“The Crystal Dead”

Here is my entry to the NPR three-minute fiction writing contest. Stories had to be no more than 600 words and had to start with; “Some people swore that the house was haunted” and then end with; “Nothing was ever the same again after that.” Oh by the way… I didn’t make the cut…  …but it was fun…

Some people swore that the house was haunted. They know so little and I know too much. For generations we’ve heard about how scary ghosts are. Those are the ghosts of the past. Sure, they had their moments in history but they don’t hold a candle to the freshly dead of today.  The Dead of the past (when they were living) were slaves to the desires of the flesh, just like the ones of today and Satan uses sex and physical passions to destroy us all.  For thousands of years the Devil has milked us like swollen utters, the slightest touch of his evil red hand and we burst, spilling our honor.

Since then our universal adversary has perfected his game.  In the world of living skin, future ghosts are groomed at an increased level of human degradation.  What this means is the more wicked the living, so the dead will be. We can read accounts of ancient visions on how freakishly evil Hell is with its wailing and gnashing of teeth.  The fact is these visions are of future Hell, the Hell of here and now.   Hell in the beginning was filled with fools who just pillaged and raped.  Their ghosts would wander the halls or swoop through a dark wood in their disembodied state of misery.

The final scourge to be unleashed on mankind has been the introduction of street drugs.  Yes – mind altering herbs and plants have been used in the past to get closer to “The Spirit” or “God”.   Since the flesh is the best way to make us fall, it is the degenerate sex acts that can bring the soul down the deepest.  The most evil of all street drugs is Methamphetamine.  Think about it, why control us by the sex organs when you can transform the whole body into one?  That is what meth does. When you have a monkey on your back as big as yourself and 100% of your body is capable of having that electrifying all-consuming climax, then you become a Devil machine, a robot of wickedness.  When you are dead the intense search for the orgasm of Meth can drive a Meth Ghost to drag their snaggled teeth across the bricks of the mantel or to gnaw on the wrought iron railing of this 100-year-old address.

We are the crown jewel of Beelzebub. “The Crystal Dead”, Ghosts of Meth.  That’s how we roll in this house.   I say “We” because in this place we manufactured our precious brew.  Until one night after weeks of sleep deprivation everyone collapsed, nearly dead.  Then completely dead, when our toxic nectar leaked out of its container and sent a blanket of death over us all.

Sure there were ghosts here before us but they fled in horror when they saw us coming. Now we are condemned to these vaporous walls clawing at each other’s backs and wailing skyward. Trying to squeeze our souls through the planks that imprison us.

Then one night we felt a familiar vibration approaching the front door. In walked the twig of a woman soaring in her mind and body from the blackness of meth.  As legions we attacked her groomed vessel and twisted into her flesh like lightning hot corkscrews. We are now her and she is us. Together we have become the next great and dreadful generation of Demons on this earth. “Crystal Meth Zombies”.   Now we are free to roam the night.

For you, “The Living”, Nothing was ever the same again after that.