Tag Archives: Horror

The Harrowing Descent of Mr. Hand Puppet

It started innocently enough
he constructed a hand puppet
named ‘Willy Nilly’
to entertain his girlfriend’s young son
and together they put up clips
on YouTube.

“Hey-Hey-Hey! Duuuh! Howdy, Mr. Rabbit!”

The shows started getting longer
he made up more characters
–more puppets.

A shelving unit was built in the bedroom closet
where they would be carefully stored
when not in use.

His girlfriend joined in
she was a sassy little pink bunny
named ‘Boo!’

It was all in good fun
for a while…

Then something changed
the shows became angry
political and
at times bizarre and
uncomfortable to watch.

It was no longer for the son.
He started filming just himself
in the basement and
spending more and more time
with the puppets.

When it got to the point where he
was always in character
we knew that there would soon
be big mean trouble.

Mr. Hand Puppet
was what everybody called him
by now.

He would take the puppets for walks
downtown
talking to himself
in the voice of whatever puppet
he had on
at the time.

Then one day he just disappeared
but other people
started disappearing too soon after
from the homeless shelter
downtown.
The police would find strange scraps of
fuzzy bright material
at the crime scene.

They didn’t know what was going on
but I did
deep down I knew exactly that.

It was a week later
that I got the afternoon phone call
that would put it all to an end:

“Hey-Hey-Hey! Duuuh! Howdy Mr. Rabbit!”
Mr. Hand puppet
sounded peculiar perhaps because
he was far too happy
to be sane.
“What are you up to today? Hee-hee-hee!”

“Just tell me where you are.” I almost whispered,
by now ready for just about everything
but not this:

The front door of the house was
wide open and I
rushed upstairs
to find Mr. Hand Puppet
in the bedroom
lying face-down in a pool of
growing blood.

I froze.

My mind was racing with possibilities
and none of them good
even the fact that I was now standing in
the middle of a crime scene
was also not good

but those thoughts
were suddenly swept away
as from behind me I heard
the closet door
slowly being opened
and a voice say:

“Howdy Mr. Rabbit…

would you like to know a secret?”

Jenny Says Hi

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Johnny got drunk
behind the wheel again and
smashed his car into a tree.

Jenny wasn’t wearing a seatbelt
and died on the way to the hospital.

That was twenty years ago
and the only reason Johnny
had recalled it right there and then
as he left the party that night
was that across the road
parked right under the
lone streetlight
was a 1983 mustang GT
5-litre V8
blue finish with cobra rims.

Johnny froze
and dropped his keys.
Jesus.

It wasn’t just any mustang GT
sitting there as though shipped in fresh
from outer space
It wasn’t just any car
It was the car
the one Jenny had died in
the one with the rear left panel replaced
by a slightly deeper shade
the one with long yellow scuff marks
all across the front bumper
and worn dark tints
missing patches here and there

and of course the
silly smiley-face sticker on the side bumper
where Jenny had put it.

Johnny couldn’t breathe
as he approached the car as
inside the shifter sported a chrome skull
on a center console painted black and white.

He did that
twenty years ago
when Jenny was still alive.

Oh God.
This wasn’t happening to Johnny
There must have been some answer to this.
Some strange coincidence.

He decided to wait across the street
on the curb
sobering up –half falling asleep
until when near dusk some kid came
strolling along
cigarette in his hand.

Weird-looking kid
-strange eyes
nobody walked like that.

Kid went up to the car
and stuck his keys in.

“Hey!” Johnny approached.
“Where’d you get the car?”
“What’s it to you?” The kid asked.
“Where’d you get it?” Johnny’s voice grew louder.
“Piss off, man. I don’t answer to you.”

Johnny went to grab him but
the slippery bugger dodged it
shouting:
“Get off me! I’ll charge you!
You can’t just run around grabbing at people!”

Johnny managed to catch him by the shoulder and
spun him around against the car
the kid grinned
his breath smelled like rotten eggs.

“WHERE DID YOU GET THE CAR!?” Johnny slammed his
hand down on the roof
right next to the bastard kid’s head.

The kid shrugged. “Alright. Uncle gave it to me, man.
Some old trash job he touched up. He’s a
mechanic. We good?”

Johnny turned away. Was it possible?
Johnny supposed it was. It had to be.
“Alright, never mind.” He said.

The kid picked up his cigarette.
“You need help, man. Cut down on the booze or something.”

Johnny walked away and heard
the car door slam behind him
and the engine started with that familiar
deep rumbling that he had always loved.

The car started off…
but stopped.

Johnny turned around to face the
red tail lights loudly flashing.

The kid leaned out the window
and looked back.
“Oh, Mister -and one more thing…

With a calm smile he said:
“Jenny says Hi.”

The Laughing

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I must have been twelve
the first time I heard it
deep in the woods
-the laughing.

Sometimes it was a woman’s laughter
sometimes it was a man’s
sometimes an old voice
and sometimes young

but there was something about
the laughing
unlike anything you’ve
heard before.

Deep in your bones
you knew that it was not
like you or me
or the forest or the
cars on the street
grown or made by man
or in any way
natural.

Nobody knew what it really was
why it was there or
how it came to be.

Nobody talked about it
but everybody knew.

When you heard it from your room
late at night you knew
that harrowing echo
wasn’t a teenager by the bonfire
a drunk in an alley
a coyote or another night
animal
this was different
there was something about
the laughing
that made you want to
crawl deep inside your bed
and stay there.

When it came
even the animals appeared
from the trees out
onto the streets
startled
eyes wide in terror.

You would wonder what it might
look like
but you never wanted to find out

of course,
unless you were a kid
on a dare.

Steven was sixteen
when he went into the forest night
through the trail then off into the woods
after it
following it
looking for it
because we had dared him
egged him on

we did not fear much
then

but that had changed

because we all heard
what it sounded like
when he had found it
or it him.

Even after the search party we never
told what really happened
that night.

We never caved
in fear that they would send us out next.

Even to this day
we don’t even mention it to each other
anymore
like we had forgotten
but none of us had.

Some nights still
the room drops in temperature
the blood stops running in my veins and
I become gripped by an old fear
when I hear it
because it knows
that I know that

thirty years later
what was out there
in the barren darkened wilderness
really wasn’t
young Steven…

laughing.

Short Segments of My New Horror Novel: The Dweller

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Here are some short segments from ‘The Dweller’ just to provide a snapshot of what’s inside!

Dead Girl Writing on a blackboard:
http://hernanjmonzon.com/2014/09/27/dead-girl-writing-on-a-blackboard-dont-turn-her-around/

Facing Yourself Before the Fight:

http://hernanjmonzon.com/2014/05/16/facing-yourself-before-the-fight-dweller-chapter-15/

Voices Coming From the Walls:

http://hernanjmonzon.com/2014/05/04/hey-little-birdy-come-and-make-an-old-man-happy-dweller-chapter-14/

New Horror Novel Out: The Dweller

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I have a new horror novel out now on Amazon that delves into my musings on perception, dreams and the spirit world—and just in time for the holidays! You should definitely check it out!

http://www.amazon.ca/Dweller-Hernan-Monzon-ebook/dp/B00OVKYPWY/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1414252310&sr=8-6&keywords=the+dweller

Facing Yourself Before The Fight (Dweller Chapter 15)

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As though on cue, the mechanism beneath the platform I stood upon creaked and whined as it began the ascent into the heart of the World Stadium completely indifferent to whom it carried. It must remember well the emotions of all the past fighters that had stood upon it throughout decades of victories and disappointments. Up and up it went, slow enough to build the moment up appropriately. The far-away lights of the massive arena were starting to fall on me now. Soon I would be bathed in it.

Concentrate. This is it.

I could not. I was as far away from the stadium as an airplane flying above it as all of the things rattling around in my head began to viciously flash through my mind like a stormy window as though I were preparing for my own death. I felt my mother’s arms around me, singing that lovely song as I clung to her neck and played with her hair, having no conception of ever being separated from the warm security of her arms. I felt Bethany’s breath hot against my neck as she cried out with delight and told me that we would always be together. I felt the strain of tired legs as Sophina relentlessly chased me around the house, as I laughed and escaped beneath the couch.

I saw the summer skies drifting like a red desert throughout my mind. I felt the grass beneath me where I lay down as clouds languidly crossed my chest. I smelled the wet, rainy leaves on the days of walking to school late for class. And I could see myself, just a little kid whose hair was messed, jeans too short and shoes too big. All of these visions were chased away by the reality that stood before me like a horizon where nothing was behind. Everything, good or bad, led to this. This was my time. Regardless of the outcome, there was no going back, ever.

I looked up as the edges of the ring were coming down and I could just picture Syrus the Hellman sitting on a ledge, smiling.

“There’s no way you can beat him.” He would taunt. “He’s just too good and I’ve seen him put down a lot better fighters than you, Kid. Trust me, tonight your heart is going to be the last thing to break.”

The roar of the crowd was deafening. I was in full view now and could see little specks of spectator movement all across the stadium that walled my vision. In my mind Hellman still laughed away. He didn’t seem to have a face because he was everyone that I knew, everyone that I had ever met. He was every opponent, every wall -every open pit that I had ever come across. In every place he breathed indifference and pain. He was all of them -the harrowing bullies, the shiny plastic demons, the things that lurked in the night forest, the shadows –and he was here at my final moment before it all came to fists and blood to let me know that he was watching and waiting for me to fall.

I would not be sorry to disappoint him. I bet it happened rarely enough that he might even consider it a pleasure.

I searched the front rows looking for Sophina but I could not find her. My heart began to race at the prospect of her not being here but the idea of it was rather ludicrous considering that she had attended all of my fights and this was the largest and by far most important. Sophina was here. I could feel her if I opened my heart and listened for hers.

“Hey Little Birdy, come and make an old man happy.” (Dweller Chapter 14)

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“Hey little birdy, come and make an old man happy. Remember that? I’ll bet you do.” I was glad that finally I could unleash that saying so that maybe, just maybe, it’ll finally stop playing back like a broken record inside of a broken person. It wasn’t going to go away on its own. I had realized that by now. I needed to stop hearing it. I would do anything to stop hearing it.

Father chuckled dryly. “I didn’t think that you would remember. It was just the one time, well, that you saw anyways. How the Hell…”

“I didn’t have to remember. I still hear it. At first it drove me nuts because I didn’t know what it was or what it meant. I tried to shut it out but it just wouldn’t leave me alone and now I know why. It took me a long time to piece it together amidst everything else that was happening around me but I finally came around and understood what it was and you know what that is?”

“What?” Father was studying his fingernails, feigning disinterest.

“The final straw. That’s when everything inside of me decided to shut down because of what I saw that one day. I didn’t know it then. Fuck, I didn’t know it until now but yeah, that’s what did it. It wasn’t enough to lose my mother and to have a father that beat me senselessly when he wasn’t playing with the shadows in the cellar. It wasn’t enough that everyone in the fucking world despised me. But that did it. I felt that you should know that.”

Father looked at me nervously then went back to tending his nails. “Hmph.”

“Funny thing,” I continued, stepping closer to him, “that now that I can remember her back then it didn’t seem like she had any pain, that she suffered in any way. She hid it well, she didn’t want me to know what was really going on but you should see her now. And what just fucking kills me is that she could have been an angel, you know…right? You may not think about it or even remember but she could have been, oh yeah, just like mother. But no…not now…not after you had trashed her fucking soul. She was a flower of a girl and you peeled all of her away, pedal by pedal. And now she sleeps with the fucking devil.”

“What the fuck do you want from me, huh?” Father asked, arms spread. “I gave you answers. I gave you everything. What’s done is done. It’s gone. Forget about it.”

I stepped even closer, enough to make him start to step back. “She still follows me, comes to me. You probably already knew that always hiding in the bushes watching me maybe watching her too. But she is not the same girl and I am not the same guy and I don’t need to think about it to know that it was all because of you and it was that part of me that knew this day would come that haunted me by replaying that one time again and again.”

Father sighed. “The day that….that…”

“AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!” I shouted as I moved forward, forcing my father back again down the walkway. He looked behind him to make sure that he still had space to move back. “Yes, that must have been the final straw. That’s when the wall came up, just like in the cellar, the black wall in my mind. And now there is only one thing that will make it go away.”

“You already know everything.”

“I need to hear it from you, from your voice, face to face, right now. You owe it to her. You owe it to me. For all the things that you have done, I don’t think that it’s asking for much at all. I need you to tell me that you’re fucking sorry.”

The Dweller Chapter 12: Angels, Demons & Drugs

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“So, you now have two choices.” She offered.
“What are they?” I asked as I walked around the bed towards my stash.
“Fuck or fight me.” Moon-girl grinned.
“How about a little of both?”
“Oh, I like the way you think.”
I turned back to the window just as the bedroom door burst open and Michael strode in, entering into the reflection of the glass like a ghost walking into the night sky. I turned around and shook my head. It was always a nice vacation here when he wasn’t around but it never lasted long between visits.
“Get rid of the groupie, now.” He adamantly demanded.
“She doesn’t have to go anywhere.” I replied.
“That’s right!” The groupie said. “I don’t…”
With a wave of his hand, Michael threw her off the bed as though she was moved violently by an invisible force. I really hoped that she wasn’t a journalist now. That would be hard to explain unless one had taken into account all of the booze and drugs that flowed freely through my place at any given time. Michael then, by moving his finger across the air, dragged the poor, screaming girl across the hardwood floor all of the way out slamming the front door behind her. Great, soon there would be a screaming naked woman down in the lobby. No wonder rent was so astronomically high.
Turning around and smiling at the disapproval on my face, he said, “Hey, I asked politely.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.” Michael rubbed his bald head in frustration.

Author’s note: This was an excerpt from my current project ‘The Dweller’ that I have slaved over the last few months and now can finally see the end drawing near. I had written this novel 14 years ago and chose to rewrite it, which was a large mistake as it would have been less effort to write a new book from scratch. Lesson learned, I think.

The Dweller 11: Enter Sweet Sophina’s Night of Heaven Deep inside of Hell

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I was not dead, well, still half-dead but still here above ground. I had simply passed out from the overall strain of whatever I was doing which I could not exactly recall so it must have been very intense. For how long I was out for I wasn’t entirely sure but I had awakened to hands shrugging my shoulders with increasing intensity and so crossed my arms over my face to shield myself while shouting, “No! Get away from me, you Haggard Wench!”

Calm, cool hands brought my arms down gently and I ventured to open my eyes to find not the easily excitable (and extraordinarily insane) healing bag-lady but Sophina knelt down before me, peering into my face questionably. It was quite the contrast. Sophina looked so much more outer-worldly majestic than at any other time that I had seen her. It ached to watch her, even for a moment. Black dress, black lipstick, black hair, large black eyes and a white porcelain face from a dolls from a dream that you would not want to ever forget faced me and I somehow knew that she was not here to harm or terrify me, not this time.
‘Dweller.’ She whispered.

I gazed at Sophina as an artist would a fine painting. That she was here seemed nothing short of a miracle and reinforced what Jacob had said about her being my keeper. I still did not truly understand what that entailed but I didn’t have to, not right then. I had never been so close to her and I had just opened my eyes. That in itself was its own reward. The question of why Sophina was here or how she had got here did not seem too important at the time. The fact was that she was here. I felt as though I was staring at heaven, a dark heaven filled with impossibilities to be broken.

I reached out and touched her face. Sophina did not back away, instead her eyes grew with curiosity so I caressed her and she let me, even leaned into my hand. There was such sadness in her there that I did not see before. It was breaking my heart to look at her but would only break it even more to turn away.

(Excerpt from ‘The Dweller’ Chapter 11)

Keep Writing

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Some things may pierce you so deeply
that you only start to write about them
years after they’ve passed
and even then
you can feel the malevolent entities and memories
lurking in the depths of your mind
suddenly spring back to life:

We’re still here! Oh, do come back…
yes…that’s it…I can see you
looking at me.

Some things you want to write about
as they are happening
and sometimes do.

Sometimes you write
to digest what you’ve swallowed
maybe you should take smaller bites
maybe not.

Sometimes you write
because it just hits you out of nowhere
and you need a pen
right now (dammit!)
to get this out and out of the way
and it’s always when you’re at work
with the boss looming over your shoulder
or on the road busy behind the wheel
or having great make-up sex.

Keep that thought.
It might not come back
ever.

But the most important thing
is that you are
writing
not because it’s all part of some plan
or because you choose to become a writer
because why would anyone choose that
really
when you could be a rock god, movie star, captain of industry
or any one of the other delusions of grandeur
that are waiting to be plucked
from the tree of narcissistic expectations?

No.
You are writing because you have to
need to
right then and there and
for no other reason but that.

And that is vital
because without it
all of those outside things
will get in the way
and before you know it
the fire’s out.

I have always thought that
writing was the way out of
everything

maybe it is
maybe not
but keep in mind…

I have never come across a situation
where somebody
consistently practices what they love to do
and does not get better at it.

So keep writing.

We all need a place to put our pain:

Oh, do come back…
that’s it…yes!
I can see you
looking at me…

and I’m still here.