Here at Graphic Content we cover a lot of different areas of the genre, whether it be comics, art, novels, ect…And sometimes we get to bring you some really fun, interesting, and just plain awesome exclusive content. Most of the time that is a contest, or an interview, but today we have something you’ll really be able to sink your teeth into. Up and coming horror author Ian Messenger has provided Bloody-Disgusting with one of his original short stories titled, “ANIMAL CONTROL”, exclusively for our readers! If you are a fan of “CREEPSHOW” or “TALES FROM THE CRYPT” you’ll definitely want to check out Ian Messenger’s style of writing short horror fiction. Inside you can read the entire short story and judge for yourself. Read on for the skinny.

ANIMAL CONTROL

WRITTEN BY: Ian Messenger

It’s dusk, the sky is fading from a brilliant blue to a dark, cold, dead gray. Ben Thomas stands alone in front of an old beat up trailer. He looks like he has seen better days; he’s a dirty disheveled mess today. That’s to be expected though when you’ve killed a man.
Ben doesn’t like to think of it like that though, no. He didn’t kill the hobo, it killed the hobo, that thing that took up residence in this old tin box of a house Ben’s been trying to fix-up and sell.

It all started a few days ago when he came to the house to clean it out after the former renters had moved out; well, abandoned would be a better word. The former residence took most of their stuff, the important stuff and hit the old dusty trail. No letters or phone calls to let Ben know, no, he came to collect rent which is now about three weeks over due and found the abandonment.

It was a mess when he went inside and it smelled real funny, like wet carpet and rotten eggs. Ben had to cover his nose and mouth when he stepped in the wreck of a house, when the initial gust of stench hit him, the Italian meatball sub he consumed earlier briefly considered coming back up.

The smell wasn’t the worst of his problems and he would soon find that out.

As he made his rounds through the house it started to become more and more apparent that he wasn’t alone. With bated breath he searches through the front room, living room, and front bedroom. Nothing, not even a mouse reared its ugly head.

Paranoid, this house has always made him paranoid. When he first sold this house back some ten years ago, it was so exciting; it was his first sale in what turned into quite the lucrative career move. He’s always been creeped out by this place, maybe someone died in here, at least that’s what he thinks.

His foot now falls slowly to the linoleum floor, he’s sneaking, the whole house hasn’t been checked and he figures he better be safe rather than sorry. Not four paces into the kitchen and that’s when Ben hears it.
Something else, not a mouse or a loose dog, but something else was in the back of the house. Ben was stricken with fear at this point, a sweat is starting to form on his brow, the noise is heavy and slow.

Ben hurries back outside, catching a cool gust of clean smelling air as he hurriedly exits the house. He jumps the three steps and slams down into the gravel driveway, his legs splay but he catches himself before taking a full on header into the ground. He rushes to his car, popping the trunk and grabbing a baseball bat which he lovingly refers to as “the peacemaker”.

Walking back to the front of the car, he sits on the hood pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, Marlboro reds; he’s always felt like a real cowboy when he smoked these.

Some people drink for courage, Ben smokes. Maybe it’s also to calm his nerves a bit. The cigarette after one initial puff just dangles from between his dry lips until it begins to burn the filter. The cigarette drops out of his mouth and he promptly crushes it under the heel of his foot, with the opposite foot he steps forward and begins to walk back into the house.

Raising the peacemaker up like a samurai’s trusty sword the frightened man makes his way back through the kitchen and into the short, narrow, dark hall.

You know it would’ve been nice if the former residence hadn’t taken all the light bulbs with them when they decided to pick up shop and get out of town, mainly for moments just like this.

Ben briefly thinks about how rude people can be as he inches his way deeper into the darkness.

The smell is getting worse the further he gets down the hall.
It begins to move, whatever it is, it begins to move in the back bedroom. By the bathroom now, Ben pushes the baseball bat forward into the darkness.

“Anyone in here?”

His question into the dark bathroom is met with silence.

A noise again from the bedroom, it’s big, big enough to be a man. It’s weird, he can just tell though. It’s a vagrant, a hobo, some guy who smells like wet carpet and rotten eggs.

Why was Ben so scared? He’s not in bad shape; he has a gym membership and works all of his glamour muscles at least four times a week. Some poor old bum isn’t going to cause him any trouble. Just storm in there, start yelling and let the old fuck know whose boss!

That’s the plan.

He enters the room a little more sure of himself, and then he turns on the hard-ass persona cranking the dial all the way to eleven.

“Are you deaf? I asked who the fuck was in here!”

A man clears his throat in the darkness.

“You think you’re being wise old man?”

Ben pushes his baseball forward into the darkness. “This is what I like to call the peacemaker! I don’t have a problem using it on you!” His idle threat is met with no response in the pitch black room. Not knowing what to do, Ben leans forward and squints letting his eyes adjust to the dark.

There’s a shape in the back corner, a big shape.

Ben lifts the bat back up into the defensive position, he adjusts his grip on the bat, his grip is now what people would describe as a “white-knuckle grip”. The wood is screaming in his grip.

If he has to swing this baby, the recipient of the swing won’t be getting back up once their body slumps to the floor.

Whining now, a whisper of a whine pierces the air. Ben although trying to come off as a tough guy gives a small jump at the whine, men don’t make noises like that.

It’s a dog then, a huge dog but still a dog!

The worry begins to dissipate as Ben steps forward into the hollow blackness that fills the room.

Who is he kidding? He’s still very much afraid, but he can’t but this scared over a dog, the only option is to man up and get the damn stinky thing out of his property.

As Ben moves forward his motions are suddenly halted by a growl, a big mean growl.

This is the kind of growl which makes you piss your pants when you hear it alone in the dark, which is what he promptly does. A little trickle of piss now runs down his leg.

How embarrassing and uncomfortable, but who will know? No one, once he’s done here he’s coming home to take a shower, he’ll come back tomorrow morning…with light bulbs.

“Heeeere boy…” Ben is trying to calm the dog down. “It’s ooookay boy, it’s ooookay…”

It’s not okay, what he thought was just a big dog now begins to move. It stands up on its hind legs and while yes, it’s shorter then Ben it’s width is massive compared to Ben’s.

Panicking, he stumbles backwards slightly into the hallway. “Stay back! Stay away from me, ya hear?!”

He doesn’t get a good look at the beast as it is quickly approaching him. All he notices is the beast’s upper body, furry, with huge sharp teeth and bright yellow eyes.

A noise, not a scream or holler, growl or bark, begins to radiate from the beast mouth. It’s an awful noise, horrible, almost dizzying it’s so loud and…and…high pitched.

Ben quickly hoists the bat up in the cramped space and swings so hard and violent that he could crush a man’s skull and snap his neck from the impact that is if it connected of course.

The fur-covered juggernaut clasps his claws around the bat, halting its speeding progress to his thick, broad skull. Ben screams a high pitched no.

It makes eye contact with Ben, slowly turning its head to the side as some sort if bizarre deep growl pours from its throat.

It snaps the bat promptly as if it were a twig under a full grown man’s foot.

Ben’s retreat is rushed and sloppy as he begins to slams and careen from wall to wall as be backs out of the hallway.

His furry foe begins to pursue him down the hallway; Ben though is just slightly quicker as he got a head start. Quickly he escapes what could have been his tin tomb; he spins around slamming the glass door behind him shut.

He stumbles backwards down the steps.

The sight behind the glass door is a grim one. Ben stands in the bone chillingly cold night air and stares blankly and breathlessly at a real-life monster.

Its shoulders are pulled up tight, close to the back of its head. Its arms hang heavy from the shoulder sockets and its massive chest pumps quickly and hard as it catches its breath from the chase.

Ben begins to approach the glass door slowly, maybe out of curiosity, maybe because the fear has destroyed his mind.

Now they stand face to face with a thin piece of glass acting as the only guard between them.

The monsters breath is causing the glass to fog in the cold night air.
Ben can’t break the stare that the two are sharing.

Only three inches between him and a gruesome, bloody, painful death…
The creature slams its paws against the window, the gunshot like noise it met with a womanly shriek of fear from Ben.

He begins to run back to his car, opening the door with such violent force the hinges whine as if they are going to snap.

Ben leaps into his car slams his door closed and peels out of the driveway bringing up quite the cloud of dust in the process.

He looks back at the beast, but it’s gone, not a trick from the cloud of dust. It must have retreated back into its lair. The master bedroom.

__

Ben sits alone in his house now, sweaty, but no worse for the wear, a cup of coffee is clenched in his scared hands.

He just stares into the swirling blackness of the beverage.
It reminds him of the darkness in that room, that room which his fear has now taken residence in.

He shakes it off; he’s got to get the house back. It’s his, he bought it and he rents it out. He just needs a plan…

__

Ben pulls up to a group of men, some young, some old; all look a bit rough though.

He gets out of his car and approaches the gang, he’s obviously not thinking straight.

It’s a dusty, dingy back alley. It’s the kind of place that people would associate with murders, kidnappings, and rape.
Ben doesn’t want to get raped.

Hands in his jacket pocket, he approaches the group of ruffians, not only does he approach them, he approaches the biggest one outta the lot of ‘em.

A big burly young man, longer hair and facial hair, he really is what your typical roughneck would look like.
Broad shoulders and big hands.

Maybe this won’t go as Ben plans, but he needs the monster out of there.
After some light hazing from the small group of marauders he quickly gets to the point.One hundred dollars to chase a vagrant out of some property he owns. The large man doesn’t accept the offer.

“Where’s your crack pipe at, man? Hundred bucks? Bums carry knives and shit…”

Two-fifty.

“Nah, ain’t worth it brother!”

Four-fifty.

“Now you’re speaking my language, when you want it done?”

Now.

The two men get into the automobile, the big man leaves his group with what would be his last words, too bad it wasn’t some brilliant Mark Twain shit.

“Try not to miss me laaaaaaadies!”

__

The two men pull-up to the monster’s lair, it’s colder now as the night is growing older.

Ben is scared and nervous. His idea will work though, it has to.

A large box now sits in front of the door.

“What’s that?”

It’s a box he tells the man, a box to carry stuff out in once the hobo is gone.

They carry the box into the house together.

Ben closes the door behind him and locks it and begins to mutter the Lord’s Prayer.

“Must be some big fuckin’ bum to have you shittin’ bricks like this bro!”
The big man pops his knuckles and neck; it’s a noise that Ben needs to become used to rather quickly.

Ben points down the hall, his hair matted to the side now from all the sweat.

“Back there.”

The big man nods and starts to make his way alone down the hall.
He is approaching the door, he leans on the frame when he gets there, the frame whines under his weight.

“You fuckin’ here?” His question is met with silence.

The big man steps deeper into the room when he suddenly hears a loud, quick scrapping sound.

Something is rushing up behind him across the linoleum floor.

He spins around only to be confronted by Ben and his big box. The narrow hallway leaves no room for exit, the big man is locked behind the box.

“What the fuck man?”

The big man grabs the side of the box closest to him and begins to push back. “Get the fuck outta here string bean!”

Ben shakes his head.

“He’s hungry you stupid motherfucker! He’s gotta eat! It’s the only way he’ll leave…”

The big man stops pushing.

“What the fuck have you been smoking man?”

The big man steps over the edge of the box, one leg at a time, once in the box he send a big haymaker into Ben’s face, sending him crashing to the ground.

“You fuckin’ faggot! You were gonna try to rape me or some shit?”
Ben’s nose is gushing a violent stream of crimson red as he lies, writhing on the ground.

The big man spits on Ben.

“Fuckin’ fruitcakes are all the same!” That awful high pitched howl splits the air immediately after the big man finishes his sentence. He turns around quickly, horrified…

The big man stares, his face a horror filled caricature, and he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

His fur covered ending lets out another mind numbing howl and leaps into the big wooden box with the man.

“What the fuck are…”

The monster howls, something which could be mistaken for the word “you”, if it came out of the mouth of your worst nightmare.

A big violent fist comes smashing forth from the big man, much to his displeasure and dismay his meaty ham hawk is caught in his murderer’s clawed hand.

He begins to shriek an all too familiar screech to this beast, it’s the kind of shriek that a man lets out when he has lost all hope, it becomes childish, or maybe it’s feminine. All testosterone drains from the voice, it’s just a high pitched shriek.

The creature proceeds with particular ease to rip the man’s arm off, suddenly, he’s a man again. A big yell bubbles up from his belly and burst out of his mouth.

It yells back, much louder, longer, and much more frightening.

What’s Ben been doing this entire time? Staring, not moving, just staring out of pure and utter fright. He can’t move to stop it, he needs this to happen, needs this so he can get the monster out of his house!
The stump that was the man’s arm is unleashing an unstopping torrent of blood, it’s pooling in the box.

Ben thinks that it’s quite possible for the box to literally become a bloodbath if this crimson stream continues. He smirks and lets out a small chuckle, which seems to be a mistake.

The monster takes the big man’s head in its hand and slams it into the wall, quickly making eye contact with Ben, the source of the chuckle.

Another cry comes from the beast; it goes to move forward out of the box and onto Ben.

The big man begins to fight back, he must be delusional. His weak attempts to retaliate on his soon-to-be killer fail almost as soon as they begin. Quickly he is swung around and pinned to the wall, him and his killer face to face, his last words? Not brilliant Mark Twain shit.

“Fuck you, you pig fuckin’ piece uh-shit!”

Like a bear trap, his jaw slam onto the big man’s face, he severs flesh from bone with the first bite.

Ben watches in horror, nothing he can do, nothing he wants to do. It needs to feed, so he can trap it…

The big man collapses, maybe it’s shock, maybe he’s dead the beast doesn’t care. It slumps with his body and begins to feed.

As it feeds, Ben rockets up quickly grabbing the boxes lid and slams it on, closing the horrors inside.

No reaction, no struggle, it doesn’t notice.

Ben nails the box shut, hammer and nails were waiting on the breakfast bar not too far away.

The last nail sinks in and he only has a brief moment to wipe the sweat from his brow before it realizes what has been done.

The box bounces and thrashes against the narrow walls of the hallway, the cargo inside is angry and very powerful.

Ben begins to drag the box out of the hallway, it leaves behind bloody streaks.

__

It’s dark and empty in the back lot of the Varela Brother’s moving company and it’s the perfect place to drop off an unclaimed box.

Ben with one final yank pulls the huge box out of the back of his truck.

It slams to the ground and the vicious little beast inside begins to thrash, scream, and howl. He’s obviously not very pleased, no worries though, he’s no longer Ben’s concern.

With a swift kick to the box, Ben leaves the beast with a message…

“Helluva day you caused me, whatever the fuck you are…”

He kneels down and puts a hand on the box.

“You aren’t my issue anymore though…”

With that he walks off to his truck, climbs in and waits, he watches in his rear-view mirror, he’s waiting for the thing to burst out of the box and come careening through his back window, it doesn’t though.

Ben pulls away slowly leaving someone else to take care of his monster.