Thanksgiving for Werewolves: 2014

The following is a story in that might fit in with the Thanksgiving for Werewolves collection, but probably won't be included. It's hella uneven. It also needs another comb through, but thought I'd share it anyway:

Rough Cut

ML Kennedy

Joyce’s high heel stayed in the muck, but her foot kept going. When her bare toes squished into the soft ground she let out a disgusted grunt, and stopped running. She looked over her shoulder and threw her arms up.

A few yards behind, Steven commanded her to “use it.”

Joyce started to run again, a lop-sided attempt. With only one shoe, she was surprisingly fast and unsurprisingly awkward. She made it about thirty feet more before she came crashing to the forest floor. Mud splattered all over her pleated skirt and white blouse. Was she supposed to be dressed like a school girl? If so, why the heels?

Steven yelled, “You’re not supposed to fall yet! The spot is over there!” Steve was tired of actors, and all their changes. He brushed a strand of auburn hair behind his ears and finished the last sip of his energy drink. “Should we do it again?” he asked his pudgy camera man Pat.

Joyce held her knee and tried to separate the mud from the blood. She began questioning the value of the whole project. A tiny rock had found its way into her palm. Joyce tried to scrape it out from under the skin with a bright red fingernail.

Pat lowered the camera against his soft belly and said, “I think we should use it. That fall looked way more real than the practices.”

“Yeah, but the lighting here is all wrong.” Steven crushed his empty can and shoved it into a pocket of his backpack.

“Why don’t we use the fall, move her, and then just shoot from a different angle.” Pat looked around and scratched his patchy beard. “I don’t think anybody will notice.”

Joyce shouted, “Can you guys hand me a wet-nap or something? I’m bleeding over here.”

Pat reached into the back pocket of his jean shorts. “I have a hankie.”

“Don’t get too clean, though,” Steve insisted. “ Continuity.”

“Yeah. Cuz that’s why people watch serial killer movies: continuity.” Joyce sneered as she pressed the small monogrammed handkerchief to the wound on her leg and tried not to think about any of the horrible infections she learned about in her immunology class.

Steven corrected, “This is a slasher movie, not a serial killer movie. And you’ve got to respect the art.”

“Art matters, Joyce,” Pat added.

Joyce folded the handkerchief on her knee. “Where is the art, guys? You’re doing the same movie everybody has already seen like a billion times since the ‘80s.”

“It is life affirming. Watching somebody die makes you remember that we all die alone, and makes you appreciate your time on earth that much more.” Steven had read something like that somewhere on some highbrow review of some lowbrow movie. He remembered how the writer of the article kept talking about that girl who sang “Smooth Operator”.

Pat intervened, “but you’re not dying alone if you’re being murdered. By the nature of murder, there is usually going to be somebody else around.”

Joyce added, “If you die in a fucking hospital, there’s like a billion people around.”

“What about 9/11? That was like thousands of people,” said a voice behind the trees.

Steven’s frustrations grew. “Look, it took us forever to get us all together to shoot this; let’s just shoot this.”

“I just want to know what we are doing out here.”

“Hey, guys. This is helmet is hot. Can I take it off for a bit?” Jeffrey had walked over to the group from his hiding place behind the trees. He was looking forward to being a monster, but things weren’t going like he imagined. He was hoping for a cool costume or makeup, but instead he was dressed in a hodgepodge of old dirt-bike gear and a lacrosse helmet that barely fit over his head. Steven had also insisted that Jeffrey wear these homemade “lifts”, which were really just a pair of old work socks shoved into the heels of his boots. They made the boots a half-size too small. It was all worth it though, as they made the nimble six-foot-three Jeffrey into a monstrous, if less nimble, six foot three and a quarter Jeffrey. Steven insisted that that quarter inch made all the difference when standing next to leading lady Joyce. Joyce was, herself, a quarter inch over five feet.

“Keep the helmet on. We’re going to go!”

“Well wait.” Pat stopped a moment to consider. “What if it were the killer who was filming everything?”

“I’m the killer, and you guys said I was bad at shooting!” Jeffrey was irritated and just wanted to remove the lacrosse helmet.

“I told you before, we are not doing found footage!” Steven was sick of everybody. He pondered the possibility of portraying each part in this movie and making it by himself. He’d be Eddie Murphy and Orson Wells at the same time.

Joyce spoke up, “But the killer is filming it. That would be a little different. Maybe he makes snuff films.”

Pat intervened, “Snuff films are fake ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s hard to make a living filming your own crimes. It’s a bad business model.” Pat had a horrible tendency to patronizingly reject his own ideas when they were re-worded by women.

Joyce retorted, “Preternatural slashers are realistic to you, but a man making money off of snuff isn’t?”

“I’m supposed to be preternatural?” asked Jeffrey. He had no idea what the word meant, but thought it sounded bad ass.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“It’s ambiguous.”

The responses all came at about the same time. Jeffrey couldn’t determine which person said which part.

Joyce continued, “He won’t be selling VHS tapes out of the back of his van. He’ll broadcast in online. You know, it’ll be like internet Videodrome!”

Pat looked excited. “Videodrome is pretty great.”

“We are not making a video dome!” Steven insisted.

Joyce adjusted her bra strap. “I still think we need an angle for all of this to be worthwhile. Maybe it’s a fake documentary, like ‘The Office’.”

“Joyce, you’re Hispanic,” declared Steven. “That’s our angle. Final girls in slasher films are never Latinas. That’s what makes us unique.”

“I’m Chinese.”

“You’re Chinese?”

“I thought that it was survivor girl,” Jeffrey stated to nobody in particular.

Pat replied, “That was only in Leslie Vernon. Everybody else says final girl.”

Joyce looked upset. “Shit, Leslie Vernon. Slasher mockumentary has been done.”

Steven took off his backpack and kneeled in front of it.

Pat took a bandana from his other back pocket and patted it on his forehead. “Yeah, but they drop the mockumentary angle in the final act. What if we kept it going? Like, kept it the whole movie? That’s never been done before, right?”

“You want to know what’s never been done before?” asked Steven, pulling a handgun out of his bag. “This.”

He shot Joyce through the heart and Pat through the eye. Then, Steven turned the gun on Jeffrey.

Sweat flowed from Jeffrey’s armpits. He stared at the gun, but could only think about whether or not he put on deodorant that morning. “Look, man, I, I, I didn’t see anything. I just want to go home. Okay?”

“What’s a matter, Jeff? You afraid?”

“I just want to go,” Jeffrey said, as though he were a prom date with sore feet.

“You shouldn’t be afraid. You’re on ‘Prank the Monkey’! It’s a TV show!” Steven smiled, but kept the gun trained on Jeffrey.

“Really? It looks so real.” Jeffrey went down on the ground to check on the blood pouring from Joyce’s chest. Where could all this blood be coming from?

Steven shot Jeffrey in the back. Blood trickled from the dirtbike chest protector. “Idiot.”

Jeffrey tried to stand, made a half turn and fell backwards into a tree. “Steven, you’re a fucking asshole!”

“You got any last words, or are you happy with the fucking asshole bit?”

Jeffrey held his ribs with one hand and stood up defiantly. “Shooting people in the woods has been done before. It’s been done to death.”

“It’s an homage!” screamed Steven as he pulled the trigger.

Black.

***

The room darkened as the Steven shut off the projector. Joyce, Pat and Jeffrey all squinted when the lights went back on.

“So, what did you think?”

Pat responded first. “I don’t understand your character’s motivation. Like at all.”

Joyce’s only words were, “Too meta.” This time, Joyce was dressed more modestly in jeans, sneakers and a Ramones T-shirt.

Veins protruded from Jeffrey’s neck. “I was supposed to be the killer!”

“Man, you shot the movie with us. Did you remember filming any scenes where you murdered people?”

“I’ll remember this!” shouted Jeffrey as he stood up. He calmly walked over to the kitchen and pulled two large knives from the wooden block on the counter.

“That’s not funny,” said Joyce. “Don’t play like that.”

Steven reassured her, saying “He’s not going to stab me or anything.” Subsequently, Jeffrey stabbed Steven in the gut with a butcher knife. “Huh” was Steven’s last word.

Pat tried to run away, but Jeffrey drove the meat cleaver into the back of his head. The rotund cameraman made a terrible noise as he fell face first onto the hard wood floor. Blood trickled in straight lines between the wooden slats. Jeffrey stepped on Pat’s neck and pulled the cleaver out.

As this was happening, Joyce twice smacked a chair against the window. On the second try, the glass shattered. She dived through the window, glass scraping her body. She landed awkwardly in a rose bush.

The thorns tore at her as she tried to untangle herself from the bush. She had a massive cut on her left arm. A small spot of crimson grew larger on her pant leg. Blood poured from her clenched right fist. By now, Jeffrey’s attentions were surely pointed her way. She threw herself forward with all her might, and managed to get to her feet, tearing off most of her shirt in the process.

As she glanced down at her exposed bra, Joyce protested, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Jeffrey knocked away bits of glass with the cleaver, and pushed his large leg through the window.

Joyce looked left. That way laid the forest preserve, a thick grove of twisted trees with leaves wet and sagging from the recent rainfall. To her right, there was a road, civilization, motorists and people with cell phones.

Joyce ran to the street for help, waving her arms and hopping in the air. There she was nearly killed on a road, in civilization, by a motorist with a cell phone. The car swerved at the last minute, jumped the curb and came to a complete stop around a fire hydrant.

“Call 911,” she yelled!

The driver replied, “You’re damn right I’m calling 911 you crazy bitch!” She only managed to hit the 9 before blood streamed into her eyes. The butcher knife had sliced into her forehead, taking off part of her left eyebrow. Jeffrey dragged the motorist out of her car by the hair. He placed her jaw over part of the fire hydrant and shoved a knee into the back of her head.

Jeffrey did this again and again, so distracted by his flair for violence that he didn’t see Joyce creeping up behind him. He didn’t notice her at all, until she shoved the piece of glass clenched in her right fist into his inner thigh.

Jeffrey fell to the ground. The butcher knife slipped from his hand and skid on the concrete, stopping in front of Joyce’s sneaker. She picked it up.

“HHP 4460. I just cut your femoral artery, bitch! And do you know what happens to be behind and slightly to the left of the breastbone?”

Joyce stabbed Jeffrey in the heart.

Black

****

The room darkened as the Steven shut off the projector. Joyce, Pat and Jeffrey all squinted when the lights went back on.

“So, what did you think?” asked Steven.

Pat responded first. “Am I really that fat?”

“I got to kill people!” said Jeffrey with delight. “But, I think that you shoulda used the take where Joyce starts crying and I do a zombie sit up behind her.”

“I shouldn’t be crying. Jeffrey, that reeks of sexism.” Joyce added. “But you really shoulda used my karate kick scene. That was my favorite part!”

“You’re Chinese. You told me that was racist!” Steven pleaded.

Joyce Karate kicked Steven in the face. “Karate is Japanese, racist.”

Joyce stood behind Steven and snapped his neck.

Black.

*****

The room darkened as the Dracula shut off the projector. The Wolf Man, The Mummy and The Gill Man all squinted when the lights went back on.

“So, what did you think?” asked Dracula.

“That was disgustingly vulgar,” said the Wolf Man. “Do people really talk like that? So blue.”

“I don’t think all that gore was necessary either,” added the Mummy. “You’ve got to leave some things up to the imagination.”

The Gill Man thought that the only reason Dracula invited him to this thing was because the Frankenstein Monster RSVPed in the negative. “I don’t think I get it. Is this how all land movies are?”

“It is supposed to be meta!” Dracula screamed. He dropped a match onto the film stock. The flames tickled the ceiling as the vampire shut and locked the monsters in the room. The Mummy and the Wolfman screamed, terrified of the growing inferno. The Gill Man, however, was merely despondent.

“It’s so childish,” the gill man said. “Can’t you take a little criticism without murdering everybody? You’re gonna burn up too.”

Dracula turned into mist and escaped beneath through a crack in the door.

“Aw, fuck you Dracula!”

Black.

******

The room darkened as the Steven shut off the projector. Joyce, Pat and Jeffrey all squinted when the lights went back on.

“So, what did you think?” asked Steven.

“Why was Dracula such a jerk? Weren’t those guys his friends?” Jeffrey was upset by the casual manner with which Dracula murdered his peers.

Joyce crossed her legs and pushed a finger into the rubbery bottom of her Converse. “Lighten up. It’s only a movie. It doesn’t really matter.”

“Doesn’t it?” questioned Pat.

“Of course not,” Joyce responded. She walked over to Jeffrey, took off a high heeled shoe and held the pointy heel in front of Jeffrey’s tear duct. “See, just a moment ago I was wearing sneakers. It’s a movie; it doesn’t matter. So it wouldn’t matter if I did this.”

Joyce punched the insole of the shoe. The heel pushed into Jeffrey’s eye. She twisted the shoe by the vamp and his eye popped out. “See”

“What is wrong with you!” screamed Pat.

“What the hell?” screamed Steven.

Jeffrey screamed something too. It was probably about his eye.

“No, no guys. Listen. Any minute now, were are just going to fade to black.”

“What?!”

“Any minute now.” Joyce waited. She had already dropped the heel. It held onto Jeffrey’s eye which was still attached to his face by ugly red strings. The shoe and eye swung slowly like a hypnotist’s watch.

“Any minute now. In three, two, ONE!”

The shoe swung back and forth.

“Five, four, three, two, ONE!”

Back and forth.

“Sorry. TEN, nine, eight, seven, six-“

Black.

“Oh, thank Jesus.”

*******

The room darkened as the Steven shut off the projector. Joyce, Pat and Jeffrey all squinted when the lights went back on.

“So, what did you think?” asked Steven.

Jeffrey was the first to respond. “I think I’m being incepted.”

Joyce looked around nervously. “I shouldn’t have brought up Videodrome. I think we’re in eXistenZ now.

Pat was concerned. “If I start killing you guys now, will it be real or just part of another movie?”

Steven didn’t know anymore. He said, “Guys, I don’t know anymore.”

Pat stammered. “I think it is my turn to kill you guys. I don’t want to, but we might be stuck in this movie forever if I don’t.”

“Wait,” Steven shouted. “What if this movie is great? What if it is better than all our lives would have been. What if it’s a big Hollywood movie where everybody has six pack abs and perfect teeth? Where you never have to go to the bathroom and girls always wear matching underwear sets!”

“Where the sex is always PG-13.” Joyce added.

“We got to get out of this movie!”

“Maybe we aren’t even in a movie anymore.” Pat asked, “Did you even think about that?”

Jeffrey had a moment of epiphany. “Guys, I got it! We need to find Joyce’s shoe in the mud! That will complete the cycle, and all the movies will end!”

Joyce responded, “That doesn’t make any sense! It’s perfect!”

“Yes!”

All four of them died moments later when the house was crushed by Gappa, the Triphibian Monster.

Black.

Everything you always wanted to know about Thanksgiving for Werewolves, but were afraid to ask...

What is "Thanksgiving for Werewolves"?

It is the centerpiece in the short story collection Thanksgiving for Werewolves and Other Monstrous Tales. It is the longest story in the collection, probably around the length of a novellette to a novella.

What is it about?

It's like Die Hard. Except:
1. Instead of a cop, our protagonist is a part-time independent wrestler.
2. Instead of terrorists, the antagonists are skin-walkers.
3. Instead of an office building, the story takes place in a restaurant.
4. There is no Bonnie Bedelia.

Is it connected to The Mosquito Song?

I wrote both. Both features scenes in Chicago. Other than that, separate universes. There is no magic in the Mosquito universe and there is some magic in "Thanksgiving". Vampires and werewolves aren't going to meet here.

But I want more Mosquito Song. That ending was hella abrupt!

The abrupt ending of The Mosquito Song is due to it being in the style of a serial/comic book. So I wanted to end it more like a TPB than a graphic novel.

The good news is that there is a short story in the Thanksgiving collection that does feature our vampire protagonist Bob/Ambrose/Terry/etc.

How does the protagonist of "Thanksgiving for Werewolves" differ from Vampire Bob?

Our protagonist, Chris, is younger, more neurotic, and generally rougher around the edges. He doesn't narrate in the present tense.

The fun with Vampire Bob is that he has nothing and is almost indestructible. None of his actions have consequences, and only his personality quirks serve to act as impulse control.

The fun with Chris is beating the living shit out of him. He's pretty tough, but he has to work a lot harder than vampire Bob at the whole "not dying" thing. Chris will fight dirty when he has to; Vampire Bob fights dirty because he loves to.

Are the stories in Thanksgiving for Werewolves and Other Monstrous Tales all about vampires and werewolves?

No. Every story has some monster or some element of horror to it, but it isn't a collection of werewolf stories. Other than all falling under the blanket term "monstrous" and its varying meanings, the stories vary quite a bit. We've got our supernatural Die Hard-ish story, we've got a "Tales from the Crypt" style story, we have a fantasy adventure, and we have squabbling roommates.

Where can I buy the book?

Nowhere, yet. But keep checking here, here and here for a proper release date and other information.

Will you answer my question?

Sure.

Thanksgiving for Werewolves

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Good News, Everybody!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

While you wait, part whatever. . .

Thursday, June 5, 2014

WIP Story.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

More Praise for Thanksgiving for Werewolves

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

What is Thanksgiving for Werewolves?

Saturday, May 17, 2014

I'm not a graphic artist. . .

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Link to an unrelated short story. . .

Monday, May 12, 2014

For more Thanksgiving for Werewolves updates. . .

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Some of the Monstrous Tales

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Praise for "Thanksgiving" - Coming this Summer