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Tonight, for the second of this year’s Halloween tales, we look towards the abandoned town of Geeston, and the man with the unending smile who haunts its wreckage.
The Skinner Co. Network
FP293 - The Turnaround
Some days, gloomy, my hours are slumberless Dearest, the shadows I live with find nonetheless Little white flowers will never be taken in Not where the bright coach of sorrow has taken you Angels have no fire ever returning you Or they're the angry of fire, so they'll join in you Welcome to Flash Pope Episode 293 This evening we present the turnaround This week's episodes are brought to you by Skinner Co Skinner Co, where getting ahead usually means a visit to the bioengineering research and development department Follow us on Twitter @skinercow I've decided to end it all Flash Pope 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, for the second of this year's Halloween tales, we look towards the abandoned town of Giesden In the man with the unending smile who haunts its wreckage The turnaround, written by J.R.D. Skinner, art and narration by Popon X, an audio produced by Jessica Me As the ivory white Ford Focus left the highway and edged onto the disintegrating pavement of Red School Road A misshapen figure broke from the encroaching pines Pushed through the ditches overgrown brush and screamed, "He'll kill you!" Inside the car, 19-year-old Jared Clark asked, "Well, you shit, did you see that hobo bushman yelling and waving at us?" "Look like he was part forest," replied Lance Newell, the same age as Clark and the boy's most consistent partner in Miss Adventure Amber Curtis, a year younger than her male companions and Newell's sometimes girlfriend, turned in the passenger seat "He just looked dirty to me. Did I seriously see a cloud of flies around him?" "Probably some hunter who pulled over to water the trees," replied Tamara Benson, the 17-year-old behind the wheel. The vehicle was her parents, and she was determined to prove that she could make the road trip to the abandoned town without becoming pregnant, or almost worse, damaging their newly purchased Ford. "What about the ghosts of Geiston?" her mother had asked when the girl had requested the keys. "I'll call Bill Murray if I see any," she replied. A half-decade earlier, a family, the Palmer's, had disappeared at the site, and since that time, every missing runaway in the area had been blamed on the urban legends that surrounded the derelict town. It was the lack of guff or second-guessing on her mum's part that made Tamara especially determined to return home, incident-free. "Maybe we'll see the smirking man," she suggested. "Don't the slasher types always have some sort of harbinger?" Uninterested in her friend's choice of topics, and with the opening notes of the beastie boy's sabotage pushing at the speakers, Amber's fingers crept towards the volume knob, only to be slapped away. The smirking man was said to be the somehow resurrected form of Odell Barrow, the Chemback's worker who, local mythologies stated, had said the chemical plant ablaze after discovering his wife in a trist with one of the company's managers. It was Barrow's efforts with a rifle from a top Chemback's largest storage tank that had kept the emergency personnel from containing the toxic inferno, which had resulted in many deaths, and necessitated the evacuation of the town survivors. But it was the man's work with his straight razor that had earned him the nickname of the smirking man. Supposedly, as he sat upon his smoking tower and shaved away his lips, he claimed each strip of flesh was a kiss returned to his former beloved. But his craftsmanship had been lopsided, leaving his exposed teeth in a permanently curled grin. The teens found themselves brought to a halt by a cement barricade, originally erected when the hamlet was quarantined. "Ha! There's no U-turn sign. Guess we're stuck here," said Lance. Amber raised an encouraging eyebrow at him, and set a thumbnail to her cherry-glossed smile. It began to rain. "Maybe we should head back," said Tamara, Jared unbuckled, afraid of finding the Palmer's. Despite his fixed expression of merriment, Haudel Barrow was running out of patience. Com had never been his strong suit, even in life, and death had done nothing to clarify his reason. He'd heard the car's approach soon after its turn onto the winding road that led to town, and he'd set his mind to the deaths of all inside. But now, hunched behind the low crack barrier that marked Giesden's edge, his eagerness for fresh blood edged into annoyance, then anger. He knew he should draw it out, as he had with the campers who'd visited so long ago. And yet, he stood. Though it had been decades since the fire, his bare but decaying arms still smoked from the heat, and perpetual ash drifted to the ground as he moved. He raised his straight razor across his 1974 Chemback's family picnic t-shirt, and dragged its still sharp blade across his blackened gums. To Haudel, the extra pain was worth their fear. Then, with three broad strides, he approached the idling focus. What happened next was not an accident. There was no moment to fearful reflex over riding conscious decision. Instead, Tamara simply said, "Nope!" Then, flipping on her signal, she rolled the car back 20 feet. She was making the turn, signage, and rotten-faced serial killers be damned. As he watched the red taillights drift up and around the nearest hill, however, the smirking man did not despair. These were his woods. All the land around Giesden was his, by his estimation. And he knew that a short stroll would bring him to a point further along the road, much quicker than the Ford might travel. It was while he stood astride the pavement, with the focus's lights just beginning to touch the timber that lined the bend, that Haudel realized things were awry. His first indication came when a swinging pine trunk impacted on his spine, and then the second arrived when, after stumbling briefly through the scrub in a daze, a nimbly-handled nail gun left him pinned to a thick oak. Without noticing the men in the undergrowth, the teens drove past. Tamara's parents, despite an inspection with careful eyes, would find no damage to their vehicle. The harbinger wiped at the muck that covered his face as he inspected his work. And where he found the iron's hold on the smirking man to be lacking, he liberally applied further pins. "I've been waiting," he said. "Spent months lying out there in the woods, buried in the stink so you wouldn't be able to smell me from your own decomposition." "Everyone says the legends are bunk, but I knew. I've watched you stalk the wilds at night, roaming around like a lost child searching for his toy." "Must be tough when the only company you have is the ghosts, and they all blame you for their deaths." Farrow attempted to spit through gritted teeth, but managed nothing more than a wisp of smoke. "Look at me, moron. You can't kill me. My punishment is eternal." "Good," replied the old man, as I'm hoping to spend a while with you. Reaching through a fern's fanning leaves, he retrieved a gray wool blanket and unwrapped it. Within, lay a pair of long-handled steel yard clippers and a sharpening stone. "Oh," he added, "and you can just call me Grampy Palmer." Flashpulp is presented by flashpulp.com and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution non-commercial 2.5 license. Text and audio commentaries can be sent to scare@skinner.fm or the voicemail line at 206-338-2792, 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, please check this episode's notes at flashpulp.com. And thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends. [Music]