The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole! (1) by Timothy W. Long, Jonathan Moon Page B

care about you or your plans. I just want to go back to my room.” She stomps a petulant foot and starts to turn around, but he is beside her quick as a whip crack. His hand circles her bony arm. She turns to confront him, but the big silver ball at the top of the cane catches her eye. She doesn’t want that to be the last thing she ever sees.
    “As I was saying.” His voice is right next to her ear, and she feels the back of her neck go livid as the hairs stand on end. Her body shivers again, and her knees threaten to give out.
    “We had a peaceful life while my real father prepared the world for me. For him. Now he rests under the city and waits to make his move. After I make mine, of course. Father is coming back for the end of days, and I will sit at his right hand as I lead the world to oblivion, and it will be beautiful. We will rule the world and we will rule the dead.”
    “What are you going to do with a dead world, sonny?” This man is wicked, but there is also madness in his words. She feels brave when she realizes he may be just a crazy person with some charlatan tricks.
    “Pardon?”
    “What are you going to do with a bunch of dead people and a world burned to a crisp? How will anyone live?”
    “That’s the point. No one will live.”
    “So you are going to rule a big empty burned-out husk of a world with daddy? Sounds like a real shindig.”
    “I … eh ...”
    “Do you like girls? Do you plan to keep a few around?”
    “I guess. I mean I hadn’t really thought about it.”
    “And now Rose is dead. Rose Mary Lebouf, your own mother. For shame. She would be sad to see her only son saying such things.” Lorna may be more scared than she has ever been in her life, but she still knows how to play the disapproving mother card.
    “You cannot understand.”
    “Oh I understand all right,” she says and knees him between the legs as hard as she can. She may be old as dirt, but she knows this move just as she knows how to breathe.
    The man’s eyes widen, and he grabs his balls while staggering back. As he stumbles, she pulls the knitting needle out of the yarn. When the man looks up again, his mouth is a snarl that emits a string of profanities so vulgar that their viciousness sears the room. His eyes are great gaping holes that transfix her and make her want to scream. They are livid, beyond hate.
    Lorna swings the needle right into one of those wicked black holes. The needle thrusts through something hard before sinking into something soft. His body reverses the process in a grotesque parody. First it softens like the sly snake he was, then hardens like the corpse he is fast becoming. His hand claws at the needle, but Lorna has shoved it in so deep that he can barely get a hold on the slick piece of metal that is covered in white ooze and dark blood.
    He tries to curse, but all that comes out is a hiss. Then he falls forward, and the impact shoves the needle all the way into his head until it clunks against the back of his skull. The smell of ammonia fills the room as the dead man pisses himself. The most malodorous shit Lorna has smelled in her long life floods the room. Makes her eyes water. The corpse shrivels a bit, and his hand, outstretched as if in supplication, shrinks over the bone, leaving a gray oily material behind. Lorna has an urge to touch it, but she fears the stuff will burn her.
    She has just turned to leave the room when the body bursts into flame. Then it explodes, tossing her through the doorway. She smacks into the wall across the hall like a doll tossed by a child, then falls to the floor in a heap. One arm lies at a weird angle so she can clearly see her palm. It isn’t long before the pain of her broken arm, cracked clavicle and shattered hip rise to the surface of her mind. She takes a breath to scream, but her lungs feel like they are filled with glass. Her legs are numb, and when she tells her head to move it just lies there the wrong way so she can focus on a flea that