Evelyn's Children

By Jim Johanson

Pain, sharp and searing like the feel of cold steel, aching like a buildup of flames internal, the Greer family is suffering. Billy has gone off wilder than usual on a gasoline huffing binge, and his behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. His Mother has gone mad, engulfed in a religious fervor, bedridden and refusing treatment for the chronic illness that has ravaged her body and mind.

It's all that Mary can take just to care for her Mother, and now her brother Billy is becoming dangerously unstable. But like vultures encircling a dying animal, there are others who wish to prey on the vulnerability of the unfortunate Greer family with the most devious of intentions, leaving Mary as the fulcrum shouldering the weight of a scale of wanton chaos. A feverish venture of terror and upheaval, this is the story of Evelyn's children.

Word Count: 31,325
Page Count: 123

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Johanson
• Release date: Oct 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370641369

Jim Johanson

An intrepid researcher of the human mind, Jim seeks to find a greater understanding of human existence and to depict his findings in fiction. With a true appreciation for anything new and unique, Jim refuses to rehash old stories in his writing, rather does he prefer to expound on weird and otherworldly things that humans so rarely experience, and in the case of his horror genre writing, hope never to experience themselves.

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Evelyn's Children

Copyright 2017

Jim Johanson

Published on Smashwords

JimJohanson.com

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. Goeth he and taketh to him other spirits more wicked than himself, and the last state of the man is worse than the first.

-Luke 11:24-26

Chapter One

Fumes of rapidly evaporating gasoline drifted like invisible serpents in and out of Billy Greer's sinuses, the harsh chemical vapors stinging at the lining of his nose. The burn used to bother Billy, but he had grown accustomed to it through repeated abuse. The caustic vapors had become an acquired taste. Like the burn of strong vodka down the throat of an alcoholic, the pains of huffing gasoline had simply become an acceptable gateway to the land of exalted bliss. Billy's world of dire boredom faded as he embarked on a return journey to the world of sublime immaculacy, all for the cost of a few gallons of gas and a reusable red plastic container.

Rings of blackness formed around the corners of Billy's vision as he inhaled, forcing his field of view into a blurry tunnel. Though normally a frightening phenomena, Billy no longer had any fear of the less desirable effects of gasoline inhalation intoxication.

The familiar but overwhelming sensation of dizziness began to set in. Billy found himself losing his balance. He steadied himself by pressing his shoulder against a tree. A piece of bark, sharp at the edge, dug into his shoulder. Though he knew that pain was inherently a bad thing, he was quickly losing his susceptibility to it. Pain was a man shouting desperately at the back of a crowd, drowned out by the white noise of hundreds of other voices.

Billy struggled to keep his grip on the container of gasoline, but the muscles in his hands were slumping and quivering to the point of near uselessness. His fingers felt to him like loose rubber bands, wriggling out from underneath the crude stump of his hands, made chemically vestigial.

Knowing that he wouldn't be able to hold onto the container of gas for much longer, and having been disappointed with his last experience, Billy sucked in as hard as he could, taking one final gulp of fumes into his mouth. He inhaled like a veteran cigarette smoker taking their first drag after a failed attempt at quitting, filling his lungs with the intoxicating vapors, sucking deeply from the hole in the plastic container. The fumes stung his nose and burned his throat, but Billy remained stalwart, ignoring the pain, knowing that the familiar sensation of supreme bliss and serenity was soon to come if he could just hold on a bit longer.

Then it arrived. Like a scientist finally discovering the solution to his life's work, Billy felt the sensation of a spark firing off at the base of his neck where it connected to his skull, like a firecracker in-between his vertebrae. All of his struggles evaporated and flew out on the wind with the gasoline fumes.

Haunting memories of family, unfortunate childhood experiences, responsibilities and burdens, despair at what may come in the future, all of it dissipated. As Billy's mind relaxed, so did his body. Billy felt air pushing up from behind him as he lost his balance and fell backward to the ground, dropping the can of gasoline off to his side. It landed with the nozzle facing the ground. The gas began pouring out of the container, collecting in a pool of moistened dirt nearby his legs.

The rings of blackness around Billy's vision soon turned a bizarre shade of green. The edges convulsed and protruded, turning themselves into triangles and teeth, pushing inward and taking up more of his visual space, twisting, turning and forming wondrous shapes and colors. Billy's world had become nothing more than the inward construction of his mind, represented visually as geometric kaleidoscope patterns. Time became meaningless. He became an initiate of quantum depravity, absorbed by oblivion.

Had Billy still retained any sense of who he was, he would have been proud of himself. He had outdone all of his previous efforts, having finally achieved the high he'd been looking for since he’d first begun experimenting with inhalants. For the scores of times that Billy had ventured out into the woods behind his mother’s house, down forgotten paths to the abandoned railroad tracks to set fire to aerosol containers or huff gasoline, never before had he been so dead-set on reaching a higher plateau and escaping his physical life.

Billy’s gasoline experiments had become a habit, a means of escape from the world. Now, as he lay nearly motionless in the afternoon sun, his escape from reality was teetering on the brink of permanence, his breathing rate slowing to a dangerous low. His fingers laid motionless on the dew-covered grass, his eyes glazing over with his pupils pointed blankly at the sky.

Billy, unfortunately under-educated, never had any warning that inhaling enough gasoline would cause his breathing rate to slow to zero, that his lungs would simply stop hungering for oxygen, in turn causing the oxygen levels in his blood to plummet dramatically. Neural synapses and entire regions of oxygen-deprived white matter in Billy's brain began to turn black with decay. Billy was approaching the verge of cerebral vegetation, though his heart was still pumping intensely, his whole body enveloped in a paradoxical state of living and dying.

He was still conscious and his eyes were open, but all he could see were two green dots, dancing around and crashing into each other in concentric circles. When the dots struck each other, they split into halves and rejoined in an endless spiral. From Billy's perspective, he was nothing but another odd green dot stationed outside of the realm of existence, watching the other two dots react with each other as though they were two of his oldest friends.

The dots amused Billy. They had the demeanor of two tiny kittens stumbling around, trying not to fall over as they fumbled into one another, knocking each other off balance. The dots seemed innocent, devoid of negativity, just existing for the sake of existing.

Empty tins of lighter fluid, spray paint cans with burst shells charred black, stolen automotive cleaners, and all other manner of emptied containers of flammable liquid lay littered about the area, evidence of Billy’s previous pyromantic excursions. This time, prior to huffing gas, he'd stolen a can of cheap spray deodorant from his sister Mary’s bedroom and tossed it into a burning pile of twigs, smiling when as watched it explode in a miniature mushroom cloud. Unbeknownst to Billy, some stray embers had fallen onto the ground where he’d begun his gasoline huffing. The gasoline dripping from the container snaked downward into dirt, eventually finding its way to a burning ember while Billy lay paralyzed in the throes of intoxication. A fire crept upward from the point of ignition, following the pathway back to the gasoline can and setting Billy’s jeans alight. As the fibers burned, Billy’s flesh turned red and began to blister. Ash from his jeans melted into his leg.

Billy’s burning flesh tried desperately to send a message of emergency to his muddled brain. A jolt of adrenaline shot through his system at the sensation of pain. His lungs reanimated, struggling for air. Even with his body now aroused and pulling itself out of the gasoline-induced delirium, he’d already suffered significant hypoxic damage to his brain.

Billy screamed and thrashed around in the dirt, instinctively trying to protect his body from the pain, not yet capable of understanding what the pain was or what was causing it. Still high on gasoline, Billy suffered immense disorientation, barely able to remember who or where he was.

Heat. Flames. Woods. Water.

Though his vision was still black and wrought with hallucinations brought on by gasoline vapors, Billy managed to drag himself toward the nearby pond. His legs were enfeebled and unresponsive, so he clawed and dragged himself toward the water, breaking a fingernail in the process. Managing to get his head into the water, he let gravity pull the rest of his body into the pond.

The fire was out. Billy's leg sizzled in the murky water. His jeans stuck to what remained of his skin as if ironed onto his body. The worst area of burn had gone deep into his calf muscle, permanently destroying flesh and very nearly heating his bone marrow beyond repair.

Now quenched by the waters of the pond, Billy faced a new struggle. His mouth and throat filled with fluid. He gulped and swallowed, forcing dirty water rife with bacteria into his lungs and stomach. Still intoxicated, Billy could hardly tell which direction was up.

Need air.

Billy thrashed his arms and legs. His feet kicked up against the dirt at the side of the pond. With a struggle, he found some footing on the muddy incline below the surface of the water by the shore. With a determinant thrust of his foot against the bank, he propelled his head above the water and sucked deeply the life-sustaining air above the surface, a boy