Drive In. A Short Horror Story.

DRIVE IN

‘Everyday it's a-gettin' closer
Goin' faster than a roller coaster
Love like yours will surely come my way’

Cheryl had been the last to go.
Her skin bleached ashen white as her eyes filled with tar and rot.
She had crumpled to the floor and contorted like a dying spider, following the macabre routine set by Sam and Linda earlier.
Jerking upright, her head shaking violently like a broken film reel, she twisted her arms towards Bruce as her fingers curved into her palm.
The fireplace poker was closest to her, rudimentary but suitable enough to beat her with. He darted at it, his hand embracing the edge and ready to club her.
Bruce surprised himself when he found himself forgoing that crude style of assault and skewering her through the eye with a clumsy panache. He certainly hadn’t intended to do that, but desperate times and all that.
He wasn’t annoyed at himself though, regardless of the damp pop as the retina burst, the dull crunch as the skewer hit the roadblock that was her skull, or the inky spray of blood that warmed his face as her veins were severed.
He was impressed by his limbs working on their own accord, his conscious self being the lone patron to their ghastly theatre. It was far more ‘graceful’ than the methods he’d disposed of the others.
Cheryl reeled backward. Well, whatever Cheryl now was.
He knew Cheryl wasn’t Cheryl.
The superficial flesh exterior was hers, but it was merely a suit stolen by another.
When she screamed that guttural belch, octaves beneath Cheryl’s sugared tones, Bruce knew he was correct.
He wiggled the fireplace poker, Cheryl’s legs thrashing as he dug into her brain with the brass spike at the end.
It had gotten to her.
It had gotten to everybody else, why was she so exempt?
Because of her Bridgette Bardot eyes and ‘Peggy Sue’ chequered dress?
She was beautiful, kind and sweet, yes.
But those are adjectives for the living to judge her.
It was like trying to stop the night staking its claim on the sky.
She howled her discordant sonata and grabbed Bruce’s throat.
Her hands moved; a spasm from the poker? Maybe. Maybe she was easier to kill than the others.
The fire and brimstone grip that carved into his neck? No. That was intentional. That was Cheryl's grip, heightened by the malice that had weaved itself into her sinew and muscles.
He’d felt that grip on his arm at the Drive-In.
Roger Corman did that to her. The Blob did that to her. Man made nightmares did that to her.
Out of teenage joy and out of delightful shocks.
She wasn’t doing this.
She wasn’t strangling him.
It was this intruder.
This bastard.
This disease.
You won’t have her. I won’t give you the satisfaction you bastard.

Her hands remained around Bruce’s throat, his breathing painful and limited as it was when Sam had strangled him earlier.
Bruce grabbed Cheryl’s head, as he had with Sam and dug into her scalp. The fireplace poker was standing free on its own accord, jutting stiffly from the gore and swollen skin that formed Cheryl’s right eye.
When Bruce grabbed Sam’s head during the struggle, about an hour ago now, he hadn’t expected his hand to punch through the top of his skull so easily.
Like the cheap candy from the dime store, the soft mush that would stain your palms if you pressed too hard.
Bruce never expected Sam’s head to collapse at all, so for a few seconds he remained motionless and stared into the cosmic black spheres that Sam’s eyes had become. Cheryl’s had also been stained with this darkness.
He was squashing down on a horrific mix of brain matter, hair, and hair gel, whilst the jagged edges of Sam’s skull dug into his wrist.
Linda had seized this opportunity to beat Sam’s head in with the radio, barely giving Bruce enough time to pull his hand free.
Linda’s cardigan was polka dotted with bits of flesh and gore, Cheryl screamed in the corner of the Cabin and Bruce simply breathed heavily, his eyes fixed on the oak walls.
Now Linda was dead and Cheryl was gone.
Murdered, raped, possessed.
Contaminated.
In the space of an hour the cellar had been painted with dread and dyed with blood.
Maybe Bruce was being tormented, saved until last for a long forgotten sin from his childhood.
He’d never killed or harmed another creature, his worst offence was occasionally cursing at the assholes being far too uncouth at the Diner most nights, but that never escalated to anything.
He’d done nothing.
Nor had Linda, Sam or Cheryl.
Maybe if he killed them all then he’d be left alone, he’d prove himself far too strong to dominate.

Cheryl wailed at Bruce and he pulled back on her head, ripping her skull open.
His mind broke free of any concentration he had hoped to maintain, it panicked, trying to take shelter in earlier memories of the day.
It chose to take refuge in the Buddy Holly song that had been on the radio earlier.
The sun is out, the Sky is Blue.
The poker was heaved backward; the weight of Cheryl’s brain as it fell out the exposed puncture at the back of her head .Her neck snapped backward, a noise as sharp as the crash of a T-Bird as she released her knotted fingers from Bruce’s neck.
There’s not a cloud to spoil the view.
She birthed a guttural belch as she tilted backwards, her brain sliding down the fireplace poker towards the ground, as her arms clawed the air.
But it’s raining.
The decayed fleshy mass slid off the poker and melted to the floor. Bruce grabbed her neck with both hands and threw her towards the wooden wall. He began slamming what remained of her head against it, Cheryl’s fingers desperately trying to find anything to pierce or gouge.
It’s raining in my heart
Cheryl crumpled to the ground as before, her head destroyed, nothing but a paste washed with bone and muscle. Bruce reeled backwards, his breathing a jackhammer.
He stumbled towards the front door and made his way to the Ford Thunderbird parked by the lake, a few metres from the cabin. It was Sam’s, he wouldn’t mind. He stumbled across the grass like a drunkard or a cripple, spraying red over the sweet green around him as he headed to the car.
Bruce opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, staining the seats with gore and stench.
He’d just sit and wait.
Wait to see what happened next.
His fingers shaking, he turned the chrome radio knob and tried to catch his breath. Static and the popping burst of frequency intruded on the silence. His fingers, greasy and tense, slipped across the dial before stopping as he heard the faint dream of music. He turned the volume up and closed his eyes.

‘..weather man says clear today 
he doesn’t know you’ve gone away 
and it’s raining - raining in my heart’