The Horror Library - The Best in Horror Fiction

99 Ways I'd Hate To Die
By R.J. Cavender

"The avenues to death are numerous and strange."
Edgar Allan Poe - "The Angel of the Odd"

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Inexplicably, in this dream, even my narrative inner voice is spoken in the gravely junky drawl of one William S. Burroughs. Well before my words form outloud, I know to expect this voice to hammer forth from my sputtering mouth with a torrent of expletives and insults.

"What in holy hell have we here, Boy Wonder?"

But, that wasn't me.

It's the voice of my old friend Mickey Scholl. He's joined me here in this dream. Or rather I've joined him, as this one takes place in his family residence circa 1980-something back in lovely Grand Blanc, Michigan.

The house is as I remember it in it's entirety. The dark wood panelling is hideous. The Formica countertops are an offensive vintage-era orange. The carpeting, shag.

The entire wall in front of Mickey is covered in anuses. Ones of all shapes, sizes, and variations. This is a new addition, as it was never there in any other capacity, save this dream. Mickey is wide-eyed and drug-crazed, poking at the tender flesh of the wall before him with a long brittle twig.

Gory details are likely to be spared in this retelling, as in dreams details are fuzzy at best and horrid at worst. Just for the sake of posterity, pomposity, and practicality, just a straight retelling of events occurred shall be registered for this documentation. On with tonight's entertainment.

He's got the drug platter laid out. It's the silver tray from his mother's vanity set, the one he'd always bring out when his parents went out of town. Upon it, a bountiful offering of pills, powders, and herbs for our weekend consumption. Although, in this dream we are not teenagers at all, but merely children. He looks to be about ten. I feel as though I may be the exact same age.

And in this dream, we're playing an old game that the Mick-man and I used to play. It's called "99 Ways I'd Hate To Die". But, instead of just speaking the scenario's, we're acting them out. I join this dream in progress.

"Number Sixty-Three! The Babsy Drippy Splits!" Child-Mickey belts out from across the room, his hands on his hips. "One foot in a meat grinder, one foot on a power sander. A family of ferrets gnawing on your balls. Suspended by your arms from the ceiling, a noose pulled tight around your neck. Covered in red ants and honey, all the while being forced to listen to Barbara Streisand's Greatest Hits!"

Then in unison we both exclaim, "Now there's a way I'd HATE to die!" And that was it. With a sly and crooked grin, and a wiggle of his fingers he points them directly at me like a wizard conjuring a spell. I feel a surge of energy.

Boom! I'm in the very scene he'd just described.

I try to free my hands, but they were tied above me to a rope that reaches up impossibly far into a darkness where a ceiling should be. A searing pain rips through both feet, as simultaneously they are each being shred in their respective aforementioned fashion.

An unseen family of ferrets rage a war on my testicles, beneath the stretchy fabric of my Captain Caveman Underoos. "Memories" oozes from the reel-to-reel at full blast.

"Way Number Twelve!" I shriek, unable to take the torturous pain of it all combined. "Squirt, Puff, Rip!" And with these words, I am freed from my ropes. The grinders both disappear. The ferrets too, although blood still drips down my pale thighs from beneath my soaked undergarments.

But, with those invoking words I've brought upon Mickey one of the most hideous deaths know to mankind. Or, at least one the worst deaths a child's mind could evoke.

"You're soaked in a hot tub for 24 hours straight until your skin is nice and puffy." With these words, Mickey's body turns a ghastly white and wetly bloats to three times it's normal size.

"Then you're slowly shot with a squirt-gun full of hydrochloric acid all over your body, eyelids first, so you're forced to see yourself being dissolved slowly." I say. Mickey's head is suddenly locked tightly into a vice in front of me, face up. A smoking squirt gun is in my right hand. His face sizzles.

"Then you're sanded down by hand with course grain sandpaper. Then bathed in lemon juice. All the while, being given a gasoline enema, which of course, is ignited for a pyrotechnical finale!"

I smile, satisfied, as Mickey writhes in pain. Large lemons levitate in the space just above him, they wring themselves out, splashing his raw skin with their fresh citric juices.

His skin is a wrinkled and mushy mass of dissolving dough, quite a few shades lighter than the average fish's underbelly. Flames dance around his smoldering posterior.

"So, what'cha gonna do now, tough guy?" I ask the writhing mass once known as Mickey. The sizzling hole that still looks vaguely mouth-like replies in rapid fire.

"Gonna slap you with a seasoned number thirty seven! Honeydipper Hangman! You're drowning in the bottom of an outhouse, but just in time a line is thrown down to you and you're saved. But, it's barbed wire, and you are forced to swallow the entire line until it comes out your butt."

My body jerks like a puppet, as the derived action plays on around me. My teeth grind the metallic barbs, feeling each sharp protrusion on the way down. I swallow not of my own will, and feel each inch of cold sharp wire enter my stomach.

"From that point, it's looped over and you're transported via helicopter to a huge brick wall. Then, you're smashed repeatedly into the wall until you're split in half from the force of impact and the barbed wire slicing through your guts."

The entire scene plays itself out within the confines of the Scholl family television room. My body becomes miniature and slaps wetly against the brickwork of the family fireplace on the first pass. The tiny helicopter circles the perimeter of the room a second time, my body reeling and spinning as I dangle beneath it.

I'm split in half on second impact, either side of me pounded flat and stuck against the rough reddened bricks. My mouth falls from my face, and hits the ashy opening to the fireplace with a sickly wet sound. It bounces, opens, and speaks. And as it does, I'm back in once piece again.

"Number twenty four! What's on Your Mind? I drill a hole in your skull, and every five minutes I shove something new through the hole. If you can't guess what I shoved into your head, I put even more stuff in there. We'll start easy, then it'll get much worse."

With a drill in one hand and a crawling mass of ants in the other hand, I cackle like a mad scientist.

But, then suddenly, everything is gone. There is no movement at all. I am alone in the Scholl residence, circa 1980-something as the lights begin to dim. It's like I'm on the set of a movie, and the cast has struck for lunch. Everything suddenly takes on a very artificial feel to it. I feel I shouldn't be here anymore. I open the front door and walk outside.

And as I walk out the door, I seem to be walking in through a door somewhere else. I expect an outside, but I'm indoors again.

I'm at home. My childhood home back on Norton Street, and it's Christmas morning. My entire family is frozen in place, as if they have been paused in time. Huge Christmas morning smiles are plastered on everyone's cheery faces. My brother and I lay under the tree eating candy canes. The lighting is off, artificial and a bit too bright.

Then everything unfreezes. Each person resumes their Christmas morning moment. And here's where something curious and frightening happens. They all see me. They see me as I am today, not as I was then, or even as I was earlier in this nightscape. But, see in an instant the appearance of a confused grown man, naked and trembling in the middle of their Christmas morning.

My mother screams. Dad stomps off into the back room to get his gun. I run for the front door, and find again it leads to anywhere but where I expect. This time I'm standing outside, amidst a huge crowd of people; people as far as the eye can see. They're all looking forward expectantly until the very moment I appear. Then, slowly, then all turn their eyes on me. And, they all look like they could kill me. I can hear their thoughts, and that's exactly what they want to do.

I turn back to find the door I came through is gone. All I have behind me is a cliff. I'm only inches away from a sheer drop off. I hear the crowd behind me breathing in rhythm. I don't want to turn around, but I do.

And as I do, they all smile at once. Then they scream. Long and shrill, a thousand voices all shrieking at once like a chorus of demons straight from hell. Without touching me at all, I am thrown over the cliff. I was startled into jumping, I think. I'm thinking this as I hit the bottom.

And then there's someone there, someone hovering over me.

"Mr. Harris, it's time now." I hear it say to me. It's a kind voice, one I almost remember. And someone takes my arm. Then I'm taken by car somewhere far out in the middle of nowhere. We exit the vehicle in the dark, and I'm lead inside a building.

The dream gets fuzzy at this point. But, I'm taken through corridor after corridor. They all look the same, and behind the doors I hear crying more than anything.

I reach a door, it's the last door in this hallway. A hand moves in front of me, and unlocks it. Mickey sits on the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. He looks just as he did fifty some-odd years ago.

"Mick-man, how goes it?" But, he says nothing. He just looks down at the floor and shakes his head. After a moment, his eyes meet mine.

"Number ninety three. Creeping Death. Spending a long, long time in a nursing home. No one to visit you. No one alive who cares. Sick, old, and counting the days until you die. Alone and without hope"

And I realize, as I hear the door shut behind me, that it's my voice that is speaking. Or at least I've convinced myself of that, all within a nanosecond.

"Now there's a way I'd HATE to die."

I am alone again. I speak to an empty room. I hear the door lock behind me. The lights go out. Sometimes this dream is easier to wake from than others.

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