Tonight Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his normally tipsy companion, find themselves discussing mystic murder while walking the cold streets of Capital City.
The Skinner Co. Network
FP335 - Coffin: Masks, Part 1 of 3
Some days, gloomy, my hours are slumberless. Dear is the shadows I live with by nonetheless. Little white flowers will never wake in you. Not where the bright coach of sorrow ends taking you. Angels have no fire ever returning you. Or they'll be angry if I so don't join you. Welcome to Flashpulp, episode 335. This evening we present Coffin, Masks, part one of three. This week's episodes are brought to you by the Talk Nerdy to Me podcast. Listen to Jen and Jason scrape the nerdy tree directly from their brains and into your ears at Talknerdy2, the actual number, me, podcast.wordpress.com. Jen praise it a sad I know that when I weep, let them know that I'm glad to go. Death is no dream for, and death I'm caressing you with the strength of my soul. I'll be blessing you in gloomy Sunday. Flashpulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age. Three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. Tonight, Will Coffin, Urban Shaman, and Bunny, his normally tipsy companion, find themselves discussing mystic murder while walking the cold streets of capital city. Coffin, Masks, part one of three. Written by J.R.D. Skinner, Art and Narration by Hope OpenX, and Audio produced by Jessica May. [Music] "I think that guy was totally shit-mongering," said Bunny. Her hair, freshly cut to a ragged shoulder length by her own hand, was in a ponytail, and her faded denim jacket had seen the inside of a washing machine just that morning. "Maybe," replied Coffin. The sun began to descend beyond the artificial horizon of the city's high rises, as the pair walked to the sidewalk's bands of shadow and light in no particular direction. Will's roommate had occasionally talked him into joining her and covering the block in a half to her preferred vodka salesman, but this was the first time she'd ever suggested they simply stretch their legs. Two days previous, they'd broken into a small suburban bungalow, and taken a blade whose main property was the overwhelming sense of euphoria it brought, with each cut it inflicted. Inside the place, they'd also found the moaning remnants of attics, and wealthy, but hard-eyed, boy of 19. Bunny hadn't had a taste of liquor since. She kicked a coke can into the bush alongside the bike path. Ha, guy like that. Taking money to let people have a chance to turn themselves into deling me. Seems more likely to me that he's the Jack the Ripper wannabe that had had his old man. He needed to tell a surid to keep you from letting that junkie's ghosts suck out his eyes or whatever, so he bullshitted about one of the other horrible fucking things he's done, and added the detail about finding the blade hanging out of Dad's throat. They'd come to a corner, and rather than allow the chill to settle in while they waited for the light, Bunny made a sharp left. "You ever hear the flight of the Marystallust?" asked coffin, trailing slightly behind his companion. "Oh, fuck yeah. I think I saw it on an unsolved mystery as we were running from the 80s. One Halloween, a smallish jetliner ditches into a big potato field in Idaho. It was a red eye, so there were only maybe 30 people on board. I remember the host being impressed that it held together. He said it was as close to a perfect landing as he could hope for an emergency situation. I don't know how much fucking talent it takes to crash. Anyhow, the farmers, a couple of mom-paw-cents, squeeze into the cab of their work tractor and drive out in their PJs. It's easy to see because the landing lights are still on, and the jet is listing a bit to one side, mostly upright. They can see that there's a hatch swinging wide, but there's no one around. None of those plastic evacuation slide things. Nothing." Paul parks the tractor beneath the open door, and manages to hoist himself inside, like climbing on the roof. He walks along the rows towards the bathrooms, looking back and forth. There are a lot of spots with movie headphones plugged in, and the overhead luggage compartments are buttoned up tight. Some of the seats are even leaning back with blankets pushed aside, like the people in them had to stand up so quickly they hadn't bothered fixing their chairs. Farmer yells, but he gets no answer. The passenger area, the can, the little flight attendant nook, they're all empty. The only thing at a place seems to be the drink cart, which is rolled into the corner of the service area because of the floor's angle. Paul heads to the front to see if Ma has gotten the whole of the police yet, but he notices the cockpit entrance is open to crack, so he ducks his head in, and notices there's a big wet spot on the pilot's chair. I think he's finally found some evidence of violence, and that it's blood, he touches it. [laughs] I remember laughing when Paul figured out what it really was. [laughs] He always had such shit actors for those reinactments. To be honest though, I would have probably pissed myself, too, if I had to make that landing. So, right, that's the big mystery. What happened on the plane to make everyone disappear? They came to another intersection, but this time the lights were with them, and they strode across without breaking pace. "That's the story you hear," said Coffin. But the truth is that the jet was cruising normally when its poorly maintained electrical system caused a massive system hiccup that sent them plummeting. Partial control came back, but the pilot had a lot of momentum behind him, and not a lot of options, so he set the thing down as best he could. He was extremely lucky in his choice of crash site, and he used his 30 seconds of semi-controlled descent carefully. But, yeah, his bladder was a casualty of the impact. He says he'd had a lot of coffee. Now, the thing is, we're talking 1985. Satanism was a big deal back then. Even amongst potato barons who like to play secret dress-up, this farmer and his wife were holding Coke and Acid orgies with some friends, including the local sheriff and mayor, under the guise of being truly free through Lucifer, etc., etc. Basically, some hicks playing at being yuppies, all with a shared violent kink, had found an excuse to get high and make it that they thought made them superior to the poorer folks in the area. When they weren't rubbing on each other, they were target-shooting with expensive guns, or patting themselves on the back for running the town. Every budget with enough margin to embezzle, and every bump of Coke confiscated from a townie, was a blessing directly from a grand old goat. So, to celebrate Halloween, a bunch of them were wearing animal masks, groping in the farmer's barn, carrying out a fake sacrificial rite that, for some reason, involved a lot of spanking. And the jet crashed, 150 yards away. Mrs. Farmer had been so loud in her enthusiastic declarations that she would make any sacrifice that her dark lord had asked of her, that no one even heard the descent until the plane was already sliding across the field. Well, sweaty, stoned to the gills and in a frenzy, the group pulled off their beast faces and held a conference. They looked out at the splash of dust and dirt, dying home of the engines mingling with their exorcist slash omen soundtrack mixtape, and they were convinced Satan himself had set that thing down for them to offer to him. It's managed to use a potato collection trailer to rescue the grateful two dozen passengers back to the garage. Sheriff kept things calm while telling his little sect to go back to the house and gather everything off the farmer's gun rack. Then they had all the survivors lined up for medical triage. Everyone was fine until a shooting started. We're talking a mass murder on some superstitious hillbilly mud patch, but the national media got so wrapped in the notion of the jet landing empty that they forgot to look for, say, the blood spatters that were still in the barns and nooks and crannies were leaking from the trailer where they first hit the bodies. Bunny paused. Wait, is this Mr. Miyagi shit to try to tell me I can't see the fucking Satanists from the trays? Cough and shrugged. Let's say it was you and my jacket, and you're the one who's just taking the mystical equivalent of an endless crack supply away from a kid who claims that he found the thing in the neck of his dead father. And worse, the old man was supposedly sliced open by a Batman-style serial killer, who even has a recognizable media nickname, The Laughing Buddha. What would you do? Reflexively reaching her bottle that wasn't in her pocket, his companion bought time to answer by waiting for the roar of a city buster roll by. I'd go to one of the crime scenes and use your little hook to fissure the ghost and one of the dead guys. Is that how you sort it at the cultists? Well, it's how I got the real story. I have enough problems with the actual cult. I don't need to be worrying about sociopathic cosporters. So, it's after the massacre things basically fell apart anyhow. A couple of them OD'd, and the sheriff was eventually busted for shooting the mayor and his wife. I guess he was afraid they would say something. Probably right to be scared from what I hear. Things didn't go well for him in prison. The remaining few lead lives of regret. I used to call them on Halloween night. You know, whisper secrets I shouldn't know to them, and tell them that they need to do more good if they ever wander within themselves. I'm not sure everyone now assumes they're just exemplary citizens. Despite appearances, you never really tell what motivates people. A laundromat, a Chinese place, and a used bookstore had drifted by before Bunny snorted to herself and said, "I was thinking about the laughing Buddha murders." Like, you know, where we could find articles about where they'd happened. I realized, holy shit. Like, I'm actually going to a fucking library. Cough and joined her in a chuckle. And they turned towards downtown. Flashpulp is presented by Flashpulp.com and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 3.0 Unported License. Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com. But be aware that they may appear in a future Flashcast. We'd also like to thank the FreeSound Project, found at freesound.org. For a full listing of effects used during the show, as well as credits for the users who provided them, visit this episode's notes at flashpulp.com. And thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends. [Music] Sunday is gloomy. My hours are stumbled. Here is the shadows I live with are stumbled. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)