Toluca Lake

Days seemed to have passed since they’d arrived in town. For some reason, however, Mike couldn’t recall its name.

“What’s the name of this town again, Dave?” he asked his brother. The frog tattoo on Dave’s right hand shifted in and out of sight as he swung the oars opposite Mike. The fog was incredibly thick. Had he not known his brother was with him in the boat, Mike would have thought he was all alone in the middle of the lake. All he could hear was the creaking of the boat. His brother remained silent. “The pier’s pretty far away now. Where are we going?”

Dave remained silent. The silence was almost deafening. Suddenly, the rowing stopped.

“Dave?” Mike leaned forward to catch a glimpse of his brother’s face. The fog engulfed his face like a cold blanket. He saw the oars abandoned, the seat empty. Dave was gone. Mike’s heart sank. He started frantically looking around the boat, shouting for help. Everything was silent. But then he heard it. Static. It came from the portable radio Dave had brought with him. Mike picked it up and tried to fix the static somehow, but it only got louder.

And then, in an instant, he heard nothing again, as a huge force pushed him out of the boat, head-first into the lake. He could hear a loud pounding coming from within his skull, but did his best to remain lucid. The surface was further and further away. He tried to swim upwards, he couldn’t die in a place like this, but he wasn’t getting any closer to the surface. Something was pulling him down. He looked at his feet, the black abyss of the lake was overwhelming, but he thought he could make out a pale shape around his foot. As his eyes got used to the darkness, the shape became clearer. Mike let out a scream, inaudible in the lake’s cold depths. When the hand around his foot finally let go, his lifeless body sunk lower and lower into the black abyss, passing by the hand with the frog tattoo.

That Studmuffin Neil

Life often takes us into new, unexpected directions. A decision we make may turn out to be inconsequential in the long run, as it gets mitigated by a different course of action taken by someone else. Such was the fate of Neil. Neil was an pleasant fellow; kind to his friends, helpful to strangers, charming, smart, witty and incredibly handsome, Neil was someone you wanted to be around. There was something inherently magnetic about him that attracted all sorts of attention.

Not all such attention was desirable, however. One day, life threw Neil a curveball he never expected. It all began with a letter. It was a nice Saturday morning, beautiful weather – nary a cloud in sight. Neil expected the day to be very pleasant. He’d just eaten some delicious scrambled eggs and was having a nice cup of green tea while opening his mail which had piled up during the week. Neil’s mailbox was always full of letters, the kind written on fancy perfumed stationery, some filled with shy confessions of affection, others expressing more carnal desires. The letters were always a pleasant read to Neil. He did enjoy the attention. He enjoyed it so much that he’d even bought a magnifying glass, so that he could revel in every little letter, every stroke of pen, trace every shallow breath that shook the writer’s hand. This time, however, one particular letter made him feel something else.

I’M GONNA FUCK YOUR BRAINS OUT

The stationery wasn’t either perfumed or fancy. In fact, it looked like a regular post-it. The writing wasn’t even done by hand – it was printed out, cut out and stuck to the paper. Slightly annoyed, Neil put the paper down. He grabbed his keys and made his way to the gym. As he walked, the thought of that one letter would loom over him like a flock of hungry vultures. No, he wasn’t scared. Of course he wasn’t. He was the strongest dude he knew, so if anyone tried to force themselves on him, he would definitely have the upper hand. And yet, the very fact that he had to reassure himself of that  made him realize that he felt threatened. Before he had the time to digest that thought, he’d already reached the gym. Greeted by the familiar reassuring smiles of the coaches and some regulars, he immediately forgot about the letter.

Something was wrong. He knew it the moment he got out of the showers after the workout. The locker room was completely empty, which didn’t seem very likely at this hour. He went up to his locker draped only in a towel, taking the occasional glance behind the shoulder. When he finally reached it, the lights suddenly went out. The room was underground, there were no windows. It was completely dark. Neil grabbed his phone and used it as a flashlight to locate the door. He found it. He pulled on the doorknob. It was locked. Heavy breathing. It wasn’t his. He was about to turn around when he felt a sensation in his left shoulder, as if he’d just been stung by a bee. He placed his hand there – it was a dart of some sort, though in that instant everything became blurry. Neil fell to his knees, his consciousness fading. The last he remembered was a gentle caress on the shoulder, someone lifting him up. Then, his face suddenly collided with the floor. His nose broken, face mutilated, sprayed in a puddle of his own blood, he lay there, unconscious, naked, vulnerable.