COUGHING DOG

Kristin had always been the “black sheep” of her family. She came from a rural and very conservative Middle Georgia clan, and had fought constantly with her parents since she was a child. Kristin wanted no part of the settled and routine life her parents had lead – she was an impulsive free-spirit who would travel to the far corners of the earth at a moment’s notice, sometimes not even knowing where she was headed, or why.

So it came as no surprise when, a few weeks shy of her 30th birthday, Kristin announced that she was leaving her high-paying job at a major corporation to fulfill her life’s dream – to become a professional sculptor. She sold her expensive suburban apartment and moved into an abandoned mill in one of the rougher areas of Atlanta. She planned on converting part of the space into a full-time studio and living area.

Her parents were horrified, especially when they learned that her studio was just a few miles down the road from the county jail. And Kristin didn’t see the need to rig her studio with an expensive alarm system, for her neighbors seemed nice enough. But like every other discussion Kristin had with her father, his words of warning went in one ear and out the other.

So on her 30th birthday, her father took matters into his own hands and bought Kristin a guard dog – a Doberman named Bishop from the local humane society. The dog had been abused by his former owners, and had become mean and distrustful of humans. But Kristin always had a strong love for animals, and she took the poor dog into her care. In a matter of weeks, Bishop became very attached to Kristin, and extremely protective whenever anyone else would approach her.

One morning, Kristin came home from a trip to the hardware store to find Bishop lying in the middle of the floor, coughing and wheezing uncontrollably. She immediately rushed him to the local veterinarian, who performed a series of tests. After a while, the vet was satisfied that Bishop wasn’t dangerously sick, but he couldn’t figure out why the dog was still coughing.

“Don’t worry,” he told Kristin in his calm and soothing voice, “Bishop looks perfectly healthy. But I’d like to run some additional tests on him this afternoon. Why don’t you go home and I’ll call you when we know something. There’s no sense in sitting in the waiting room all day.”

So Kristin got back in her car, made a trip to the health food store, then returned home. As she walked through the door, she could hear the phone ringing in her bedroom. Loaded down with shopping bags, she decided to let her voice-mail catch the call. But no sooner had the phone stopped ringing then it started ringing again. Thinking it may be an emergency – or perhaps an annoying telemarketer who needed to be yelled at – Kristin dropped her bags and ran to the phone, catching it on its last ring.

“Hello?” she breathlessly answered.

She was surprised to find her veterinarian on the other end. “Kristin, we have some results on Bishop. We need you to come back to the office.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in an hour or so…”

“…No, Kristin,” interrupted the vet in a barely controlled voice. “We need you to come down now.”

Kristin was taken aback by the sound of his voice. She could hear the tension lurking behind his words. There was something he wasn’t telling her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is Bishop okay?”

“We’ll talk about that when you get here,” answered the vet, his voice growing louder and more agitated. “Just get in the car now.”

“Why can’t you tell me over the phone?” asked Kristin.

The vet suddenly blurted out, “Are you in the house alone?”

A chill ran through Kristin’s blood. She slowly sat on her bed and replied, “Yes. Why?”

She could hear the vet taking a deep breath on the other end of the phone. Then, barely able to contain the tremor in his throat, he said in a hushed voice, “Listen to me carefully. We found out why Bishop was coughing.”

It was then that Kristin noticed her bedroom window. A hole had been punched through the glass, and it was unlocked.

“Kristin, are you there?”

“Yes,” Kristin answered, her voice starting to shake.

She then noticed drops of blood on her carpet. They stretched across the room and underneath her closet door. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but what we found in your dog’s throat were fingers. Human fingers.”

As the vet spoke, Kristin sat frozen as she watched the closet door slowly creak open on its rusted hinges. “Did you hear what I said? He bit the fingers off somebody’s hand!”

Kristin still didn’t answer. In the darkness of the closet, she swore she could see the hand of a large man, blood dripping from where his fingers had been gnawed off. And on his arm was the orange sleeve of a prison uniform.

REAL LIFE SUPERMAN

 

Who knew Superman was such a bad driver...

OH, HELLO

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A PATIENT POSSESSED

Nurses deal with death on a daily basis, so it’s hardly surprising that many turn to religion as a source of wisdom and comfort. However, encounters with demonic forces may also influence nurses’ views on the battle between good and evil. In a chilling tale on AllNurses.com, one nurse shares her experience with a dying patient who was more than he seemed.

According to the nurse, the patient suffered from a variety of ailments that could end his life at any time. However, the man was terrified of death and raged at the nurses to keep him alive.

“Every time his heart monitor beeped, he would go into a rage screaming, ‘Don’t let me die! Don’t let me die,’” the nurse writes. “We soon found out why he didn’t want to die.”

One night, the patient took a turn for the worse, and the nurse rushed into his room with emergency supplies. However, she wasn’t prepared for what she found.

“This man was sitting about two inches above the bed and was laughing,” the nurse writes. “His whole look completely changed. His eyes had a look of pure evil and he had this evil smile on his face. He laughed at us and said, ‘You stupid bitches aren’t going to let me die are you?’”

After this frightening outburst, the man went into cardiac arrest and died 20 minutes later. However, the terror was far from over. Five minutes after a doctor pronounced the patient dead, the newly-deceased man sat up in bed and started to laugh, saying “You let him die. Too bad.” What happened next sounds like something from a horror movie.

“We heard a horrible, agonizing scream and then you could hear ‘don’t let me die’ whispered throughout the unit,” the nurse reports. “Every one of the nurses that night was pale and scared. Nobody went anywhere by themselves. By morning, the whispers of ‘don’t let me die’ were gone.”

 Story source.

YIKES

HAROLD

When it got hot in the valley, Thomas and Alfred drove their cows up to a cool, green pasture in the mountains to graze. Usually they stayed there with the cows for two months. Then they brought them down to the valley again. The work was easy enough, but, oh, it was boring. All day the two men tended their cows. At night they went back to the tiny hut where they lived. They ate supper and worked in the garden and went to sleep. It was always the same.

Then Thomas had an idea that changed everything. "Let's make a doll the size of a man," he said. "It would be fun to make, and we could put it in the garden to scare the birds."

"It should look like Harold," Alfred said. Harold was a farmer they both hated.

They made a doll out of old sacks stuffed with straw. They gave it a pointy nose like Harold's and tiny eyes like his. Then they added dark hair and a twisted frown. Of course they also gave it Harold's name.

Each morning on their way to the pasture, they tied Harold to a pole in the garden to scare away the birds. Each night they brought him inside so that he wouldn't get ruined if it rained.

When they were feeling playful, they would talk to him. One of them might say,"How are the vegetables growing today, Harold?" Then the other, making believe he was Harold, would answer in a crazy voice,"Very slowly." They both would laugh, but not Harold.

Whenever something went wrong, they took it out on Harold. They would curse at him, even kick or punch him. Sometimes one of them would take the food they were eating (which they both were sick of) and smear it on the doll's face. 

"How do you like that stew, Harold?" he would ask. "Well, you better eat it - or else." Then the two men would howl with laughter.

One night, after Thomas had wiped Harold's face with food, Harold grunted. 

"Did you hear that?" Alfred asked.

"It was Harold," Thomas said. "I was watching him when it happened. I can't believe it."

"How could he grunt?" Alfred asked. "He's just a sack of straw. It's not possible."

"Let's throw him in the fire," Thomas said,"and that will be that."

"Let's not do anything stupid," said Alfred. "We don't know whats going on. When we move the cows down, we'll leave him behind. For now, let's just keep an eye on him."

So they left Harold sitting in the corner of the hut. They didn't talk to him or take him outside anymore. Now and then the doll grunted, but that was all. 

After a few days, they decided there was nothing to be afraid of. Maybe a mouse or some insects had gotten inside Harold and were making those sounds.

So Thomas and Alfred went back to their old ways. Each morning they put Harold out in the garden, and each night they brought him back into the hut. When they felt playful, they joked with him. When they felt mean, they treated him as badly as ever.

Then one night Alfred noticed something that frightened him. "Harold is growing," he said.

"I was thinking the same thing," Thomas said.

"Maybe it's just our imagination," Albert replied. "We have been up here on this mountain for too long."

The next morning, while they were eating, Harold stood up and walked out of the hut. He climbed up on the roof and trotted back and forth, like a horse on its hind legs. All day and all night, he trotted like that. In the morning Harold climbed down and stood in a far corner of the pasture. The men had no idea what he would do next. They were afraid.

They decided to take the cows down into the valley that same day. When they left, Harold was nowhere in sight. They felt as if they had escaped a great danger and began joking and singing. But when they had gone only a mile or two, they realized they had forgotten to bring the milking stools.

Neither one wanted to go back for them, but the stools would cost a lot to replace. "There really is nothing to be afraid of," they told one another. "After all, what could a doll do?"

They drew straws to see which one would go back. It was Thomas. "I'll catch up with you." he said, and Alfred walked toward the valley.

When Alfred came to a rise in the path, he looked back for Thomas. He did not see him anywhere. But he did see Harold. The doll was on the roof of the hut again. As Alfred watched, Harold kneeled and stretched out a bloody skin to dry in the sun.

REVIEW: PIGGY

 

The rather cornball cover art chosen for the video release of Piggy is, while cosmetically correct, tonally misleading. It’s easy to look at that picture of a man holding not just one but TWO knives and wearing a pig mask and thinking, “Oh boy, here we go.” What Piggy actually is, however, is not some random, generic, slice-and-dice. Technically it’s not even a horror film. (But that doesn’t mean it’s not horrific.)

Joe (Martin Compston, The Disappearance of Alice Creed) is a shy Londonite longing for human interaction much like all of us do. His only real friend appears to be his brother, Jamie (Ed Skrein, “Game of Thrones” [Daario Naharis: the season three version]), who may or may not be romantically involved with Claire (Louise Dylan), whom Joe may or may not be crushing on. One night at a local pub, Joe quite accidentally sets off a chain of events with a local gang that leads to some tossed threats, some minor fisticuffs action, and eventually the stabbing murder of Jamie. Joe naturally blames himself for having caused the conflict to escalate out of control and he disappears inside himself, confining himself to his apartment. That is until Piggy (Paul Anderson, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) knocks on his door, explaining that he was mates with his brother and will be around should Joe need anything. That “need” turns out to be vigilante revenge, unleashed upon each member of the gang responsible for Jamie’s death, except for that of the gang leader, who ends up in prison on an unrelated drug charge. Joe rides his fury at the loss of his brother and enjoys a front-seat view of Piggy’s fury against the gang members, but soon Joe starts to feel the opposite, becoming disturbed by Piggy’s unhinged and incredibly violent attacks on their prey. Soon Joe wants nothing more to do with Piggy…who doesn’t like suddenly not being needed anymore.

While watching Piggy, I couldn’t help but keep Fight Club in the back of my mind. Though tonally, one film has nothing in common with the other, I was struck by one particular dynamic the two films do share: that of one strange mysterious character quite randomly showing up in the life of another and providing some measure of strength and/or awakening that our “narrator” was missing. Post-viewing, and after having done some research, I found I was not alone in thinking like this. So it was when the film was leading up to its inevitable payoff that I (wrongly) assumed I knew the twist to be coming.

Luckily, the film was smarter than I was.

The power of Piggy comes from its feeling much more violent then it actually is. And don’t get me wrong, it is violent, but for every one brutal throat slash or head-stomp, we get several more left to our imagination. Piggy is out to make you unsettled and disturbed, sure, but it wants to earn that reaction from you. It also wants to make you question what exactly constitutes strength in a person. Is it taking revenge through force? Or is it confronting your own fears and taking responsibilities for your own actions?

The acting ensemble delivers on every level, perhaps top honors going to Anderson as the titular character. Everyone shares excellent chemistry, though they all look appropriately glum beneath writer/director Kieron Hawkes’ muted palette.The film is well-written, somberly shot, and beautifully scored. I'll be, it's actually a film.

Vigilantism is never largely discussed as a sub-genre of filmmaking, though it remains ever popular, recently attracting an eclectic collection of names like The Rock, Jodie Foster, Kevin Bacon, and Rainn Wilson. There is something dangerously appealing of seeing someone out for revenge and willing to go to great lengths to achieve it. The rational side of us know such actions are better left to the judicial system, but the emotional side of us live vicariously through our chosen vigilante as he/she exacts the kind of justice their targets have coming.

Piggy ends on an extremely dour note, but one that will have you smiling anyway.

It hits video May 13.