Fan Fears: A collection of fear based stories (3 page)

“No way am I letting those things get at our livestock again. I can’t afford it.”

“Be careful, Albert,” she said as she watched him pull on his coat. “Those things are dangerous.”

“Don’t worry, you just stay inside now,” he said. He picked up the hunting rifle from where it leaned behind the door, checked it was loaded and stepped outside.

The cold was bitter, the fresh taste of winter hanging in the air.  He walked across the gravel yard and stood at the edge of the wheat field, gun held ready. There was absolute silence.

His eyes drifted across the treeline, his ears strained as he tried to pick out any sound at all other than the subtle hiss of the wheat as it was pushed by the wind.

Had Albert bothered to get the glasses Monica had been telling him he needed, then he might have seen the woman face down on the ground at the edge of the woods, who could see him but couldn’t move. He might also have heard her desperate attempts to call out to him, but he had left his hearing aid in the house in his haste to get outside. Even so, her cries were so weak, that they were easily masked by the sound of the wind moving through the wheat field. Lastly, had he not turned away to check that the chicken coop was closed, he would have certainly seen the coyotes come out of the woods and grab the woman and drag her back into the woods, even as she scratched and clawed at the dirt in her desperation to escape.

Albert however, saw none of this. By the time he looked back across the fields, both the coyotes and Hazel were gone. Albert scanned the perimeter one last time, then headed back into the house and closed the door, unaware that for tonight, at least, his chickens were safe, as the coyotes who lived in the woods had a much more substantial meal to enjoy.

FEAR SUBMITTED: Coyotes / Hyenas.

FAN FEAR TWO:

BEAT

(Submitted by Coleen Cassidy)

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This project was one where there was always the potential for something so far outside of the kind of thing I would usually write about, it was refreshing. This was one such story. When Colleen submitted her particular fear, I was both excited to push myself to come up with something fitting and worried in case I failed. Colleen loved the story, and I had great fun writing it. Hopefully, you will enjoy it just as much.

****

Whumph.

A beat, a whisper of spent breath which Colleen Cassidy thought might be her last. She was only forty-six, too young for this, too young to be staring down the grinning, twisted face of death as he waited for her.

Another beat, and with it another breath.

A reprieve, then, although who knows how long. She flicked her eyes towards Ashba, although he didn't much resemble a doctor anymore. He looked ghastly in the candlelight, a ghoul, a monster dressed in human flesh. His eyes were wild and flicking between her and the door. His hair was sticking up in the back and he had blood smeared on his face from where she’d punched him. The sounds at the door were becoming more and more urgent as the police tried to force their way in. Ashba grinned a yellow cheese wedge smile which scared her because there was no fear in it.

“There’s nothing they can do,” Ashba said, looking at the gun in his hand. “There’s nothing anyone can do. Your time is almost up.” He was psyching himself up, preparing to do what needed to be done.

Colleen would have answered, but she couldn’t move or breathe.

Whumph.

There it was. The pacemaker did its job, and for now, she took another precious breath.  “Why me?” she asked as she sat there waiting to die.

Ashba looked at her with something close to sympathy, then shrugged his shoulders.

“Please, Doctor Ashba....”

Whumph.

Another breath, the spaces between them growing more distant. “Please....” Colleen gasped.

“No. This is how it has to be. You brought this all on yourself. None of this is my fault.”

Colleen closed her eyes and waited to see if another breath would come. She thought back to when it began, surprised that it had only been a week. It felt like a lifetime ago, and now the hope for a future that she had been given had been snatched away by the very man who had given it to her.

ONE WEEK EARLIER

“How are you feeling?”

Colleen sat on the opposite side of the pristine table, looking at the man who had saved her life. “I feel fine, grateful. Humbled.”

Dr. Ashba smiled. “Just doing my job. Now the pacemaker is new, so nothing strenuous, please. Light exercise is fine, but certainly nothing intense.”

“How safe is it? I just... the thought of a machine keeping me alive is....strange.”

Ashba folded his slender hands on the desk. “It’s perfectly safe, although I do appreciate you have concerns. Most patients do. What you have to remember is that this isn’t a new technology. It’s been tried and tested. Did you know these newer models are all driven by computer software?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said, looking around the white-walled office.

“They really are quite good. Much like telemetry in motorsport, the new models monitor everything and have an instant response to ensure regular heartbeat. We can even upload new software patches to the pacemaker remotely without operating to ensure you are always up to date, as it were.”

Colleen smiled, the doctors words alleviating some of the worries. “You make it sound better than the real thing.”

“In a way it is. Here, let me show you.” He typed some commands into his computer, then turned the screen towards her. The display was a series of coloured graphs and lines zig-zagging from left to right across the screen. “See here how it is all tracked? We monitor everything. We can even adjust the tempo of the pacemaker to allow for any-”

A sharp knock on the door interrupted his conversation as one of the nurses poked her head into the office. “Doctor Ashba, there’s a Mr. Johnson who insists on speaking to you. He has no appointment, but refuses to leave.”

Ashba flashed an apologetic smile at Colleen. “Sorry, would you excuse me for a moment?”

“Of course.”

“Mr. Johnson has terminal hypochondria and thinks I'm the only one who can fix his never ending fantasy ailments. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Ashba left, leaving behind the lingering smell of soap and aftershave as he crossed the office and closed the door.  Colleen looked at the screen, amazed that the array of lines on it was the only thing keeping her alive. She was both amazed and grateful that the technology to help existed. She closed the application with the single line in the top right corner of the screen, minimizing the application to the taskbar. She was about to check her phone when a folder on the desktop caught her attention. The right side of the screen was as she would expect to see it, files and folders and applications for email and bespoke medical software. On the right side of the screen, by itself was a separate folder titled SEXY STUFF. She frowned at it and wondered if it could be an abbreviation for something else that just happened to be spelled that way. She glanced at the door, wondering if she should just ignore it, but the pull of curiosity was too great. This was the man who was in charge of making sure she stayed alive. She decided she had a right to know what was inside that folder. She manipulated the mouse, and hovered over the folder, not quite able to bring herself to press it. Realizing time was short, she double clicked the folder. Inside were subfolders, each of them named so that there could be little doubt as to the nature of their contents. She read the file names, each one making her increasingly disgusted and making her new heart beat a little faster.

She scanned the file structures.

BONDAGE STUFF

ANIMAL SEX

BODILY FLUIDS

DEAD BODIES

PRIVATE COLLECTION

Realizing her hands were shaking, she stared at the screen, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. Before she could stop herself she clicked into the folder labelled BONDAGE STUFF. Inside, were hundreds of images showing both men and women in increasingly violent poses, all graphic and leaving little to the imagination. She backed out of the folder, and clicked on another folder, this time selecting BODILY FLUIDS. This folder was filled with images of women being urinated on, others were smeared with what looked to be faeces, others still with their faces covered in semen. Repulsed, she backed out again, deciding she had seen enough. Even so, one folder drew her attention.

PRIVATE COLLECTION

She glanced at the door, knowing that Doctor Ashba would be back at any second. She couldn’t help herself, though. She had already glimpsed into the private world of a man she thought she knew, that she had trusted completely, and had seen that beneath the kind mask, he was a monster.

She double clicked the file labelled PRIVATE COLLECTION, unsure of what to expect. There were images of Doctor Ashba recreating some of the things from the other folders. The first images were of him in a cheap looking sex dungeon, dressed in leather straps, his head sweaty, hair sticking up at the back. His face was twisted into a grimace as he stood over a woman who was bound and gagged to the bed. In Ashba’s hand, was an enormous sex toy. She scrolled past, seeing flashes of similar images. Ashba with women. Ashba with men. Ashba doing and having things done to him that were almost too horrific to take in. It was only when she reached the images of children that she knew what kind of monster Ashba was. She couldn’t bear to look at too many of them. She felt sick to her stomach. Her new heart was working hard, and she felt as if she were going to throw up. She closed the folder and maximized the initial screen showing her the pacemaker graph. She lurched out of her seat, tipping it over against Ashba’s bookcase. On legs that felt unsteady, she exited the office, praying she didn’t bump into him.  Her stomach was tight, and she had started to sweat as those awful images played over and over in her mind. She could see Ashba in a side room by the entrance taking to a pock-faced man who was nodding at whatever Ashba was saying. Colleen was glad his back was to her. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She clutched her bag tightly to her body and focused on walking out of the hospital, keeping her eyes focused ahead and praying nobody decided to stop her. It was only when she got outside and was clear of the building that she threw up, heaving into the gutter. With hands that were still trembling and hot tears streaming down her cheeks, she called the police.

TWO

She had no comprehension how things would escalate. Her one call to the police had exploded into a story that made national news. Ashba had disappeared and was the subject of a nationwide manhunt. Colleen had taken it badly, feeling both repulsed and guilty for causing such a huge uproar. News reports had shown that Ashba’s depravity went further than the folder on his office computer. His home had been raided and his computers there seized, along with several other items which the police called key evidence. She had been interviewed several times and had told them what they needed to know, and was now trying to keep a low profile until it all blew over. Her friend Naomi was staying with her and giving her support, doing everything she could to help under the circumstances. After three days, the news crews found new things to talk about. A political scandal had taken most of the main headlines, but the search for James Ashba was still a key news story. Even though she knew she was justified in her actions to report what she had seen, there was still an overwhelming sense of guilt that the man who had saved her life was now a wanted criminal with a career in tatters.

“Do you need anything?” Naomi asked.

Colleen shook her head. “No I'm good, I just feel bad. Did I do the right thing?”

Naomi smiled and put an arm around Colleen’s shoulder. “Of course you did. Anyone else would have done the same. He’s the guilty one remember, not you. Those things you saw on his computer....he was a danger to the public. You just need to rest. Look after you.”

“I know, look, I'm sorry. You don't need to be here, you have your own family to look after. You don't need to be here with me.”

“I wouldn't be anywhere else right now and you know it. Whatever it takes to get you well. You’re my best friend. There’s no way I'm leaving you to deal with this alone.”

Colleen couldn't express her gratitude with words, so settled for a hug. She held her friend close, still unable to untangle the swarm of emotions that existed inside her.

“What do you think he’s doing now?” she asked into her friends shoulder.”

“Hopefully, he’s panicking and close to getting caught. He deserves it.” Naomi said, squeezing her friend a little bit harder.

THREE

The fury inside Ashba had died down to glowing embers in his stomach, but even so, the circumstances of his current situation infuriated him more than he could ever imagine. For the past fifteen years, he had worked to save people's lives, had gone above and beyond working long hours with little to no thanks, all in the interest of helping people to scratch out an extra few years of existence. He had lost count of the number of people he had helped over the years. Definitely hundreds, and now he was being hunted like a dog. He had seen what they were saying about him on the news, about how he was facing prison for possessing indecent images. He wanted to tell them how those were private, and didn't have any effect on his ability to do his job. Like his patients, it was a sickness. He had no control over the things he liked to look at, the things he found satisfying and stimulating. It didn't make him a monster, just a human with issues which he was working hard to control. Now, he had been forced to run away from his life and his job, both of which would never be the same again now that his particular tastes were all over the news and he was a wanted man. All because of her, all because of that woman, he had lost everything. He sat on the lumpy bed of the cheap hotel room, the kind that accepts cash up front and don't ask too many questions about its clientele, and with the smell of damp in his nostrils allowed the hot embers in his stomach to take flame again. He had saved her life and she, in turn, had single-handedly ruined his. He opened the lid of his laptop and connected to the hotel Wi-Fi. An idea had come to mind. An idea that was horrific and enticing all at the same time. From the laptop, he logged into the hospital software he had illegally installed there some time ago. At the time, he didn't know why but supposed now in hindsight he had always been preparing for this day to come. He typed in his login details, realizing that his idea could be a nonstarter if they had locked him out of the system. As depraved as they thought he was, though, they didn't anticipate he would try to go back to work, and so his information was still valid. He pulled up his patient history and found what he was looking for. He found her.

Her name, address details, contact numbers, email, next of kin. Everything about her, an in-depth record of her medical history and the troubles with her heart which he had since fixed. The seed of an idea had grown in his mind and was being fed by the inferno that now raged in his stomach. It would be easy. Better still, nobody would know what he had done or how to fix it until it was too late. Feeling positive for the first time in as long as he could remember, he started to put his plan into action.