Coffin Nails and Other Beasts: A Micro Anthology by Angela Kulig Excerpt

Coffin Nails and Other Beasts: A Micro Anthology by Angela Kulig
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One part literary fiction, one part horror, and all Angela Kulig. Darkness drips from every page, and just when you think you're having a good time, you find out someone's died, someone's been dead, and someone is about to rob your grave.

In Coffin Nails, Angela Kulig weaves the sort of tales we all hoped she didn't have in her. Frightening and often crass fantasy mingles with the paranormal and surreal in this swift anthology.

If it was any longer, we'd all have nightmares.







An Excerpt of Prick a Story from Coffin Nails & Other Beasts

It’s just a twinge of light in the dark; you blink and miss half of it. It’s just a shallow breath in a sea of lights, and the only reason anyone can see it at all is because this light is warm, this light is alive. In the city of neon lights, you can’t even pick out your own heartbeat; but you see this—this spark, and you know it means something.

And that something is about to be snuffed out.

• • •

The hotel-motel is the weirdest shade of teal blue, like an over chlorinated pool with something rank at the bottom. Cracks in the sides of it are filled half-assed with wads of chewing gum from rotten teeth—and covered with still more teal paint that bubbles up in low patches like the damn spit’s still wet.

The gum is probably fifty years old, just like the hotel. Just like me. The parking lot, however, is new. You can still smell the tar over the stench of the town. The whole thing is covered in it, and it lays there as ominous as the dark side of the moon on a clear night. You can see it clearly; there isn’t a car within fifty feet, but there is a girl. Her hair is so full of peroxide it practically glows from the shine of the nearest street light, and it’s half a block away.

I can smell her from here as I catch the light of her again. It’s the slightest little glimmer from the chain around her neck. My lips move to smile, and I know my teeth are brighter than her speck can ever be and I take time to enjoy the irony of the whole thing.

I’m a bit of prick—and when I get to her that’s all she’ll feel, but I’m a freak and I like to watch first. I don’t like to be the cause of death, so I bite my tongue, and it bleeds just like this girl is about to.

The street is quiet, but it’s a ruse. A bubble of silence so worrisome, nightclub music is even afraid to waft through it. Then of course, two thugs in a Caprice Classic burst in like they own the whole damn night—and these are the sort of guys who do. The sweet little thing that’s flickered her way to the stop sign adjusted her skirt one last time, then hiked it up until it barely covered her ass. The thugs in the loud and silver car hit the brakes two seconds too late, and threw rubber onto the ankles of the little light as it shot backwards for another look.

This girl is just their type blond, beautiful, and someone no one will miss. At least not right away. She’s a classic beauty, probably from the East Coast by way of Hollywood. She probably meant to be an actress, and when that fell through, there was only money to get this far back home.

She was probably planning on working all the way back, then forgetting about it—but because she climbed into that silver car I knew she wouldn’t make it. Someone’s mommy should have told her there is no such thing as a free ride....