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Few sixteen year olds had the stamina to remain surly and jaded with any consistency. These types made Denny sick. They’d rage against the machine until roughly dinner time, then remove the black lipstick just to scoff down a steaming plate of mom’s Shepherd’s Pie. Angst was a choice for them. They only pretended to despise, while Denny’s hatred was sincere and justified. Theirs was theater. His was a pure, divine rage.

Denny was committed to his conflict, his insurrection of authority, and no target was more desirable than his parents.

Unfortunately however, his parents did not combat him. Rather, they neglected him to the point of invisibility. He once counted five days where they offered not a single word, moving around him as though he was a piece of furniture. Why they ever gave birth to him, he didn’t know, but he assumed it was a tax write off.

But his rage toward them needed quelling, and so prompted his attempts to get a reaction. He’d sit in his bedroom, blasting music at obscene volumes while they watched television downstairs. They’d simply pick up and move to their bedroom, shutting the door on his clamorous protest.

He smoked weed in the house, but they paid no heed other than to spray air freshener after he’d left the room. He stayed out all night without calling. He invited friends over and drank his father’s three hundred dollar bottle of Cognac. He spilled chocolate syrup on the Oriental rug.

No response.

He was beginning to wonder if he’d in fact become invisible, or perhaps died, and his antics were the fantasies of a restless spirit. But finally, when he stole their Mercedes, they called the police and he was taken into custody.

“Your grandparents are here,” his father said, finally arriving at the police station after four hours. “You’re going to live with them in Roxbury. They’re waiting for you outside. Your bags are packed and in the car.”

With this said, his father attempted to leave the room without a glance backward. But Denny needed closure.

“Why did you have me?” he called out. “Why did you have a child?”

His father paused and turned back, his face blank. “We tried to have you aborted. The doctor said you were too far along. Now hurry it up. Your grandparents are waiting.”

Out front, Denny watched his parents drive away, stinging with rejection. To his considerable annoyance, his rage had left him.

Resting against the stinky vinyl backseat of his grandfather’s Impala, he hung his head and wept. Grandma reached back and patted his shoulder, uttering soothing assurances that everything would be all right. He saw her watery eyes scrutinizing his earrings and newly died black hair.

They were in their late seventies, not ideal for handling a teenager. But by basis of comparison, it wasn’t a bad deal. Gram and Gramps were always kind to him. He had memories of gifts and sweets when visiting as a small child. Docile and fragile as they were, he’d get the attention and love he’d so horribly lacked with his own parents.

But this image of geriatric Nirvana started to fragment almost immediately. As Gram and Gramps showed him to the spare bedroom, he noticed flecks of blood on both their shoes. At least it looked like blood. Some of it spattered the white cuffs of Gramps’ summer trousers. Denny averted his eyes, embarrassed. He knew nothing about what medical oozings might plague the aged, nor did he want to.

“We love you, Denny,” Gram said. “You’ll be happy here.”

He offered them an awkward nod, and they left him alone to stare at the ceiling, pondering his new existence.

Shortly thereafter, a terrible argument broke out between Gram and Gramps. Denny sat upright in bed as something crashed. Muffled yelling filtered through his bedroom wall. He strained to hear, and caught fragments of his Grandfather’s voice. ‘I will not change my plans! I’ve come too far to have some kid come in here and…’

Denny frowned. Leaving his bed, he crept quietly downstairs and out the back door. The yard was vast and groomed, Gram’s rosebushes edging the property line, a shield of privacy. Moonlight lent a white glow to the pale green grass. With hands stuffed in his pockets, he walked over to the short set of cement stairs that descended to the basement door. He grinned at memories of childhood play when the cellar was a secret, magical place.

His foot kicked something that crinkled, a trash bag in the shadows alongside the steps. The green bag had tipped on its side, trimmings of shrubs and sticks spilling out onto the grass.

“Crap,” he said, and reached for the bag, scooping the spilled contents back in, careful not to grab onto a thorny twig. His hand found something soft and pliable among the brush and he paused, bringing it to his face. With a short gasp, he dropped the dead squirrel and jumped back, wiping his hand on his jeans. “What the fuck!”

The rodent lay stiff on its side. Denny kicked it, rolling it onto its back. The white underbelly was stained with dark blood. Denny leaned over and squinted at the carcass. From pelvis to throat, the tiny body had been sliced. He shook his head, wrinkling his nose at the vague scent of rotting flesh.

Road kill? He studied the wound on the squirrel’s belly. The line was nearly perfect, straight like a blade. A breeze kicked up, fluttering the trash bag and bringing goose bumps to Denny’s arms. He looked down.

A second fluffy tail peeked out the mouth of the bag. With the toe of his sneaker he kicked it. Another squirrel. This one had the same gutting wound up the center of its body, blood drying to its pale gray fur.

“Mm…yeah. I think Denny’s off gardening duty.” Wiping his hand on his jeans again, he left the bag and went back inside to bed.

As Gram piled pancakes onto this plate the following morning, he asked about the squirrels he’d discovered in the yard the night before. The spatula froze in her hand. She looked over at Gramps, pouring coffee at the counter. The cup slipped from his hand, steaming brew spilling across the tile.

“Son of a bitch!” his Grandfather yelled, shaking his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Denny said, though he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t spill the coffee. Gram ran to get a rag.

“What kind of lunatic kid goes digging through someone else’s trash in the middle of the night?” Gramps screamed at him, his wrinkled face flushed in fury. Denny sat frozen, his mouth agape.

“Richard!” his grandmother hissed. “Don’t you dare yell at the boy!”

Gramps wiped his hands with the rag and stormed out of the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, Gram,” Denny said. “I kicked it over by accident, and then I–”

“You pay him no mind, Denny,” she said, mopping up the spilled coffee. “He’s just a miserable old man. Now don’t you go near the lawn trash again. You’ll get pricked by thorns.”

“But Gram, what happened to the squirrels?”

She threw the rag in the sink and looked at him. “Sometimes they get into the basement,” she said. “The squirrels, they…they get in.”

“But how did they die?”

Her weathered face tightened. “Shovel,” she said. “Grandpa hits them with a shovel.”

Denny nodded, but he knew it was a lie.

His days were spent helping around the house and wandering the neighborhood in search of fun. He was able to find a comic book shop and a video arcade, which satisfied his need of escape from his elderly guardians. He was not unhappy. Though he kept up the façade of being jaded, he was secretly thrilled with Gram’s doting on him, and the wonderful dinners that graced the table each evening. But something in the house was…off.

Gramps was cordial to him, but this was obviously not the same man that bounced Denny on his knee as a child. His pleasant manner seemed forced, and more than once Denny heard him screaming at his wife in their bedroom late at night.

One night the screams woke him from a dead sleep. He got out of bed and turned on the light. He heard his grandfather’s deep voice vibrating the floor from below, and then the muffled weeping of his grandmother. What the Christ they were doing out of their room at this time of night, he couldn’t imagine.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he crept down the stairs. The rooms were empty. Then the shouting came again, his grandmother’s voice filtering up from the basement. You have to stop this! Now with Denny here… The voices trailed off.

Denny moved to the closed basement door. “I told you if that God damned kid came here that… ” His grandfather’s voice was muted by the sound of the washing machine turning on, a loud, swishing whir. Then the voices were gone, either too low for him to hear, or silenced by the sound of the washer. After ten minutes, they still hadn’t come back up stairs. Pondering how often the old folks did laundry at three in the morning, Denny finally went up to bed.

The next day Gramps was gone. When Denny inquired as to his whereabouts, Gram said he’d gone to church. But as the day wore on, there was still no sign of him. When dinnertime came, he and Gram ate alone.

Around 11:00 pm, Denny was reading a comic book in bed when he heard his grandmother leave her room and go downstairs.
He lowered his comic book and listened. He heard the faint creak of the basement door, then the light steps of Gram padding down them. His grandfather had not yet returned from whatever was his excursion. Denny laid the comic book on the bed and went downstairs.

He eased open the basement door. The dim bulb lit the gray steps. From somewhere in the room below, Gram called to her husband in a harsh whisper. “Richard!” he heard her say. “Richard, come back here now!”

Then came the rustling of plastic.

“Gram?” he called down.

“Denny go to bed!” she yelled.

He trampled down the stairs and rounded the corner. “Gram, what’s wrong?” He stopped short.

His grandmother knelt on the floor in front of the washing machine, dressed in a thin pink nightgown. In one hand she gripped a small metal shovel, the other holding the edge of a green trash bag. She glared at him. “Get out of here, Denny! Go to bed!”

He moved into the room and knelt alongside her. “Gram, what are you doing?” There was blood on the floor, blood edging the circular opening of the front-loading washer. Denny snatched the bag from her frail hand and she gave out a little cry. He glanced at her, then reached into the bag, his fingers connecting with something warm and wet. He pulled out a squirrel carcass. Its body was split up the center from pelvis to neck.

He dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor. Gram stood on shaky legs, then stepped back as the pile of dead squirrels spilled out onto the cement. Blood spread in a lazy dark stream from the corpses.

Denny dropped the bag and looked at his grandmother. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

His grandmother’s eyes looked crazed. She shuffled forward and pushed Denny back with a frail hand. Retrieving the small shovel, she knelt down and began to stuff the spilled corpses back into the bag, her head down, not meeting his eyes. “Sometimes the squirrels get in,” she said.

Denny moved to the washing machine and looked inside. A drenched squirrel corpse was stuck to the inside of the round drum. He rotated the drum gently, and the little corpse dropped to the bottom, its severed underbelly exposed. He looked back at Gram, who was shoveling the mess into the bag with thin, shaking arms.

“Gram, tell me what’s going on,” he demanded.

“They get in,” she said again.

“Through the washing machine? Come on Gram! What the hell’s going on? Where’s Gramps?”

Tears streamed down her papery cheeks, and she pointed to the washing machine. “He’s gone in there!” she said. “Oh Denny, he says this time he’s not coming back!”

He stared back at her, wincing. “Gramps has gone in where? Into the washing machine?”

She nodded. “Oh, I know it sounds crazy, but you have to help me get him back, Denny! I’m too old and weak to go after him myself.”

Denny gave her a frown. “Gram, you’re not making sense.”

“I’ll explain tomorrow, Denny. Just promise you’ll find him for me! Will you, Denny? If I show you the way? I…I can’t bear it!” She began to weep and Denny held her, escorting her up the stairs and putting her to bed.

Gramps still hadn’t returned when Denny got up the following morning. Gram was at the sink, washing dishes. “Do you want pancakes?” she asked without turning around.

“Gram, where is Gramps?”

“I told you last night,” she said. “He’s gone through that damned portal in the washing machine.”

He sighed and drummed his fingers. “Oh yes. Of course. I’d forgotten.”

She turned around, her eyes pleading. “You’re still going to help find him, aren’t you Denny?”

Her expectant smile wouldn’t leave him. She just stood there with the spatula, wearing that goofy expression that could have been the seed of laughter or tears.

“I think I’ll go out for a while,” he said.

Denny walked the streets. The only feasible logic was that his elderly grandparents had gone stark raving mad. And now Gramps was missing. How the hell had he gotten stuck caring for a couple of delusional old cotton heads? So much for freedom.

When he returned home he strolled around to the back, seeking a moment of solace in the cool night, the aroma of Gram’s rosebushes to soothe his senses. But as he rounded the corner he stopped in the shadows. Gram was in the backyard, still dressed in her pink cotton nightgown. Her sparse white hair was askew in a mess of unruly tufts. The old woman cursed as she fussed with a boxy contraption alongside the bulkhead.

Lifting the contraption, she made down the stairs. A feral shriek pierced the night, then another, coming from the thing Gram carried. As she took the steps, moonlight glinted off the wire mesh of the trap. It was filled with panicked squirrels, screeching and clawing. The sound was cut when Gram entered the basement and shut the heavy metal door.

Denny moved to the rectangular window just above the foundation of the house and peered into the basement. He had a clear view of Gram moving around in the dim light. She set the trap down before the washing machine, and went to the worktable, returning with a long black wand. Crouching down, she poked the wand into the trap, between the wires.

Denny watched her do this for several minutes. Finally seeming satisfied, she replaced the wand on the worktable, returning with a glinting silver blade.

Denny gasped.

She opened the top of the trap and lifted out one of the rodents. It twitched in her hand, but did not struggle. It had been stunned, along with the rest of them, piled docile on top of each other now. Denny winced as the old woman sliced the squirrel open, from the neck down, blood spilling over her hand. Opening the washer door, she tossed the murdered squirrel inside.

Denny observed, disgusted as each tiny body was sliced up the middle, then thrown into the drum with a clunk. Once the trap was empty, Gram shut the washer door and turned the dial. The machine hummed into action, sending a vibration through the window. He’d seen enough.

She looked up when he came through the back door.

“Denny! Thank heaven. The spin cycle’s almost ready. Come on now.” She beckoned him with a small, bony hand.

“Gram, you need help,” he said.

She frowned. “No, Denny, I don’t like killing squirrels any more than you would. But the machine requires a sacrifice.”

“Gram,” he said, “can’t you see that you’ve gotten…confused?”

She shook her head. “Oh dear, that’s not it at all.”

“Where is Gramps? Where did he go?”

Her eyes grew cold, focusing on some distant memory. “We got this thing at a yard sale, you know. Gramps said it was a real bargain. Our washing machine broke a few months back you see, and being on a fixed income…”

“Gram, come on upstairs,” Denny said, trying to take her arm.

She yanked it away and took a step back. “When we got it home we found a set of instructions inside the box. But they weren’t instructions on how to wash clothes. It was like a recipe. Told us how if we got enough animal blood, and followed the directions exactly, a portal would open. We thought it was a joke naturally. But one time your gramps got drunk on Scotch and decided to try it out. To this day I regret I didn’t stop it back then…”

Denny raised an eyebrow. “Gram, I’m trying to be patient with you, but you need to go to a doctor.”

She wasn’t listening. She’d turned and was watching the circular glass door at the front of the washer. Denny glanced at it and scowled, moving in closer. The bloody red water was turning a fluorescent green, glowing like one of those chemical wands they sold at the town fair.

“The spin cycle is coming!” Gram said excitedly. She turned to Denny. “It’s almost time, honey. Don’t be afraid. It’s like a carnival ride. First you’re falling, and then it’s over.”

Denny tore his eyes away from the machine. He took a careful step toward his grandmother, reaching his hand out. “Now come on, Gram. Let’s go upstairs. We’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

She looked devastated. “Tea! You mean…you mean you’re not going to go get him? You’re not going to bring Richard back?” She stumbled, her rear bumping against the machine.

“Gram, come on. It’s going to be okay.”

The spin cycle kicked in, and the entire room was flooded with crimson light. The machine whirred as the drum spun, and Denny gasped at the beams of ruby light fanning out from the hole where the washer door had been. He looked to Gram. “What the hell is happening?”

Gram stepped back from the washer and watched the phenomena, red beams making patterns on her white hair and pale nightgown. She glanced back at Denny just once, then leaned over.

“RICHARD!” she screamed as she dove into the light.

“Gram, no!” He dove after her, managing to grab onto her tiny slippered feet just before they disappeared into the hole. But instead of dragging her out, he was sucked in with a force that drew the breath out of him.

Then he was free falling, for just a moment in the dark, then pain.

Lying on his back, he gasped to reclaim the wind that had been knocked out of his lungs. Above him was a high, gold ceiling with elaborate designs that would have made the choir boys at the Sistine Chapel envious. And music.

Jovial music echoed out from somewhere; drums, stringed instruments, jingling and clapping. He sat up, holding his throbbing ribs.

He was in a vast marbled lobby, just outside a glorious hall filled with people. Cautiously, he moved over to the curtained entryway and peeked in, watching them dance and laugh, toasting gold chalices and spinning about.

They were lavishly dressed in sheer, colored scarves and flowing shirts with gold trim. Silk and tulle garments fanned out from dresses as they twirled and stepped.

He was about to enter the ballroom when he turned his head and saw Gram laying face down on the floor five feet away. “Gram!” He ran to her and knelt down. He shook her. She was very still. “Gram?”

Rolling her over, he knew in an instant she was dead; her eyes slightly parted, her jaw stiff, no breath moving her chest. “Crap,” he said, and lowered her to the floor.

Someone tugged on his sleeve and he spun around. A small child stood watching him, an eccentrically dressed little boy with olive skin and a head of dark curls. “The fights are about to start,” he said, his voice like honey. “Don’t you want to come in?”

Denny looked over the boy’s head and saw the crowd forming a large circle. The music continued, but most of them seemed preoccupied by whatever was within the circle. Denny looked at the little boy. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, offering one last glance back at Gram.

The ballroom was vast and magnificent, yet there was a primitive quality to it, with natural lighted chandeliers, torches and lanterns. Tribal masks hung along the walls between glass cases full of ominous looking blades and axes.

The crowd congregated into a large circle, clapping hands and stomping feet to the music. As Denny moved closer he saw what their focus was.

Gramps was in the center of the circle. Dressed in white underpants, black socks and loafers, he danced. Denny pushed himself up through the crowd to get a better look. His grandfather did some sort of two step, laughing maniacally, periodically taking a sip from his mug. The crowd cheered him on. Denny looked behind him for the little boy, and found him close by. He leaned over and whispered, “Why is everyone watching that man?”

The boy frowned, his brown eyes discontented. “Because he’s going to fight the king tonight.”

“Which one is the king?” Denny asked.

The boy pointed to the far end of the room. “There.”

Denny looked with astonishment at the figure in the gold throne. The man was dressed in the same carnival style ensemble as the others, with scarves and feathers aplenty, but that was not the end to his oddness.

He had a strong face with olive skin and thick lips, and his partially bare chest and arms were muscled like a warrior. From his forehead protruded three large horns. From the waist down was thick brown fur, the ends of his legs curving into the menacing claws of a grizzly bear. He lifted a hand to accept a cup of wine someone had poured for him. The hands were brown fur as well, and the razor sharp claws were apparent on his thick fingers as well.

“That guy?” Denny looked to the child. “Gramps is going to fight that guy?”

The boy shrugged. “Richard has beaten everyone else. It is now his right to challenge the king for the throne.”

Denny shook his head. “Wait a minute. Gramps…I mean Richard, is a wrinkled old bag of crusty bones. He couldn’t beat a rug.”

The boy gave him an odd look. “His animal form is far superior,” he said. “But I don’t like him. I don’t want him to be king. He doesn’t care about the people. He only wants power and adoration.”

Denny looked back over at Gramps, who was gloating in the attention as he danced like an idiot in his dingy underpants.

Three loud drumbeats bellowed through the hall then, and the crowd went quiet. Flanked on either side by a flamboyant guard, the king came forth into the circle. Gramps snickered as the king approached, making crude gestures and sticking his tongue out.

The king was solemn and frightening, a horned bear-man gliding on muscular animal legs. He bowed to Gramps, then lifted his arm and looked out to the crowd. “Let us change, and let the battle begin!” he called out.

The crowd broke into shrieks and howls, first in jubilation, then in something feral as their bodies twisted and grew, becoming a montage of forms.

They were all humanoid hybrids of one sort or another. Denny felt his mind hit that surreal barrier where he’d either grow stronger for enduring this madness or fall into a quivering, giggling ball of lunacy and never return. To his fortune, the boy tugged on his arm before he could drop into a fetal catatonia.

The kid had transformed into some sort of fanged chimpanzee beast, but was still recognizable with the olive skin and wide brown eyes. He frowned up at Denny. “Change,” he said.

“Huh?”

A sharp pain zippered through Denny’s back and he felt like he was being split open. “Ugh!” His skin burned as bubbles erupted. He examined his arms, which were turning pale green like a lizard. Then his back ripped with pain again and he fell to his knees. The bones behind his shoulders twisted and crushed. His scream became a howl in a chorus of others.

Then the pain was gone.

He looked down at himself. His arms had elongated, and his fingers had sharp hooks on the ends of them. His legs and torso were normal. But his shirt had ripped off his body, as a pair of huge leathery wings sprouted from his back.

Denny was in shock, but somehow elated. Instinctively he knew how to move the wings, and did so, enjoying the ’swoosh’ sound they made as he fanned them out.

Power he thought. He felt powerful, and it was foreign, an emotion he was completely unacquainted with. He wanted to get to know it better. A lot better.

“Hey mister! Your primal form is bird! Do you know what that means?” the chimp child asked.

Denny didn’t answer because the screams of battle rang out. He turned to see the king in combat with a pink reptilian creature, a giant, at least nine feet tall.

The naked, hairless creature had a long spiked tail, a bald head with one fierce horn protruding from the center. It batted at the much smaller bear-king, knocking him onto his back.

The king tried lifting his spear as the larger beast came down on him, but the creature snatched it from his claws and plunged it through his chest. A bubble of blood spilled out over the king’s chin, and his eyes went still. The king was dead.

“Well shit, that was fast,” Denny muttered.

The giant pink creature turned toward the crowd and grinned, wide and hideous with pointed yellow fangs.

Denny’s eyes widened. “Mother of God,” he said. The face was Gramps’. A stretched out, reptilian Gramps, but Gramps nonetheless.

The Gramps thing lifted the spear over its head, and in a deep hellish growl, yelled out to the crowd.

“Bow down before me! I am your king!”

Some cheered, others looked frightened. But all fell to their knees and bowed. The room fell silent. The Gramps-creature grinned in satisfaction. Then his eyes found Denny, and the hideous grin dropped.

Denny was the only one standing.

The creature looked dumbfounded for a moment, its yellow Gramps’ eyes blinking in confusion.

Then the chimp boy was at Denny’s side, lifting his arm. “There is one who challenges!” he called out. “There is one who challenges!”

The king’s court of guards and attendants took their attention away from their slain leader and looked at Denny. The crowd slowly got to their feet, a murmur of curious voices.

“What the hell do you mean?” Denny hissed at the boy. “I’m not fighting that…thing! Even if I am related to it. He’ll kill me!”

The reptilian giant threw its head back and laughed, a sinister bellow. “Come on then!” It beckoned Denny, leering over at him. “Come on you punk kid. Grampy has some candy for you!”

Denny felt his bladder threaten to let go. The chimp child pulled on his hand. “You can beat him. He can’t fly! And you can.”

Denny hesitated.

The little boy looked up at him miserably. “Please, mister!” he whispered. “If that guy becomes our king, our lives will be unbearable! Please, take the power. Kill the beast.”

Denny glanced over at the giant demon-like thing that had been his grandfather. It stuck a thick, pink middle finger up at him. Denny pumped the wings on his back. He’d taken flight before he realized what he was doing, an oddly natural sensation.

The crowd went wild, cheering and shouting. Denny circled the air above Gramps, while Gramps struck out at him with a long pointed spear. “Get down here and fight me like a man!” he bellowed.

“But you’re not a man,” Denny said. Then he came down like a dive-bomber.

Before the Gramps creature knew what hit it, Denny had ripped out its throat with his new hook-like talons. Black blood bubbled from the creature’s neck, and he dropped to the marble floor, shriveling and changing until it was just an old man again.

Denny did a circle of flight around the bleeding body of his grandfather, then landed alongside it.

The little boy ran out to join him, taking Denny’s hand and raising it over his head. “Our king! Our king!”

The crowd went wild, screaming and cheering. The music started up and they clapped hands and fins and paws in his honor. The crew of guardians that served the former king came over with a golden chair with extended legs for carrying, and they urged him into it.

He seated himself in the gold chair and looked out at the crowd, all eyes upon him. All eyes acknowledging him. Adoring him. Serving him. The feeling welled up inside of him again. Power.

“You are our leader now,” one of his council said softly in his ear. “Shall I make a statement to your followers on your behalf?”

Denny let his eyes drift over the subservient crowd. “Yes,” he said.

“And what is your will, My Lord?”

A cold grin curved his lips. “Tell them to bow down.”

END

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Adrienne Jones’ story “Party Makers” appears in the Apex Publications anthology Gratia Placenti. Order your copy today.