Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs - Creeping Silence (Promo Single)

 

 

(Released as a promotional single on 11/27/92 through Exploitation Records)

 

 

 

 

 

Track 1. Creeping Silence

(From a groundbreaking new Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs record coming soon! Mixed by Rob Tannahill, Mastered by MJS)

 

 

The words formed somewhere near the end of his small intestine, where they bubbled up through his guts until her name fell from his mouth.

“Emily Stone.”

THUNK

SCREEEEECH

He would’ve never pulled over if the stars hadn’t aligned perfectly that crisp, winter evening. If he hadn’t been on a dead, backroad highway somewhere between Barrenview and the main freeway, with no cars in sight? Not a chance. He never would have slammed on his brakes for some shit raccoon too stupid not to run when it saw headlights, not if the last time had gone better. He never would have stopped if not for the fact that the very second before he hit the poor animal, he just remembered her name.

“Emily Stone,” he said again, now parked just feet ahead of the small yet apocalyptic collision. His voice was alien. Far away. A heavy weight sat in his throat as his eyes stung at their corners.

He shook the feeling off while he stepped out onto the shoulder. The ding of the interior alarm screamed at him in intervals to let him know he still had his keys in the ignition.

DING DING DING

The protective cone of pale-yellow light spilling out of his open car door barely penetrated the pitch dark. If not for the faint moon and the car’s red taillights, the shadows of the trees looming over either side of the road would have rendered him blind the second he stepped out of the vehicle.

His shoes crunched gravel as he approached the creature he’d broken. The weight in his throat spread up into his cheeks, just below his eyes, where his lower lids drooped. The poor thing lay just feet ahead, a shadow on the pavement bathed in brake lights. As he got closer, the animal’s rasping breaths reminded him of sheets of notebook paper tearing in half.

RISSSP

The silhouette moved, limbs twitching, as the cricket song swelled around him, thrumming everywhere.

A flash of her face, framed in blue hair.

He stepped around to the other side of the raccoon so his shadow wouldn’t block his view. He didn’t really know why he pulled over. What did he think he was going to do with the injured animal in the middle of the night out on this nowhere highway? Take the thing in his car to an all-night vet somewhere? Magically lay holistic hands on it, like Jesus? The most he could probably do for the thing would be to end its agony by stomping its brains in.

Her eyes, shining at him.

The sting in his own eyes returned. The orchestra of insect life rose to near fever pitch.

Why should he care if this creature suffered or not? Why did he suddenly remember her name? Why was he not already back in his car and getting the fuck out of here? Why did he feel that this was the raccoon’s neighborhood? That he and his metal death machine had no right to be here? Why did he feel it was an absolute travesty that the innocent animal had met such a gruesome end simply because humans felt like they needed to get places very quickly? Why were the goddamned crickets so fucking LOUD?

His eyes finally adjusted to the light. The raccoon was moving. That much he had already noticed. It wasn’t just the limbs twitching, though. There was something else. Something more subtle than that.

The soft warmth of Emily’s lips as he kissed her.

In that moment, with one hand knuckle-deep in her well-opened throat and the other gripped tightly in her hair, as he savored the wet copper taste of the last hot breath she’d ever exhale, there had been a sliver of something. Something that had tainted the onset of his high.

What?

RASSSP

He bent at the waist to look closer at the raccoon. The fur moved in waves, flesh rippling beneath its pelt. Pulsing. Bubbling.

The sight of her, the first time he ever saw her, leaning against a brick wall, asking to bum a smoke. A siren bathed in streetlight.

His vision shook as the weight in his eyes throbbed, distorting his view of the roadkill.

“NO!”

The cricket song went silent at his cry.

An owl called in the distance.

The unceasing

DING DING DING

of the car’s open-door alarm.

“No.”

The raccoon’s body was rocking side-to-side now, not from the action of its limbs, but from the pressure of whatever was pushing out from inside the thing.

He erased the image of her face in the moonlight by the water. Pushed it down.

The animal’s tearing breaths turned to a wet gargle.

He pushed that sliver of feeling down, the one that had mocked him from the shadows of their bloody kiss.

The crickets struck up the band once more, a relentless

BUZZZ

Why did he feel this way about hitting a stupid raccoon?

He pushed away the image of a helpless dog lying on a kitchen floor.

DING DING DING

What was this sting in his eyes?

At his feet, the raccoon vibrated as if it were a broken animatronic with too much voltage running through it.

He pushed away the image of an old woman, wrapped in plastic, slumped against the wall of a closet.

Was the animal screaming?

DING DING DING

Why was everything so loud?

He pushed the feeling away. He packed it up in black garbage bags to throw in the trash.

GLAHHHRRRRRP

He screamed, jumping back. Something…no, many things had ripped through from the animal’s insides, pouring forth in a streaming herd. His treacherous legs, now heavy bags of wet sand, thwarted his attempts to escape.

He knew what they were before his conscious mind could fully grasp what his eyes were seeing. The blood slugs were all fat with stuff from inside the raccoon. The one nearest him popped, misting the air in a haze of fluid that was white in the red glow of the taillights.

BUZZZZZZ

What was left of the bloody corpse still twitched as the slugs continued to emerge. The dead animal, a marionette no longer being controlled by anything rational or right. An empty, used-up vessel.

The slugs hunted him the last time he killed, ruthless until they could feed. Emily had been lost to the lake. Then he had burned the old homeless woman. The slugs had been denied their fare. No blood. They had been merciless until he gave them what they wanted from his own veins.

Even still they crawled to him. Hungry little shadows in the moonlight.

Why now? Why here?

Emily’s face. Beaming. Accepting. Shining brightly.

DING DING DING

The weight under his eyes became unbearable, as if his head were going to split in two. Whatever was happening, he couldn’t let it take him.

The slugs were almost to his feet, only inches away.

Why had he killed Emily? Why had he done any of it?

His lower eyelids overflowed, tears pouring forth as silent springs.

The core of his being shook so violently that he could no longer tell where he ended and the rest of the world began.

BUZZZZZZZZZ

Fat droplets rolled down his cheeks, where they decided to take a dive at his jaw, wetly plopping against the blacktop. The slug nearest the puddle reared away from it, changing course so that it could still pursue him with its relentless plodding intensity.

Sobbing as if someone had turned the faucet handles in the corners of his eyes from “Trickle” to “Wide-Open Flood,” he doubled over. His internal balancing system fried, he went to one knee, letting out a wail that earned him another mocking call from the owl.

Tears washed the pavement.

DING DING DING

It was the inhuman screech that brought him back to his body. An approaching slug caught a shower from under his chin. He jumped away once again, turning his eyes to the sound. The slug fishtailed around on the road as steam rose from its bubbling flesh. The other slugs turned away, driven back by the injured slug’s cry, all unwilling to navigate the tears.

An intense nausea broiled in Mike’s guts. The last high hadn’t been good enough. He remembered too much. The slugs were not satisfied. He would have to kill again. Soon.

He wiped the tears away, shoving them in a black garbage bag, as he sprinted to his back to his car.

DING DING—  

CLUNK

Slamming the door finally killed that fucking alarm. Not a second after his ass hit the seat, he threw the little red sedan in “Drive” and floored the accelerator. Tires squealed, leaving a black trail down the empty road. He had known he shouldn’t come all the way out to Bumfuck Nowhere for the stupid company outing. Now he was paying for it. 

His whole high was completely ruined. How was he going to keep it together? He prayed for beer, liquor, weed, dextromethorphan, benzodiazepine, ANYTHING. He prayed for an open shop: a gas station, a liquor store, or a 24-hour drugstore where he could pick up a box of Benadryl and a box of Dramamine. Hell, even a guitar would do. Just something to hold back this feeling until he could kill again.

(Pre-order your paperback copy of the upcoming The Leap of Faith, book #4 in Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs series, here at Exploitation Media Direct.

Pre-order your Kindle copy at Amazon.)

 

 

 

 

 

Track 2. Animal Instinct

 (From A Night on the Town, released 10/5/92 by Exploitation Records. Mixed and Mastered by MJS)

 

 

 

 

When they arrived at the lakeside, Mike wasn’t really surprised. He had picked up on the general destination as they had meandered here. This moment, standing at this railing and looking over the Great Lake with Emily, had been inevitable: the real reason he had gotten the impulse to buy that concert ticket four days ago.

“I thought I was walking you home,” Mike teased, “You a mermaid or something? Do you live in the lake?”

“Two things, Frank,” she said, mock sternly, “One, slow yourself a little. I wasn’t going to invite you over or anything, not yet anyway.”

“And two?” Mike asked, lighting up another cigarette.

“We still have more booze left,” Emily said, shaking the shopping bag hanging from her arm, the plastic bottles plonking off each other, “I figured we could enjoy the view.”

Mike reached into the bag for another shot while she reached for the cig in his hand. He normally wouldn’t want to share but didn’t mind with her, and took her forward demeanor as a sign of affection. They took their time taking shots because the conversation was good. She liked The Smiths, whereas he thought The Cure was better, but they agreed that Pixies were cooler than them both.

Mike hadn’t felt this easy and comfortable with a woman since Minnesota, after he had killed old Ruth Goldberg, and was starting to wonder what it would feel like to have his hands in Emily’s blue mane. The way she kept smiling at him and playing with her hair made him think that she was probably feeling the same. While they were leaning on the railing overlooking the lake, she rested her arm on his, and he felt his nether regions come to life like they’d been struck with a high-voltage wire.

He was just trying to keep cool when a group of ducks waddled up from the park nearby. Mike had heard the soft patter of their webbed feet on the sidewalk behind them and so turned around.

“Look, Emily,” he said while gently nudging her side.

Mike watched her face light up as she turned around to witness the gaggle of their fowl friends, practically squealing when it dawned on her.

A duck came right up to Mike and began to peck at his left khaki leg. The other ducks quacked.

“They’re laughing,” Emily giggled.

“No, they’re not,” he said as he leaned over and tried to swat at the attacking bird, who nimbly ducked and hopped away. Mike not only caught nothing but air with his strike but stumbled forward and nearly went ass over tits, barely catching himself at the last second.

The ducks all quacked again, this time much louder.

“They are definitely laughing,” Emily could barely get the words in between her own chuckles.

Mike steadied himself on the guardrail and said, “They’re just ducks. They are not that smart.”

Her demeanor straightened up, “They’re smarter than us.”

Now Mike was the one laughing; she was serious. Mike felt her unmoving eyes on him as he let himself work out his giggles. Meanwhile the attacking avian fiend had thrown Mike one last shot on the shin before the flock waddled off down the way.

Emily held her gaze firm. Mike thought it was sexy, and it cut the giggles short in his throat.

“Ok,” his tone now serious, “How are the ducks smarter than us?”

She smiled a bit, her features softening immediately, “Well, a duck has no reason to second-guess itself, and it doesn’t. That duck wanted to come up and give you a peck on the leg, knowing he could get away with it and his fellow ducks would have a laugh, so that is what the duck did. He knew what he wanted, and he followed his instincts to get it.”

“Who knows why the duck did that?” Mike cut in, “The duck could have been confused, or maybe it thought we had food, so it couldn’t control itself. Ducks aren’t some kind of cosmic geniuses because they do dumb random shit. If we had bread to throw down, those ducks would have flocked to it, absolutely under our spell.”

Emily blew an especially large plume of smoke and said, “And why shouldn’t the duck flock to the bread? If someone was throwing $100 bills on the sidewalk, are you saying that you wouldn’t make a grab for as many as you could get your hands on? I know I would.”

Mike snatched the cigarette from Emily’s hand (he noted both how soft and warm her hand was), and she grinned before she continued, “The duck should flock to the bread, because the bread is good. The only reason you wouldn’t grab the $100 bills is because of guilt, fear, or shame. If you thought you could get some without getting hurt, why wouldn’t you?”

So far, Mike hadn’t seriously thought of murdering Emily, no more than he thought of murdering every single person he saw every minute of the fucking day, but as she talked, he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do more: kiss her, or kill her.

“The duck has no self-control,” Mike asserted, trying to steer the conversation, “At least we have mastery over ourselves. We have self-control.”

“Why would you want yourself to be under control?” she asked, “Why would you want that when you could free yourself?”

At that moment, Mike thought he might marry that woman. She started to lean in. Mike was dumb sometimes, but he recognized this signal, and he knew he shouldn’t waste the opportunity. He leaned in and started to reach for her face.

(Order your paperback copy of A Night on the Town, book #3 in the Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs series, here at Exploitation Media Direct.

Order your Kindle copy at Amazon.)