in my Hummer heading out to a camp on Schroon Lake…

The Hummer, well it was my Dad’s really but he let me borrow it. He was just glad to see me out with my friends. What? You’re surprised they were my friends? The most popular kids in the school and the fat kid don’t mix, is that what you think?

Look, for as long as I’ve been able to put two thoughts together I’ve known I was overweight. When the other kids in Kindergarten won’t play on the see-saws with you, you start to realize a few things. It’s just that I decided a long time ago that fat or thin I wasn’t going to be a punch line.

Yeah a punch line, like every stupid comedy movie- the fat guy never gets the girl he just gets laughed at. That’s not me. No matter what else I am that will never be me.

It’s like my Dad always told me that you can get whatever you want in this world. You just have to really want it and you have to be patient.

And Dad should know. He is filthy rich after all.

Oh, I totally admit my Dad being filthy rich helped open some doors for me, but money can only get you so far. That’s not why the cool kids let me be part of their group, I’m sure of that.

Anyway, I was driving. We were going to camp out by the shore, a little post prom celebration. I had us all kitted out with a portable gas grill and tents and a portable TV… yeah roughing it. We had to make a lot of u-turns to get there – I kept missing the turnoff to the camp...

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Pass It On, It’ll Make Your Skin Crawl
By
Al Bruno III

The dog was barking, its voice high and frightened. Josh woke at once wondering how long he had been asleep for. He had just lain down for a moment to relax. The clock told him it had been hours. Josh shook his head, no wonder the dog was barking.

His wife Dina stirred uneasily, eight months pregnant and forever uncomfortable. Josh smiled at her in the dark, still terrified and bemused at the thought of fatherhood. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt Josh opened the back door expecting to find his beloved mastiff bounding in place expectantly.

Good thing my nearest neighbor is over a mile away.

The fenced in back yard was empty and the front gate was still latched. Up ahead the dog’s barks had become combative snarls.

This made no sense. Josh had trained Roscoe well; the dog knew his boundaries and going past the front gate when he wasn’t on a leash was simply not allowed. Josh headed around to the front of the house, to the dirt driveway that was far enough back from the road to reduce the occasional pair of headlights to frail shafts of illumination flickering between the trees. After ten years of living in the heart of Chicago he still found it hard to sleep without the murmuring din of the city and the light from oncoming traffic.

Earth oozed between his toes as he scrambled between his old battered truck and the newly purchased minivan. Four footsteps later and his feet were caked with mud and he vowed to himself that this spring he would find a way to finance paving the driveway.

Along with touching up the roof and re-grouting the bathroom wall … and the baby too. He thought. So many plans, so many expenses.

The dog became silent. “Roscoe?” Josh called, “Come here boy!”

A muffled cry filled the air. It was a human cry. No dog ever made a sound like that...

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Food, Folks and Fun
By
Al Bruno III

No one saw that damn bus coming, not at a quarter to ten. The staff of Burger Clown had already begun cleaning up for the night. Mark Kravis looked up from his mop bucket and blinked at the sight, "You gotta be kidding me."

"Get on the broiler!" Ken squawked from behind the counter, his voice filling the empty restaurant "Get on the broiler now!" Ken was the assistant manager and in charge for the night. Mark loathed working with him because his only administrative skills were squawking orders and twitching.

Cursing under his breath Mark let his mop clatter to the floor and got on the broiler. This was just perfect, his band had practice tonight...

They filed off the bus and streamed in, tramping all over the freshly cleaned floor. They were all pasty white and wearing their Sunday best, which was odd considering it was a Thursday. The faded orange paint on the walls mixed with the fluorescent lighting made them look like zombies. Mark glanced up at the counter watching as Darla took the first order. He could hear her voice over the hiss and the pop of the grill, she was reciting the official Burger Clown customer greeting but every syllable reeked with loathing. Mark couldn’t understand how she could be so hot and so scary all at once. He talked to her when it was slow but all he’d ever really learned about her was that she had run away from home and dropped out of college. Mark had never really understood what screwed her up more, her parents or her thesis.

Lucy nudged past him on her way to a fresh tray of hamburger buns. Unlike most of the Burger Clown staff she actually needed this job. She was retired and living on a fixed income. It irritated Mark the way she took pride in her work.

There was a video screen set against the wall nearest the broiler. When it was working right it would keep a running tally of the number of beef and chicken patties that needed to be made. Watching the line filter down the counter from Darla to Lucy, Mark started to realize that there were no orders flashing on the screen.

"Why aren’t you doing anything? Why are you just standing there?" Kens screech almost sent him leaping into the broiler. "Were not paying you just to stand there!"

Mark willed himself to think only about rent and car payments, not about the number of ways there were to kill a man with a spatula. "No orders yet." He said evenly. "Maybe they’re all here to use the bathroom."

"It must be broken." Ken slapped the amber monitor and twiddled the CONTRAST and TINT controls meaningfully. "Go out there and see what we need to make. That doesn’t mean hit on Darla that means find out what we need to make and get back here."

"Whatever." Mark said skirting around the fry vats and walking up behind Darla. "Hey-" he began.

"Come to visit us, hah?" Lucy winked at him from the shake machine, "Too hot back there or is Ken just getting on your nerves?"

"Yes." Mark answered as he turned back to the girl at the counter.

A bald man in a clip on tie was placing his order; there was s sticker on his shirt that announced his name in bright, child-like block letters. He grinned at Darla while he rambled, "…so we were on our way back and we figure we may as well stop off and top off. Get it? Stop off and top off."

"May I take your order please?" Darla asked.

"That thing through your eyebrow there," he pointed to the elaborate ring, "did that hurt?"

"May I please take your order?" Darla said again.

Oblivious to the wave after wave of raw hostility washing over him he said, "Ill have a vanilla shake."

For some reason that made Darla’s composure crack, a tremor crept into her voice. "One dollar nine cents please."

Ken started screeching, "No conversations! Get back here and work! Ill write you up!"

"All right!" Mark shouted back. He heard Darla slam the cash register door closed. The next customer was already poised to place their order. Mark turned to Darla "Listen, the computer is screwed up. What have they ordered so far?"

She grabbed his arm with bruising force, "They’re only ordering vanilla shakes."

"What?"

She shook his arm and squeezed harder, her nails digging into his flesh, "They are all ordering vanilla shakes. And they all have exact change. All of them..."

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Celebrity Skin
By
Al Bruno III

When she wore sheer dresses and short skirts the tabloids insinuated she was a whore, when she dressed demurely and elegantly they wondered what she was trying to hide. When she was out with a man, even if that man was simply a co-worker or a friend all the shows dedicated to the pursuit of celebrities immediately assumed they were fucking. If she was out with one of her female friends or co-workers, the blogs and internet gossip sites would start hoping she was a lesbian. If she put on a few pounds they said she was losing her looks, if she lost weight she was anorexic.

But the worst part, the worst part was that they were all starting to call her a has-been. A has-been and she wasn’t even thirty yet.

That was what had brought Gwen Seymour to the offices of the Ternion Agency aka the last stop of the falling star- they had resurrected dozens of careers from scandal, poverty and, worst of all, irrelevance.

When she had arrived the receptionist had directed her to the security guard and the security guard had escorted her to the elevator. There were no buttons on the inside of the car; apparently visitors to the Ternion Agency offices only went where the Ternion Agency wanted them to.

The doors of the elevator were mirrored and highly polished, Gwen took a moment to examine her reflection for any flaws. She still had healthy looking skin and a great figure, her distinctive red hair had lost none of its luster and her eyes- well her eyes were always the first thing anyone noticed. They sparkled like emeralds.

The Greed Eyed Monster- that was what the first article about her in Peoplemagazine had called her when she had become the new breakout starlet of the horror film Johnny Nightshade. Even now Gwen wasn’t sure what it was that made her stand out from the other eager young actors in the ensemble. Was it the realism she brought to her performance? Was it the something the camera found alluring about her? Or was it that she was the only girl in the cast that kept her clothes on?

Whatever the reason, her life became a roller coaster of guest spots on TV shows, supporting roles in movies and then before she was twenty, three staring vehicles each one doing successively better at the box office until the smash hit Sour Girl.

She had even been nominated for a Golden Globe.

The elevator doors opened and she found herself staring into a spacious and empty office. “Hello?” Gwen called as she cautiously stepped out onto the luxurious shag carpet. A wide picture window gave her a panoramic view of LA, “Is anyone here?”

The wide leather chairs faced away from the window forcing the person seated in them to stare into the oversize fish tank at the far end of the room. The water was a smoky shade of blue and thick with shadowy shapes...

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Futterman's Apotheosis
By
Al Bruno III

It wasn't until after they got settled in that someone found the hatch set into the stone floor of the cabin; a wooden door with hinges on the inside and a black metal ring in the center that was cold to the touch.

“I was thinkin' it might be a wine cellar or something.” Randy said.

Edward shook his head, “We're just bedding down for the night. Don't go screwing around.”

Of course it had been Randy snooping around. While they had been unpacking and unrolling their sleeping bags, he had been going through the books stacked in one corner of the room; while they were struggling with the fireplace, he had found the weird graffiti scrawled on the inside of the kitchen cabinet doors. Now he was obsessing over the hatch, “Maybe there’s bodies down there or something.” He said with a morbid grin, “Maybe the people that own this place make snuff films or worship the Devil...”

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Canadian Girlfriend
By
Al Bruno III

for my mother

...it began as it ended, with an abrupt transfiguration and a flutter of wings...

* * *

The air in Rousedower’s Tavern was thick with cigarette smoke. The patrons were college students and middle-aged bohemians; both groups were lured here by the promise of cheap beer and easily ignored acoustic bands. Barry Moore tired to look casual as he directed Jimbo and Mike to a corner table.

When the waitress brought the menus, Barry watched while his friends debated over the exchange rates between American and Canadian currency. They didn’t have a lot of either after pre-paying for the motel room and they still had to have enough left over to make the trip back from Montreal to the SUNY Albany Campus. Barry grimaced a little at the thought of four more hours crammed into Jimbo’s Dodge Charger.

“Well?” Mike Proctor straightened his glasses. He was the tallest of them; his face was far too small for a head so large. He preferred to wear tie-dyed shirts and heavy boots. He looked like the Frankenstein monster had collided with a hippie commune, “Where is she?”

Barry made a show of scanning the crowd; he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the bar; plain looking with shaggy hair and an easygoing smile. “I don’t see her. She must be running late.”

“I can’t believe you’re making us do this man.” Jimbo Lord wore mostly black, because he’d learned that black was slimming. Sadly Jimbo had never learned that diet and exercise were even more slimming. “I mean we’ve come all this way, can’t you just admit it?”

Barry shook his head, “Admit what?”

“You’ve been telling us about this girl for almost a year.” The waitress brought over a bowl of popcorn and Jimbo dug in, “This perfect girl. Come on. Admit it so we can drop this charade and hit some strip clubs.”

“Topless…” Mike half-spoke, half-sang, “…and bottomless.”

“Guys she’ll be here.” Barry said. The waitress came back and took their drink orders, two beers one soda.

Mike looked over the menu again, “What are the wings like?”

Barry shrugged. The door opened with a long drawn out squeal as another group of college students filled the air with raucous laughter. The band finished their first set to scattered applause and made their way to the bar.

“I thought this was your little love nest?” Mike asked,

“How can you not know what the wings are like?”

“I never tried them all right?”

Jimbo shook his head sadly, “Look. Just repeat after me… There- Is- No- Phoebe- Reischl.”

“You can tell her that soon enough.”

“Lord have mercy. We have got to break you of this.”

Barry took a drink of his soda, “Break me of what? She’s real.”

Mike shook his head, “I need evidence. We have not seen one picture of this girl and you have not received one phone message. Not even an email and believe me we’ve looked.”

“Guys…”

“How far do you think he’s going to take this?” Mike wondered aloud, “Should we settle in and order something?”

Jimbo nodded sagely, “Even in the midst of an intervention, there is always time for curly fries, and wings.”

Mike smiled, “You’re like the Sun Tzu of junk food.”

“What intervention?” Barry scowled, “I don’t need an intervention.”

In his third year of college Barry had moved off campus, of all the applicants he’d looked into for a roommate Mike Proctor had seemed like the one least likely to murder someone in their sleep. Jimbo Lord had come to help Mike and he’d never really left; when he wasn’t working or trolling for ‘babes’ on the Internet, he was planted on their couch. It didn’t take them very long for them all to become friends, and it didn’t take Mike and Jimbo long to figure out that their newest friend didn’t have much luck with the ladies.

When the waitress returned to their table she asked, “More drinks?”

Mike and Jimbo ordered curly fries, hot wings and more beers.

“You know what I think?” Mike smiled, “I think what you need Barry, is a night with a professional.”

“Hey!” Barry said.

“Hang on a minute here.” Mike continued, “I don’t mean some skank, I mean a night with one of those high class hookers you always see dead on CSI.”

“So many things were wrong with that last statement...” Barry said.

“Look, you’re among friends here.” Mike frowned and looked around the bar, “Friends and Canadians. Just admit you made her up so you wouldn’t seem so lame.”

“Yet in doing so you became lamer.” Jimbo said.

The door squealed again and in the silence, everyone at the table seemed to look up at once. Barry felt his entire world tilt sideways. A woman stood in the doorway, she wore jeans and a bomber jacket covered with faded decals; her dark hair was pulled back in a knot. Her smile practically glittered as she waved and headed over to sit down at their table. It was Phoebe, there was no mistaking her.

But that's impossible. Barry thought, She doesn't exist...

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A Vision For The Future
By
Al Bruno III

“There are CREATURES that come from beyond reality
From beyond the realms of TIME and SPACE
Beware THEM for THEIR purposes are unfathomable”
The Kriely Fragments
Sixth canto
Translator unknown

* * *

Sheku Banjah tried to keep the class busy but the children were tense and distracted. He stood at the front of the one room schoolhouse, framed by the maps of the African continent and Sierra Leone on the walls. He kept the questions easy and gave away pieces of candy for each correct answer. The schoolhouse had been a farewell gift from the Peace Corps workers that had visited almost a decade a go. The people of the village of Kono did their best to keep it in repair, doting on it with the same amount of care and reverence they had for their place of worship.

Usually the classroom was loud and busy but today Sheku’s students were all nervous glances and halting replies. The adults of the village had tried to shield the children from the chaos erupting in Freetown but they knew; they heard whispers of the wholesale slaughter committed in the name of the Revolutionary United Front. They snuck radios to their beds and listened to the news from under the covers. They had all seen that man stagger into their village a week ago, his dark skin pallid with blood loss, his arms and lips hacked away...

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Oozing My Religion

by
Al Bruno III

Every night she waited out in a clearing with her camera and binoculars to catch sight of something from beyond; she didn't care what it was- a UFO, a shimmering wisp of ghost or even a forest spirit. Just so long as it was something that could prove to her there was more than her job, her apartment and her emptiness.

This night was cool with the early days of fall and the winter stars were beginning to shine; she was wearing her windbreaker and stocking cap, there was a thermos of soup between her feet should she need it. It had all the makings of a perfect night...

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IN THIS TWILIGHT
tales of lost gods and fragile transformations