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valarltdSounds of the Season:
What else? OK, TV variety show, but with Mr. Pickett himself.
And a bit of a treat from me. "Ghouls" from my collection, Riding the Nightmare
Ghouls
Andrew Gough resisted the temptation to run his fingers along the barbed iron fence to hear it ring. Such behavior didn’t suit the necessary gravitas of his position. The two assistants carrying the wicker would have borne tales back. He walked up the path, ignoring the red and yellow tulips nodding on each side. He rang the bell of the great stone house and doffed the black silk top hat. His men set the wicker down on the porch.
The lady of the house answered, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair and black dress rumpled. “Yes, Mr. Gough. We’ve been expecting you. Come in, he’s...” She choked, swallowed and regained her composure. “He’s in the spare room. We’ve already washed him.”
The assistants went up, and Andrew followed the widow into the parlor. She had the maid bring tea. He sipped a single cup, no sugar.
“Mrs. Walker, did your husband make any last preparations?” he asked, keeping his voice low and respectful. Of course, Thomas Walker hadn’t prepared anything. Men like him never did. Their wives always did because they were too busy being college chancellors.
The high cravat and stiff collar made him keep his head up, keeping his posture perfect. Andrew hated the formal undertaker’s dress, outdated finery of fifty years before, but knew the clients expected it, just as they expected the horse-drawn hearse for an in-town burial. Those who were buried in the new cemetery, out of town, got the black Cadillac hearse.
He listened as the widow talked, and remembered he had their caskets and such on file in his office. It would be a standard funeral to round out a standard life, with evening visitation and the Episcopal priest conducting the service the next day. All of it would take place at his funeral parlor, which meant no transportation fees and no inconvenience.
The assistants came down with Chancellor Walker’s body. Andrew rose and bowed to the widow. His manners had to be as old fashioned as his appearance. It made the clients more comfortable.
The maid let them out, and he could hear Mrs. Walker sobbing in the parlor. The iron fence was no temptation this time, not when there was work to be done. The assistants loaded the wicker into the station wagon and they went to work.
The Gough Funeral Parlor resided in an old Victorian house in the southern part of town, about three-quarters of a mile from the college and a quarter-mile north of the old cemetery. The assistants took Chancellor Walker in by way of the cellar doors, down to where Edward waited with his tools and potions to embalm him.
Andrew went upstairs, to the rooms above the business and stripped out of his formalwear. If Edward saw him in it, neither of them would get a thing accomplished. He set the silk top hat with its trailing black band on the bureau, and hung the rest of his suit in the closet. It would be time to have another made soon, he thought. Perhaps he would choose a design that was slightly more Edwardian than Victorian, this time.
He went down and dug through the filing cabinet of his wealthy clients. Yes, there were all the instructions. Joe was helping with the embalming, so he summoned George to help him carry the coffin in from the outbuilding that had been a carriage house before the Civil War. A red convertible, its tailfins glinting in the sun, whizzed by on the street. The frat boys in the back rose up and jeered, “Never laugh when the hearse goes by or you might be the next to die!”
Andrew ignored them as he and George carried the casket into the parlor. The muted velvet drapes stifled the noise as they broke the crate away from the mahogany wood with silver fittings. George cleared away the crate and excelsior and Andrew polished the casket and made it ready for its inhabitant.
It was well past supper-time when Edward and Joe emerged from the basement, smelling of formaldehyde and decay, Edward's pale skin almost luminous in the twilight. Chancellor Walker was strapped to a board between them and they carried him in and casketed him. Edward whipped out a black pocket comb and arranged Walker’s slightly tumbled hair. Andrew watched approvingly.
“Visitation begins at five tomorrow night.” Andrew shook Joe and George’s hands. “Have a good evening, gentlemen.” The assistants left, turning out most of the lights, leaving only the casket display lights burning.
When they were gone, he looked at Edward. “You, sir, need a shower.”
Edward gave an infectious grin and combed his own hair. Andrew was impervious. “I know. Anything good for dinner?”
“We have cold roast beef. It seems appropriate with a dead man beneath our floor.” Andrew still hadn’t smiled. He knew the Grave Undertaker act would arouse Edward more than any affection. His long-time companion was a bit on the ghoulish side. It was a hazard of the trade. They went upstairs for dinner and Edward’s promised shower.
He came out, wearing only undershorts of a hideously garish card-and-dice design. Andrew had the meal laid out, a pair of roast beef sandwiches and some carrot sticks for each of them. The crystal water goblets were full of milk.
“It was an easy job today,” Edward said, sitting down and picking up a sandwich. “Old Tom, he’d been gone long enough that rigor was past.”
“Don’t bring your work to the table, Ed. If I wanted the noxious details of your unholy travails, I would have been an enbalmer myself.”
Edward shot him a passionate look over the table. Andrew wanted to smile, lean over and kiss him, maybe even have him there on the table, breaking dishes and smearing food. Instead, he only set his long, funereal features into a mask of coldness and finished his meal in silence.
The dishes done, Edward caught Andrew and pushed him into the bedroom. “Say it,” he demanded.
Andrew, not smiling, donned the top-hat. “Dearly beloved-” he began, only to have his mouth stopped with Edward’s kiss. He returned the kiss. The shades were always drawn abovestairs, and they were very careful about which side of them the lamp was on. It wouldn’t do, not a bit, for word to get out that the undertaker and his long-time companion were inverts.
Andrew had always liked that term better than the newer gay or the more clinical homosexual. Invert. It went nicely with introvert and undertaking was, by necessity, a solitary life. Unlike the preacher, no one ever asked him round for dinner. Unlike the diggers, he couldn’t go for a couple of beers with the other guys at the bar after a hard day’s work
And what woman would live here? They kept the house up, but it still was old and smelled of musty wall-paper and ancient plaster. It settled in the night with unquiet groans and the floorboards creaked when no feet trod on them. What woman would live with strange odors from the basement, caskets in the parlor and a corpse or two under her feet? No, he had been lucky the day he found Edward, and he knew it.
Edward was a bit ghoulish, true, and his cheerful disposition was at perpetual odds with his work. But nothing damped his spirits and he was never more cheery than when working on the corpses.
He was clever too. When a local matron had frowned at his buying White Rose Jelly, he’d smiled pleasantly at her and said, “Keeps their skin soft through the funeral, you know. I daresay you use it the same way.” He’d winked and added the White Rose slogan, “A thousand and one uses and you know what that one is, ladies.” Andrew had reprimanded him for being so open, saying they could as easily use shortening or butter in the bedroom.
But Edward kept kissing him, hands all over him, the White Rose giving off its faint scent as he opened it. Andrew let himself be guided to the bed and lay back, looking up. He relaxed under his lover’s hands.
“Keep going,” Edward insisted, setting Andrew's work hat carefully on the hat-stand.
Andrew took a deep breath. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our final respects-” Andrew broke off with a groan as Edward worked two slick fingers into his ass.
“Go on,” Edward insisted, rubbing his own hard cock, and pumping the fingers just a little.He kissed Andrew just briefly.
Andrew tried to think what would come next in the eulogy. Edward's fingers, long and cool and strong, kept pumping him. “To pay our final respects to Thomas Walker, beloved husband, devoted father, trai–trailblazing chancellor–ah God, Edward!”
Edward had finished with the fingers and replaced them with his cock, and Andrew shuddered beneath him as he always did. Edward laughed. “I usually have you by devoted father. You’re getting better.”
Andrew smiled. “And you are always good, my love.” He pressed his lips to the Y-shaped autopsy scar on Edward's chest. “I'm so lucky to have you.”
Creepy pics, a double dozen for Halloween, hosted by a hedgehog from the Nashville Zoo
We resume our Hollywood horror after the cut
What else? OK, TV variety show, but with Mr. Pickett himself.
And a bit of a treat from me. "Ghouls" from my collection, Riding the Nightmare
Ghouls
Andrew Gough resisted the temptation to run his fingers along the barbed iron fence to hear it ring. Such behavior didn’t suit the necessary gravitas of his position. The two assistants carrying the wicker would have borne tales back. He walked up the path, ignoring the red and yellow tulips nodding on each side. He rang the bell of the great stone house and doffed the black silk top hat. His men set the wicker down on the porch.
The lady of the house answered, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair and black dress rumpled. “Yes, Mr. Gough. We’ve been expecting you. Come in, he’s...” She choked, swallowed and regained her composure. “He’s in the spare room. We’ve already washed him.”
The assistants went up, and Andrew followed the widow into the parlor. She had the maid bring tea. He sipped a single cup, no sugar.
“Mrs. Walker, did your husband make any last preparations?” he asked, keeping his voice low and respectful. Of course, Thomas Walker hadn’t prepared anything. Men like him never did. Their wives always did because they were too busy being college chancellors.
The high cravat and stiff collar made him keep his head up, keeping his posture perfect. Andrew hated the formal undertaker’s dress, outdated finery of fifty years before, but knew the clients expected it, just as they expected the horse-drawn hearse for an in-town burial. Those who were buried in the new cemetery, out of town, got the black Cadillac hearse.
He listened as the widow talked, and remembered he had their caskets and such on file in his office. It would be a standard funeral to round out a standard life, with evening visitation and the Episcopal priest conducting the service the next day. All of it would take place at his funeral parlor, which meant no transportation fees and no inconvenience.
The assistants came down with Chancellor Walker’s body. Andrew rose and bowed to the widow. His manners had to be as old fashioned as his appearance. It made the clients more comfortable.
The maid let them out, and he could hear Mrs. Walker sobbing in the parlor. The iron fence was no temptation this time, not when there was work to be done. The assistants loaded the wicker into the station wagon and they went to work.
The Gough Funeral Parlor resided in an old Victorian house in the southern part of town, about three-quarters of a mile from the college and a quarter-mile north of the old cemetery. The assistants took Chancellor Walker in by way of the cellar doors, down to where Edward waited with his tools and potions to embalm him.
Andrew went upstairs, to the rooms above the business and stripped out of his formalwear. If Edward saw him in it, neither of them would get a thing accomplished. He set the silk top hat with its trailing black band on the bureau, and hung the rest of his suit in the closet. It would be time to have another made soon, he thought. Perhaps he would choose a design that was slightly more Edwardian than Victorian, this time.
He went down and dug through the filing cabinet of his wealthy clients. Yes, there were all the instructions. Joe was helping with the embalming, so he summoned George to help him carry the coffin in from the outbuilding that had been a carriage house before the Civil War. A red convertible, its tailfins glinting in the sun, whizzed by on the street. The frat boys in the back rose up and jeered, “Never laugh when the hearse goes by or you might be the next to die!”
Andrew ignored them as he and George carried the casket into the parlor. The muted velvet drapes stifled the noise as they broke the crate away from the mahogany wood with silver fittings. George cleared away the crate and excelsior and Andrew polished the casket and made it ready for its inhabitant.
It was well past supper-time when Edward and Joe emerged from the basement, smelling of formaldehyde and decay, Edward's pale skin almost luminous in the twilight. Chancellor Walker was strapped to a board between them and they carried him in and casketed him. Edward whipped out a black pocket comb and arranged Walker’s slightly tumbled hair. Andrew watched approvingly.
“Visitation begins at five tomorrow night.” Andrew shook Joe and George’s hands. “Have a good evening, gentlemen.” The assistants left, turning out most of the lights, leaving only the casket display lights burning.
When they were gone, he looked at Edward. “You, sir, need a shower.”
Edward gave an infectious grin and combed his own hair. Andrew was impervious. “I know. Anything good for dinner?”
“We have cold roast beef. It seems appropriate with a dead man beneath our floor.” Andrew still hadn’t smiled. He knew the Grave Undertaker act would arouse Edward more than any affection. His long-time companion was a bit on the ghoulish side. It was a hazard of the trade. They went upstairs for dinner and Edward’s promised shower.
He came out, wearing only undershorts of a hideously garish card-and-dice design. Andrew had the meal laid out, a pair of roast beef sandwiches and some carrot sticks for each of them. The crystal water goblets were full of milk.
“It was an easy job today,” Edward said, sitting down and picking up a sandwich. “Old Tom, he’d been gone long enough that rigor was past.”
“Don’t bring your work to the table, Ed. If I wanted the noxious details of your unholy travails, I would have been an enbalmer myself.”
Edward shot him a passionate look over the table. Andrew wanted to smile, lean over and kiss him, maybe even have him there on the table, breaking dishes and smearing food. Instead, he only set his long, funereal features into a mask of coldness and finished his meal in silence.
The dishes done, Edward caught Andrew and pushed him into the bedroom. “Say it,” he demanded.
Andrew, not smiling, donned the top-hat. “Dearly beloved-” he began, only to have his mouth stopped with Edward’s kiss. He returned the kiss. The shades were always drawn abovestairs, and they were very careful about which side of them the lamp was on. It wouldn’t do, not a bit, for word to get out that the undertaker and his long-time companion were inverts.
Andrew had always liked that term better than the newer gay or the more clinical homosexual. Invert. It went nicely with introvert and undertaking was, by necessity, a solitary life. Unlike the preacher, no one ever asked him round for dinner. Unlike the diggers, he couldn’t go for a couple of beers with the other guys at the bar after a hard day’s work
And what woman would live here? They kept the house up, but it still was old and smelled of musty wall-paper and ancient plaster. It settled in the night with unquiet groans and the floorboards creaked when no feet trod on them. What woman would live with strange odors from the basement, caskets in the parlor and a corpse or two under her feet? No, he had been lucky the day he found Edward, and he knew it.
Edward was a bit ghoulish, true, and his cheerful disposition was at perpetual odds with his work. But nothing damped his spirits and he was never more cheery than when working on the corpses.
He was clever too. When a local matron had frowned at his buying White Rose Jelly, he’d smiled pleasantly at her and said, “Keeps their skin soft through the funeral, you know. I daresay you use it the same way.” He’d winked and added the White Rose slogan, “A thousand and one uses and you know what that one is, ladies.” Andrew had reprimanded him for being so open, saying they could as easily use shortening or butter in the bedroom.
But Edward kept kissing him, hands all over him, the White Rose giving off its faint scent as he opened it. Andrew let himself be guided to the bed and lay back, looking up. He relaxed under his lover’s hands.
“Keep going,” Edward insisted, setting Andrew's work hat carefully on the hat-stand.
Andrew took a deep breath. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our final respects-” Andrew broke off with a groan as Edward worked two slick fingers into his ass.
“Go on,” Edward insisted, rubbing his own hard cock, and pumping the fingers just a little.He kissed Andrew just briefly.
Andrew tried to think what would come next in the eulogy. Edward's fingers, long and cool and strong, kept pumping him. “To pay our final respects to Thomas Walker, beloved husband, devoted father, trai–trailblazing chancellor–ah God, Edward!”
Edward had finished with the fingers and replaced them with his cock, and Andrew shuddered beneath him as he always did. Edward laughed. “I usually have you by devoted father. You’re getting better.”
Andrew smiled. “And you are always good, my love.” He pressed his lips to the Y-shaped autopsy scar on Edward's chest. “I'm so lucky to have you.”
Creepy pics, a double dozen for Halloween, hosted by a hedgehog from the Nashville Zoo
We resume our Hollywood horror after the cut
