Trash Dances (Return of the Living Dead)

Friday, September 28, 2007

"Camp Trash" (chapter 2; adults only, horror/gore, femslash)

"Camp Trash"

By Brian Flynn

Chapter Two: Camp Lilith Lake

3rd June, 1985

Less than a mile away from the lodge, through thedense woods, lay Camp Lilith Lake. Spread out oversixty acres, the camp included one large chunk ofLilith Lake and a good helping of the woods around it. During the off-season, when the camp was closed,there were no caretakers other than Old Coot, who dida patrol of the camp about twice a week. Heessentially did this just to make sure that no largeanimals were making their homes in one of the cabins. This was why the counselors arrived at the camp sometime before the campers – the kiddies, as the staffliked to call them – arrived. They cleaned the placeup, made it livable once again.

Wilson had been right about the camp. It was openingfor the season at the beginning of next week and thecounselors had arrived today, less than twenty-fourhours since Wilson and his friends had been murdered.

The lake was only a mid-sized example of its kind butit was quite deep and its waters were dark andseemingly impenetrable. As with all remote places ofmystery, Lilith Lake was said to be haunted. Storieswere told that on certain nights of the year, strangelights would rise out of the center of the lake andascend to the heavens. Theories about the lightsorigin were numerous. They were caused by some kindof underwater gas. They were actually camouflagedUFOs returning to their mothership. They wereredeemed souls entering Heaven. They were ghosts of people who had drowned in the lake.

These stories made for entertaining campfire stories but, since the phenomena had no regular pattern and had never been documented in anything other than blurry, out-of-focus photographs, no one really tookthem seriously. They were useful tools to keep thekiddies scared and in their beds at night.

William Hannigan stood by the lake, taking in its beauty. He simply loved this camp and wasn’t afraid to go on and on about it at length to anyone who happened to ask him about it. Hannigan ran the summercamp and was always the first to arrive at the lake. He was thirty-eight with dark brown hair, good-lookingin the classic sense and kept himself in great shape.
Hannigan liked to think of himself as progressive whencompared to other camp leaders. He took all types ofcampers: boy scouts, girl scouts, school-organized groups, mentally-handicapped kids. He loved them all. The first group this year was the same group that always opened the season: the boy scouts. But thatwas a week away and much work needed to be done to bring the camp up to Hannigan’s standards before then. That’s where the counselors came in. They should start arriving any moment now.

The sound of shuffling leaves brought Hannigan’s attention to the figure making his way up the lake path towards him and the camp coordinator realized that the first person he would have to deal with was Old Coot. The old man was in his early seventies, Hannigan guessed, tall and thin with not a strand of hair on his head. His skin was as white as a set of fleshly-laundered sheets and, as far as Hannigan could tell, there were about four teeth left in his mouth. The old man did keep in shape, however, and didn’t need a walking stick when he made his rounds.

“How are you, Cooter?” Hannigan asked, waving.

Old Coot’s real name was Jonathan Cooter but nearly everyone called him Old Coot. Lately, that is in the past few years, Hannigan had been trying to buck the trend. Coot waved back as he approached and Hannigan could see that serious look in the old man’s eyes and knew what was coming.

Here we go, Hannigan thought. It’s time for the annual “you’re all going to die” speech.

He was, of course, right. Coot joined Hannigan at the side of the lake and gazed out at its waters.

“Pretty, ain’t it?” the old man said. He spit some kind of vile, brown liquid out of his mouth and onto the ground close to Hannigan’s shoes.

“Yeah,” Hannigan said.

“Pretty but dangerous,” Old Coot said. “Seven people have drowned in this here lake, by my count.”

“That so?” Hannigan said. He had been involved in this exchange so many times now that he was truly beginning to get bored with it.

“Ayuh,” Old Coot said. “That’s to say nothing of all the disappearances in this area of the woods. Ask me, it was a bad idea to ever build a camp here in thefirst place.”

“Think so?”

Old Coot nodded.

“You got kids comin’ in a week’s time,” he said.

“Same as every year,” Hannigan agreed.

“That gives you a week to shut this place down, save a bunch of kid’s lives.”

“Do you have any insight into the nature of the danger this year, Cooter?”

“Not as such. Just a feeling.”

Hannigan nodded.

“That’s pretty much what I figured,” he said.

“I’ll be around,” Old Coot said, reassuring him. “Keepin’ an eye on things.”

“That makes me feel a whole lot better. Thanks.”

“Not a problem ’tall.”

Coot tipped his non-existent hat and went on his way. Hannigan watched the old man leave. Just after Old Coot rounded his way behind the cabins and out of sight, the first of the cars wandered into the camp.

Terri Fletcher, Johnny Greer, Louis Blake, Abby Warren, Greg Young and Ned Houston were all dropped off by their parents. Hannigan stayed by the lake and let the teenagers congregate by the cabins, let them socialize. Alice Miles, his assistant, drove her own car, of course. Roger Utah, another one of the teenagers, also drove his own car. He looked like he was trying to impress, what with his leather jacket and sunglasses. Finally, the van arrived. Hannigan sighed, walked towards the cabin to meet the van.

The van was from the Youth Center. This year, Hannigan had decided to take on three “troubled” kids; wards of the state who lived at the Youth Center and were frequently in trouble for one thing or another.

“Morning, counselors,” Hannigan said to the three teenagers who exited the van.

Lisa Smith, Violet Cartwright and Carl Jenkins gave him a quick glance and returned to their business of shuffling off alone to different corners of the camp. Hannigan sighed again, wondering if his decision had been a mistake. Alice Miles approached him before he could dwell on it for long. She was a strikingly alluring woman with not-quite-normal good looks but an odd beauty about her. She had dark blonde, chin-length hair and was about twenty-three.

“You’ve assembled quite an interesting collection this year,” she said.

“It’s a good group, I think,” Hannigan said.

“Could be,” Alice agreed. “What about the Youth Center kids?”

“It’s a risk, but I think they’ll work out fine.”

Alice nodded.

“Let’s get them together, shall we?” Hannigan said.

“Right,” Alice said.

“Okay, counselors,” Hannigan called, “gather round.”

Hannigan was amused by the assorted way that the counselors gathered. Here was Johnny Greer, Terri Fletcher and Greg Young bounding towards him, their enthusiasm naked and obvious. Here was Louis Blake, Abby Warren, Ned Houston laughing at Roger Utah’s jokes. Hannigan had to call again to get them to gather around him. He was happy to see one of the Youth Center kids, Lisa Smith, lagging only slightlybehind this group, obviously wanting to be included in the fun. The two other Youth Center kids, Violet Cartwright and Carl Jenkins were the last to gather: Carl had been busy looking out into the woods in fascination and Violet had been absorbed in the music that was blaring into her head from the walkman that she wore.

“All right,” Hannigan said. “Good to see that you all got here on time.”

“Right, like my mom gave me any choice,” Abby Warren said, flicking a particularly bothersome strand of hair out of her eyes. Louis Blake laughed at this.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Hannigan continued. “The kids’ll be here in a week. That doesn’t give us a whole lot of time to get everything ready but if you’re willing to work hard and you just have fun with it, we’ll be finished with plenty of time left over to party.”

A cheer rose up from most of them at that point and Hannigan smiled, calmed them down with a few gestures.

“All that,” he said, “and a staggering paycheck of fifty bucks a week.”

Good-hearted laughter from most of them. He always liked to throw in a joke or two. It kept the counselors in good spirits, he thought.

“Now let’s get to work.”

It just needs a few good kicks, really,” Hannigan said as he, Alice and Terri headed into the work shed.

“I tried that,” Terri said. She was a pretty brunette in her late teens.

“Maybe it just needs a man’s touch, then,” Hannigan suggested, a smile on his face.

He approached the generator – a massive, metal monstrosity – and looked it up and down. Taking the pull cord in hand, he gave it a hard pull. Nothing happened.

“Told you,” Terri said.

Alice was trying not to laugh, a hand on her lips.

“Don’t you dare laugh, Alice,” Hannigan said, pointing.

Alice only smiled wide and said nothing. Hannigan went back to work on the generator, looked around it a bit and grabbed the pull cord again.

“Watch out, it’s gonna blow!” a deep, loud male voice said and all three of them jumped.

“Oh, you should see your faces,” Edward Jay Merrick said, holding his rather large stomach and laughed.

“Eddie,” Hannigan said. “You nearly gave me a heartattack.”

“Hey, that’s what happens to old geezers,” Eddie said. He was about thirty with hair that was so blond itwas almost yellow. He had a considerable mustache and beard and bushy eyebrows.

“You want to give it a try, Eddie?” Alice asked.

“Hey, I’m a cook not an electrician,” Eddie said. They all looked at him. “All right, all right, quit looking at me like that. Move out of the way.”

Hannigan moved aside and Eddie moved in. He actually spit on his hands before grasping the pull cord. With a good, strong yank, the generator came alive, making a loud, chugging noise that filled the shed. Hannigan, Alice and Terri cheered and applauded. Eddie turned to the rest of them, took a few little bows.

“You’re a natural, Eddie,” Alice said. “If only something could be done about your cooking.”

Eddie gave her a sarcastic smile, headed out of the shed. The rest followed him.

“How was the trip up?” Hannigan asked.

“Shitty, as usual,” Eddie said. “Highway's a killer.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. This time up, there was a three-car. As I was passing by, a clean-up guy was covering up a man’s severed head. Swear to God.”

“Christ,” Hannigan said.

“It’s a violent world, I tell ya,” Eddie said.

“So,” Alice was saying a few feet behind Hannigan and Eddie, “do you live in town, Terri?”

“Yeah,” Terri said. “My mom moved us here two years ago.”

“You like it?”

Terri shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. I like summer camp the best. Helping out all the kids, campfires, ghost stories. You know?”

“Oh, I agree. I love it here. I like to take walks alone through the woods in the morning, just after the sun comes up.”

“That’s the only thing that I find hard to get used to,” Terri said. “The mornings. Way too early to me.”

Alice smiled.

“Race you to the cabins,” she said.

“Want to bet on it?” Terri asked.

“I never bet at camp. Too dangerous.”

At that, they were off, running past Hannigan and Eddie as fast as they could towards the main cabins, where there was much work to do. If they knew what was to come, they would have left the campgrounds that very second.

To Be Continued...

Thursday, September 27, 2007

"Camp Trash" (chapter 1; adults only, horror/gore, femslash)

Title: "Camp Trash"

Author: Brian Flynn ( hansomealvin @ yahoo.com or flynnparadox @ gmail.com)

Rating: Adults Only

Feedback: Please. Either send it to me direct or postit to the group.

Parts: ? (1/?)

Summary: Some backwoods idiots release Trash from an abandoned cannister and all hell breaks loose.

Continuity: This story takes place about a yearafter the original "Return of the Living Dead"

Warnings: This story contains graphic descriptions ofsex, gore and violence.

Disclaimer: Characters from "Return of the LivingDead" are the property of Hemdale/Fox Films/MGM. Noownership is implied nor profit recieved by the use ofthem in this context.

Camp Trash
By Brian Flynn

Chapter One: The Lodge

Sunday, 2nd June, 1985

It was true that no one knew how long the lodge had stood in the little clearing in the woods near the lake. It seemed as if the lodge had always been there; as if it had simply pushed itself out of the earth like a tooth emerging from a jawbone.

It was also true that no one could remember how long it had been since anyone – anyone living, that is – had occupied the lodge. In the dying memories of the old folks, the lodge had always been empty. The wild had grown up around it; weeds and vines encircling it, making it one of their own.

It was summer and the light pouring through the trees seemed to weigh heavier on the ground and the trees. A large family of finches twittered in the trees around the lodge. They were in the middle of building a nest when the loud sound frightened them and they scattered.

The sound was an old, battered truck back-firing as it made its way down the barely-traveled, weed-ridden path that led to the lodge. The truck had, at one time, been blue but wear and tear and the simple passage of time had dulled it; entropy in action. The truck came to a stop in front of the lodge.

Inside the truck were three men, all of considerable size. Jim, the driver, exited first. He was a large man, at least four hundred pounds, and wore jeans and a light flannel shirt. He reached into the cab and grabbed a flashlight.

“We got nothin’ to worry about,” he said, closed the door behind him. “No one comes out here.”

Wilson and Bob, the passengers, got out of the truck and joined Jim.

“Where did you find it?” Bob asked. He was the shortest among them and the slightest, weighing in at a relatively trim one hundred and ninety.

“What, the lodge?” Jim asked.

“No,” Bob said. “You know.”

“Oh, that,” Jim said, a smile on his face. “Fell off the back of an army truck outside of Louisville. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Part o’ me wanted to return it right away but it was just too dang wild. I had to hang onto it. Glad I did, too.”

“Yeah, you keep talking about it,” Wilson said. “When are we going to see it?” Wilson was bearded. He was the tallest of the three and his weight was istributed pretty well about his person. He looked, in fact, like a lumberjack.

“Step into the parlor, gentlemen,” Jim said, gesturing to the lodge.

“Since when have you owned the lodge?” Wilson asked but approached the door all the same.

“You know as well as I that no one comes out here but the summer camp kids,” Jim explained, “and the camp ain’t open yet.”

“Won’t be long, though,” Wilson said. “What, a week?”

He looked at Bob.

“Somethin’ like that,” Bob said.

“Yeah,” Wilson said, “and I’ll bet the counselors are already setting the place up. And you know these counselors, always getting away to find some place to fuck. Suppose a couple of ‘em come down here?”

“Well, then we’ll send ‘em packing,” Jim said. “Now do you want to see this thing or not?”

Wilson and Bob nodded and Jim led the way into the lodge. The building was modest, five rooms
and a cellar. The wild had overtaken the inside of the lodge just like it had the outside. It was obvious that coyotes and other animals had made the lodge a temporary residence in the past. Weeds and dust and droppings covered everything. Light drifted in through the boarded-up windows and gave everything a strange glow.

There was a crash of lightning from outside and Bob jumped slightly. The two other men laughed.

“I didn’t see no storm coming,” Bob said, trying to explain himself. “Didn’t see a cloud in the sky when we were driving out.”

Jim only laughed.

“He’s got a point,” Wilson said. “Also, it ain’t the storm season.”

Outside, the hard patter of rain was audible. The storm was winding up, drawing power from the atmosphere. It was going to be quite a spectacle.

“Cellar door’s this way in the kitchen,” Jim said, still laughing slightly.

The others followed him. The kitchen seemed to be in more disarray than the rest of the lodge. There was an ancient ice box that had fallen over at some point, the doors hanging open, a nest of some kind occupying the innards. Jim led them to a door and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. Wilson saw that Jim had installed a strong metal bar across the door and now he used the keys to unlock this bar and push it to one side. Turning on his flashlight, Jim headed down the cellar stairs into darkness. Bob and Wilson followed.

“Hey, you know Old Coot says he seen the thing that lives in the woods while he was out huntin’,” Wilson said as the three of them descended the stairs.

“No shit?” Bob said.

“No shit. Says he seen somethin’ massive with great black hooves stomping through the woods.”

“Yeah,” Jim piped up ahead of them. “And let me guess: it crawled out of a bottle, right?”
Bob chuckled.

“Old Coot’s never been known to lie before,” Wilson said.

“Yeah,” Jim said, “he also ain’t never been sober a day in his life. And he’s got some damn strange ideas.”

“You tellin’ me that what you’ve got down here is the real deal – a genuine mystery – but anything Old Coot comes up with is some kind of drunken hallucination?”

Jim was silent until they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He swept the flashlight across the cellar until the beam hit a green metal canister the size of a barrel. It looked like it had come off of a military assembly line. Writing had been stenciled across it and the olive green color of it reeked of the army. The three men approached the canister slowly. The lid was open, revealing a second lid, this one with a window imbedded in it to view whatever was inside.

“This is it, is it?” Wilson asked.

“Yep,” Jim said. “Fell off the back of an army truck, just like I said.”

They circled the canister and soon the flashlight beam illuminated a word that had been clumsily spray-painted diagonally across the barrel in large, red letters: TRASH.

“Trash,” Bob read.

“Yeah,” Jim said. “That’s what I’ve been calling her.”

“You mean…” Wilson began. “You mean you opened it?”

Jim nodded.

“You said you were going to wait,” Wilson said.

“Couldn’t,” Jim said. “There was something…something making me open it.” It seemed as if the man didn’t quite know how to articulate what he meant. He shrugged.

“Was she…?” Wilson said.

“See for yourself,” Jim said.

He turned around, shined the flashlight beam into the far corner of the cellar.

“Jesus,” Wilson said.

“Yep,” Jim said.

Bob remained silent.

Huddled in the far corner was a person. It was a woman; a nude woman huddled in the fetal position, arms around her head. As the flashlight beam found her, she raised her head up to look into it.

“She…” Wilson said. “She’s alive.”

Jim nodded.

“How…how can she be alive?”

Jim just shook his head. Bob continued to stare at the woman in the corner. She had short hair that was dark red. Her skin was extremely pale like a corpse. She was skinny but voluptuous. And there was something about her eyes. Something penetrating.

“When I got her out of the canister, she grabbed my hand,” Jim said. “Just about scared the piss out of me.” He paused, looking into the woman’s eyes. “Anyway, I didn’t know what to do with her, so I kept her down here.”

“Locked away in the dark?” Bob said.

“She don’t mind,” Jim said. “Do you, Trash?”

Trash didn’t answer, only stared into the flashlight beam. Bob was the first one of them to approach her.

“Watcha’ doing, Bob?” Jim asked.

Bob didn’t answer. He kneeled down beside Trash, touched the woman on the cheek.

“Ah, gettin’ fresh, huh?” Jim said.

Trash took hold of Bob’s hand, looked into his eyes. She didn’t pull away as Bob began to touch her.

“Hey, can you dig that?!” Wilson said. “She seems to like it fine.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. He sounded a little weary.

“Let’s leave ‘em alone,” Wilson said. “Give ‘em ten minutes or so.”

Jim nodded reluctantly and the two men headed upstairs, leaving Bob and Trash in darkness.

Wilson and Jim sat at the ancient table in the kitchen as the storm raged outside and their friend got lucky downstairs. Wilson had brought along a little metal flask which he now produced, took a swig and passed it on to Jim.

“He sure is taking his time,” Jim said, took a swig of his own.

Wilson nodded.

“What do you think’s wrong with her?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” Jim said. “Never really thought about it, actually.” He seemed surprised by this.

“It’s strange to say but ever since I got her out of the canister, I haven’t thought about how she came to be in it at all.”

The two men stood up at the same moment, looked at each other. There was something wrong here; something wrong with the way they had reacted down in the cellar, the way they all reacted. There was something about Trash; something about her eyes. Something wrong.
They bolted towards the cellar door, Jim swinging it open wide. Running down the stairs into darkness, he flicked on his flashlight.

The beam found the canister first. Jim swept the beam towards the far corner and found
nothing. Behind him, Wilson was on his guard, scanning the darkness. Jim’s flashlight swept the cellar and soon came across a pair of feet. They were Bob’s hiking boots. The beam traveled up the length of Bob’s body, revealing the rest of him.

“Christ,” Jim said.

Hunched over him was Trash. She was on her hands and knees over the man. And she was eating.

“Oh God,” Wilson said.

Bob’s throat had been torn out to prevent him from screaming and there was a large, jagged hole in his head. Jim could see inside the man’s skull and could tell that it was empty. His flashlight beam came to rest on Trash’s face just as she swallowed the last chunk of his friend’s brain. Her bloody mouth twisted into a smile as she saw them.

Wilson ran first, heading up the stairs. Jim was right behind him but it was too late. Trash bounded across the cellar floor and grabbed the big man’s ankles. Jim fell into the stairwell, his head cracking on the hard wooden stairs. Trash was on him in an instant, opening her mouth wide and sinking her teeth into the back of the man’s head. Her teeth were unnaturally strong and Jim screamed as his skull cracked open. The cellar was filled with disgusting smacking sounds as Trash ate the grey matter out of his head.

Wilson burst out of the door of the lodge and ran as fast as he could towards the truck. As he approached it, he was struck with an odd thought. She waited, he thought. She didn’t kill Jim when she had the chance. She knew he would bring more people to see her. She wanted to eat a few brains at the same time; regain her strength.

He had no idea where this thought came from so he put it aside as he reached the truck. He opened the driver’s door and got inside. After fumbling with the ignition for a moment, he stopped.

The keys were, of course, in Jim’s pocket. Down in the cellar.

He started to open the door, preparing to run for it. Trash was standing just outside the truck, staring at him through the window. She was a grim, beautiful, terrifying vision. The rain had drenched her naked body, her red hair completely soaked and clinging to her head like a skin cap. A hideous smile graced her face. There was something else there as well: hunger. Wilson held her gaze for a moment longer then made a dive for the passenger side.

Trash smashed through the driver’s side window, sending shards of glass everywhere, and bounded through it. She fell upon him and buried her teeth in the back of his neck. As Wilson began to scream in intense pain, Trash began to eat.

The storm gave no indication that it would be dying down anytime soon. As Trash emerged from the cab of the truck, she was covered in blood and the rain pattered against her flesh, creating little holes in the unbroken red of the blood.

Trash dropped to her knees and onto her hands in the mud. Rolling onto her back, she covered herself in the mud, thrashing back and forth, her body digesting the brains. The way that her digestive system worked – after death – was scary. The only things she could eat were human brains. These brains were completely digested by her body. Almost nothing went to waste. She had no need to pass solids, only had to urinate occasionally. This strange tantrum, this bizarre dance, was her body digesting the brains; giving her strength.

Soon she was completely covered in mud and she stood up, satisfied. The rain made the mud run down her nude form in brown rivulets. It was attractive in a perverse way.

She raised her face to the sky. The rain pelting her skin was a small, simple pleasure, almost as satisfying as eating the brains. She had a dim memory of her life before all this and remembered sex, which was why she knew that she could use the promise of it against the men. She remembered that it, too, was pleasurable.

Before she could dwell on these feelings she was distracted by a sense; almost a smell. She could sense flesh. She could smell brains. Slowly, with a purpose, Trash headed deeper into the woods, towards Lilith Lake.

To Be Continued...

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Return of the Living Dead

This blog is here to support my Yahoo Group, Trash Dances (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TrashDancesRotLD/) I'll be putting some of my stories from that group on this blog and others, if they want their stories posted here.

Flynn