Category: Random Fiction

Dance Of The Ragman

The Ragman

The Ragman was supposedly once a doll carried on the cart of a nomadic knife sharpener, who used it as a sort of calling card to differentiate himself from competition while wandering the suburbs in search of foodies with dull cutlery. Although he was apparently quite abrupt with his clientele, he often stopped for the children playing at the edges of the cul-de-sacs and would make them tiny dancing figurines, ground from large metal bolts.

The story goes that, one sunny afternoon, a soccer mom, in a rush to retrieve her child from school, backed into the wandering man and, in her hurry, did not notice her error. As his internal organs bled out, she drove away with only the doll, accidentally caught on her bumper, to point out her mistake.

Now, they say, at night the doll will come dancing to any cookie-cutter household which demonstrates its lack of gratitude to those less privileged. All accounts say that he makes his presence known, as a warning, and if the wrong is not corrected within three evenings of spotting him, one of the family members in the house will die by the following morning.

Purportedly, a child has never been his victim.

– source

Sunday Cthulhu

To bring back an ancient tradition:

It was the third day of Alfred and William’s thirty-first harvest as neighbours. Both hoped it would be their last – as they had for two decades.

Their time was split. Half was spent staring at the other, either in the eyes or in the back, droning along their rows of wheat. The other half was a blessed relief: their tractors carried them away to the furthest ends of their fields.

Unknown to either, they had each spent long hours prowling around the other’s home, shotgun in hand. In the end both men were too stubborn to surrender by being the one who pulled the final straw.

Without warning each man’s engine stalled.

At that same moment, in a small off-off-Broadway theater, the men’s ex-wives were holding hands and watching a terrible play. Despite the poor acting and pretentious script, they were smiling.

In the distance dogs and cows began to howl, in Alfred’s chicken coop his two dozen hens dropped dead.

Gouts of dirt began to erupt in each man’s field.

Hay bails, at least a hundred pounds a piece, were tossed into the air and became grassy bombs as they shattered on the earth.

This day, their last, both men would know the horror of Cthulhu.