Amorphous Madness: A Short Journey Into Darkness Issue 1 Read online

  Amorphous Madness

  By: W.O. Cassity

  Copyright ©2016 by W.O. Cassity

  All rights reserved.

  Copy Editor: Nikki Busch at nikkibuschediting.com

  Cover Illustrator: BetiBup33 at thebookcoverdesigner.com

  Kindle Edition, License Notes:

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people except through Amazon’s Lending Program. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for supporting this independent self-published author.

  Acknowledgments:

  A special thank you to the people of Ashley County, Arkansas for making my teenage years awesome. Go Lions!

  And thank you Mr. White for being the best teacher ever and inspiring me to write.

  Wayne shifted the red 1973 Barracuda down to second gear as he turned off the old Elton Road onto Ashley County Road 491. Jody leaned over the center console and gently nibbled on his ear. He took in a deep whiff of her jasmine perfume. Her warm breath upon his neck aroused him. An injured hamstring kept him out of the big football game against Crossett, but he knew he would still get a big score. His anticipation soared as they neared the turn for the dead-end road the locals used as a lovers’ lane.

  “Do you think there will be anyone out here tonight?” Jody asked.

  “Not for another hour or so,” Wayne replied. “The game will probably go into overtime because Hamburg is having their homecoming game.”

  “Fuck homecoming,” she said, pounding her fist on the console. “I can’t believe they kicked me off the cheerleading squad because I take remedial math. What the fuck does math have to do with cheerleading anyways? And why wasn’t I allowed on the homecoming court? Principal Watkins is just being a little bitch so her ugly-ass offspring can get sympathy votes for homecoming queen.”

  Wayne slowed the car, hitting the high beams as a large buck deer crossed the gravel road ahead of them. He needed to distract Jody before she got too pissed off. The last thing he wanted was to spend the night talking about her feelings. He wasn’t interested in any feelings that didn’t involve sex.

  “What the fuck, Wayne!” Jody shouted as he brought the car to a complete stop. She braced herself on the dashboard to keep from slamming forward. He was mesmerized by how her ample bosom bounced wildly out of control.

  “I’m not gonna fuck up my car hitting a deer,” he answered. “Look, Jody, you don’t need to get so worked up. I’m already pissed off that they replaced me with Tommy Thompson in tonight’s game. Fuck those losers. We don’t need them. Let’s just relax.”

  Prepared to deal with her out-of-control emotions, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the joint he’d rolled before picking her up.

  “Just take this,” Wayne said as he passed the joint and lighter to her. “Fuck all this bullshit. Let’s not mess up our night together.”

  “Oh my God!” Jody exclaimed as she snatched up his peace offering. “I didn’t know you were holding. I went to Shannon this morning and she said everyone was dry. You might just get anything you want tonight.”

  “I have another for after,” Wayne replied, a grin covering his face.

  “You seem so certain,” she teased.

  Jody reached out with both hands to snatch his head toward her, kissing him deeply. He knew the weed would improve her mood.

  As they turned onto the dead-end road, the headlights of the Barracuda illuminated the pine forest surroundings until they fell upon the familiar sight of the abandoned yellow road grader resting across the ditch. Some of the locals recounted the story of how outsiders tried to steal the equipment using a flatbed truck almost twenty years ago. As the outlaw crew fled from a deputy sheriff, the grader dislodged from the flatbed and rolled off to the opposite side of the ditch. Wayne wondered why the owner left it there and didn’t scrap the antique for iron.

  Careful to avoid potholes and gravel slides on the remote county road, Wayne slowed down and lowered his window to let in some fresh night air. A mile ahead, the road ended in a small clearing surrounded by the pine forest. No one lived nearby, so the kids from Hamburg High threw wild bonfire parties there during the summer. An abandoned refrigerator with no door reminded him the area was also used as an illegal dumping ground.

  Wayne shut off the car, leaving the key in the ignition so they could listen to music while they made out. He turned off the headlights and rolled up the window, then reached for his MP3 player to select the right music for the occasion. He didn’t care for that country shit. Wayne scrolled through until he found the band London After Midnight. “The Bondage Song” always worked in his favor.

  Jody inhaled deeply on the joint. The embers danced across her blue eyes and she passed it to Wayne. As he reached for the weed, she clasped his hand firmly, pulling his fingers toward her mouth. Her pouty lips gently kissed his digits before she took his index finger deep into her mouth, sucking it teasingly. She stopped to give him a quirky smile as she passed the joint into his trembling fingers.

  “That’s some good shit. Since you take such good care of me, I’m gonna take really good care of you tonight, bae,” Jody promised.

  Wayne was rendered speechless as she pulled off her shimmering green blouse, revealing a low-cut black satin-and-fishnet-laced bra that allowed her succulent pink areolas to peek out from beneath the sexy fabric. Her straight blond hair with a gentle curl at the end sprang softly upon her ample breasts that threatened to escape their laced prison. Taunting him with promises to fulfill his every sexual desire, Jody crawled onto the center console of his muscle car, heading to the backseat.

  “You gonna join me?” she asked with a seductive smile, wiggling her heart-shaped posterior. Her revealing black leather miniskirt exposed the matching lace panties to her brassiere, taunting him.

  He wasted no time tearing off his purple-and-white letterman jacket, disrobing as he pushed Jody into the back of his car. He stumbled behind her with eagerness. She grabbed both sides of his face to catch his misstep, guiding him on top of her, then inhaled deeply, kissing him passionately while wrapping her long, muscular legs around his waist. As she forced him to grind his groin against her pelvis, he was certain he’d chosen the right music.

  After some time, Wayne came up for air and could see all the windows of his beloved muscle car were thickly covered with the steam of their passion. The gentle chill of the fall evening pressed against the hot air within. Jody’s ivory breasts glistened with beaded sweat as perspiration also fell from his nose. Her thin, black lace panties and his boxers were the only things standing between desire and gratification.

  Fuck Tommy Thompson, Wayne thought. That second-string loser could never score a girl as hot as Jody.

  Wayne’s hands firmly groped each of Jody’s breasts before he gently slid his fingers down along her ripped abdomen until the tips cinched beneath those beautiful silk panties. He gently began to pull them down with anticipation.

  The listless silence of the pine forest outside the car erupted in a harrowing shriek from above the tree line, pushing the darkness away with a brilliant green light. Wayne squinted against the blinding light. Through his narrowed vision, he could see Jody’s face covered with terror as they both instinctively covered their ears with the palms of their hands. The volume outside pressed upon them, threatenin
g to deafen them with explosive decibels.

  A thunderous rumble growled from the earth as something very large slammed into the forest ahead of them to the north. Wayne only had a fraction of a second to throw himself down to protect Jody before the ripping hot windstorm shattered all the windows of his classic car simultaneously, pelting his back with glass, dirt, pine needles, and bark. The blast raised the front of the car off the ground as if the nearly two-ton car were weightless. The eruption pushed the car backward before slamming it back onto the gravel road.

  Jody buried her face down into Wayne’s neck, wrapping her arms around him. Although he couldn’t hear anything except the ringing in his ears, he could feel she was howling with deep breaths of wretched horror. He turned her face to look into her eyes and knew by her silent, disfigured expression she believed they were both damned.

  With effort, Wayne steadied himself against the center console. His mouth tasted thick with dirt, ash, and blood. He raised up to peer through the thick dust and debris, looking for a clue about what had happened. The thick pine woods before them were ablaze in hundreds of small fires. Numerous tree limbs crackled from the destruction before breaking away. He initially believed a plane had crashed nearby, but the scorched smells of burnt earth and pine tree sap were mingled with an acidic stench of sulfur. He knew there was no plane.

  Jody raked and clawed at his chest, struggling to break away and flee. He felt her nails biting deep into his breasts though the pain she inflicted was nothing compared to the pain of the glass buried deep between his shoulder blades. He brushed her tangled hair from her eyes while holding her face in his hands, attempting to assuage her fear.

  “Shhh,” he pleaded aloud as his hearing began to return. “It’s gonna be okay. Shhh. I’m here. I got you, Jody. I got you.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so scared, Wayne!” she exclaimed through trembling lips. “We need to get away. Let’s get away!”

  Only one thought reverberated through his mind: What was that? Usually, Jody would be the inquisitive one who needed to know. She was truly terrified to not need to know “what” she wanted to run away from.

  “Calm down, baby, I got you,” Wayne said to console her once more. “We’re leaving, but I need you to calm down first.”

  He noticed his MP3 player was dead. The dash lights on the car were also off. A lump of fear rose in his throat. He looked at his watch with uncertainty. In the firelight, he could see it was dead too. All of the electronics were dead.

  “Where’s your phone?” Wayne asked, his voice tense.

  “We don’t have time to call anybody, let’s go!” Jody insisted.

  “Your fucking phone!” he snapped back at her. He needed her to work with him. If the phone was dead too, then he feared his assumption would be true. The blast of energy from the incident fried everything electrical.

  “In my purse,” Jody answered.

  Wayne lunged forward to the passenger-side floorboard, retrieving her purse. He unfastened it to see a small bottle of whiskey she had stashed inside. After digging around for a second, he pulled out her phone anxiously. He pressed the power button and the device would not power on.

  “Fuck!” Wayne exclaimed.

  “What?” Jody asked.

  “All the shit is dead. Everything is dead. The car is dead, your phone, my watch. We are so fucked,” he whimpered.

  The yawning sound of metal broke through the forest, catching them both off guard.

  “Holy fuck!” Jody screamed. “Was that a plane?”

  “I don’t think so,” Wayne replied, putting on his pants. “We need to get out of here.”

  When Jody grabbed her shirt from the front seat, he noticed injuries from the broken glass on her arm and along her right side. Minor scratches mostly, he surmised by the firelight flickering inside the car.

  Wayne climbed through the glassless back window of the car to get outside quickly. His icy feet reminded him he wasn’t wearing shoes as the cold gravel dug into his heels. He didn’t care about the discomfort because he knew it reminded him he was still alive.

  Instinctively, he walked around the Barracuda to survey the damage. The debris from the blast had dented the hood and sides, marring the paint with thousands of scratches. Had they not been in the car, the blast would have killed them both.

  “How did we not flip over?” Jody asked, standing beside him in disbelief.

  “Just the weight of it, I guess,” Wayne answered. “The car was pushed back more than twenty feet from where we were parked.”

  He reached in through the broken driver-side window to see if he could crank the car. As expected, nothing happened. Not even a click. He turned to tell Jody the bad news, but she was gone. For a moment, he believed she’d bolted back down the road, but then he noticed she was standing near the old refrigerator on the edge of the woods—in the same direction where something had crashed.

  “What are you doing?” Wayne screamed. Apparently, Jody’s undying curiosity was back. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Someone could be hurt out here, Wayne,” she replied. “Look at that green glow. That could be coming from a plane’s lights. We should check before we leave. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I found out somebody died out here because I didn’t take two seconds to save them.”

  He walked over to where she stood to peer through woods, surveying the damage. He grabbed her gently by the arm and said, “Look at you. You aren’t wearing pants, shoes, or even your bra for that matter. We should go.”

  Jody pulled away from him, running into the firelit unknown.

  “Get back here!” he shouted after her. Crazy bitch is gonna get us killed.

  Wayne was no coward. He could not leave her running around the woods all alone and in her panties no less. “Wait!” he called to her again, picking up the pace to catch up with her as best as he could with his injured leg.

  Where there had once only been a thick pine forest on flat land, Wayne saw an earthen ridge created by the impact of whatever had fallen within the foreboding devastation. The newly created crater was more than thirty yards wide where the forest had instantly been cleared. He saw the remnants of a steel deer stand left in a mangled pile. Perhaps this was the metal sound they’d heard earlier.

  Stepping onto the rim of the crater, Wayne saw the source of the glowing green light. Fragments of a large meteor, burning with green flames, were scattered across the affected area. To his terror, he discovered Jody curiously exploring the crater, covering her mouth and nose with her blouse pulled up to her face.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he cried out in disbelief.

  “Do you know what this is, Wayne?” she responded, turning toward him. “Do you know how rare it is to find meteorites like this? From what I saw on a documentary once, this shit is worth a fortune!”

  “Are you fucking crazy? Don’t you smell that acid and shit? Those green flames could be toxic and you’re breathing all that shit in,” he said. “You’re gonna get burned or worse!”

  Jody stepped near a piece of the meteor that was not on fire with her hand outstretched.

  “Stop it, will you?” Wayne’s voice was now shrill and his eyes were wide open.

  “Some of these rocks have ice on them,” she continued. “I think this one is cold enough for me to pick up. It must be from the middle or something.”

  All of this was wrong and Wayne knew it in every fiber of his being. He quickly made his way down into the large crater, hobbling to Jody in an attempt to stop her. “You don’t know what chemicals are in those rocks, Jody. We should get the Ashley County sheriff out here or the Milo Volunteer Fire Department. Or fuck, maybe NASA will come to quarantine this shit or something. Do you want to be in quarantine too?” he said, trying to reason with her.

  As her hand touched the basketball-sized chunk of rock, he froze in midstride as his heart leaped into his throat. She touched the fucking rock.

&n
bsp; “I was right,” Jody cackled with glee. “This rock is cold and it also feels oily. Some of these meteorites have gold and shit in them. We are fucking rich!”

  Wayne understood what she was saying, but he still could not believe she didn’t see the risk. He didn’t know why he was so unnerved, but every part of him told him they were both in grave danger. Unmoving, he watched as she stood up and opened her hand to reveal a black ooze stretched across her fingers like nearly transparent mucus.

  “Ew,” Jody said, trying to dislodge the ooze from her hand.

  “Please, Jody, we should get out of here,” he begged once more even though the pit in his stomach told him it was too late.

  “Oh, this is cold!” She shook her hand frantically. “Ouch, fuck me, it’s starting to burn. It fucking hurts!”

  “Get that shit off your hand, Jody,” Wayne shouted.

  With disbelief, he witnessed the veins up along her arm growing into thick, black lines. He wasn’t prepared for the violent snapping of her fingers contorting outwardly, bending in upon themselves. Jody screamed in writhing agony as her outstretched fingers clasped shut together of their own accord. She attempted to speak but couldn’t seem to articulate her thoughts as she witnessed the depravity of her own flesh turning against her. A trilling sound escaped her closed hand as her right arm snaked out, flailing from her body, contorting and bending in ways it should not have been capable of doing. Feebly, she tried to reach with her left hand to hold her wounded arm as she dropped to her knees whimpering in despair.

  From Wayne’s vantage point, her arm writhed more like a tendril than an appendage as it made the ghastly trilling noise through the crisp fall air. What his eyes beheld, this unfathomable madness, could not be reality. As he watched her clasped fingers open to reveal a sharp row of long, fine teeth in a gaping maw that hissed in defiant sedition, he knew his concept of reality was minuscule and flawed. The abhorrent depths of his darkest nightmares could have never spilled out the reviled monstrosity that was no longer Jody’s arm.