Horrorscopes: Twelve Tales of the Macabre

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Ding-dong

The floor shook as over three hundred pounds of flabby bulk hit the floor in a tangle of sheets. Steve winced and stared blurredly up at the face of the digital clock on the nightstand. It was just after three in the morning. The air had whooshed from his lungs in the impact and he struggled to inhale as he kicked his meaty legs in an attempt to free them from the twisted sheets. Unprocessed beer sloshed around in his ample gut, its weight pressing down on his bladder. On top of it all, his headache started thrumming hours ahead of its usual arrival. He should be confused by the lateness of the hour, he should be groggy after being roused from only two hours of drunken sleep, and he should be angry at whoever deigned to come ringing in the middle of his sleep. But all he could find in himself was a creeping, clutching dread as the last line from the letters flashed in his mind again.

Diiiiiiiing-dong

She was really laying on the bell that time, impatient. She? Steve thought. How do I know it's a she? Could be anybody.

He finally fetched a short, pained breath as he hefted himself to his knees. He dug in the nightstand drawer and pulled free his revolver. Checking the cylinder, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He didn't usually answer the door with a pistol; a cocked fist more often than not, and sometimes he had cause to use it, but rarely a gun. But the way he was feeling tonight, sending some interloper home with a black eye or a busted jaw might not be enough. Tonight he thought he might put a bullet in their throat and watch them wriggle themselves to death; it wasn't the usual anger that aroused this. It was that mounting dread he felt, that unfamiliar sensation of not being on top of a situation. Of not being the intimidating half of an altercation. It was, he thought, being the threatened instead of the threat.

Diiiiing-doooooooong

This time, the bell was accompanied by four sharp knocks.

“All right, bitch, keep your skirt on,” he called. There I go again, he thought. How do I know it's not a man?

The threatening letters had started coming two months ago. Steve was no stranger to unpaid debts. His creditors sent bills twice a month in red envelopes, his utilities were turned off every sixty days or so—with a duration of about a week before he could hustle up enough cash to make the minimum payment. Threatening letters were old hat, but these were new. These came on plain white letterhead with no seal or symbol embossed upon it. The threats weren't stamped in black typeface like other letters. They were written in crayon, of all things, and there was no confusion as to who was sending them.

Six months ago he'd been interrupted from his TV shows by impatient doorbell rings quite similar to the ones he was hearing now. He had pulled his flabby girth from the couch ready to give whoever was bothering him the thumping of their lifetime. He had a long-established rule of no visitors before noon and if this was a salesman or Jehovah's Witness, they were gonna walk away with a sore ass, not a customer. But his irritation had melted away when he saw the green sashes and the red wagon filled with colorful and immediately recognizable cardboard boxes.

They were Girl Scouts selling cookies, and Steve could go for a few cookies right then.

He had bought half of their remaining stock; Three boxes of Dulce de Leches, five boxes of Thin Mints, and all of the remaining Caramel deLites—his personal favorite. No amateur con, he had paid with a convincing fake check in the name of one of his aliases.

When the threatening letters started, he had been distantly amused. The girls had balls sending him threats, after all. They were always as conveniently worded as those of bill-collectors everywhere, but the fact that they were written in a child's hand was somehow cute. But after more and more letters arrived, he began to see the subtext. And while he didn't outwardly know he was starting to bow with dread, he recognized it as soon as that doorbell rang at three a.m., rousing him from a drunken slumber.