The Stalking Man

In this world there exists primeval evil. There a darkness to each person, and a desire to commit terrible acts either out of pleasure, or curiosity. Due to the concept of evil we can imagine the extremes of this nature. We can take into account those things which drive people to do them. We can ponder the outcomes such actions leave and imprint on the world and people they are visited upon. But no one can ever estimate the lengths to which some men will go to ensure evil is done, and let chaos and hatred rule the day. These men are always to be feared.

My name is Daniel Bucket, and I am thirty eight years old. From the time I was twenty-six, up til’ now, there has been a man trying to kill me. Not just that, but a few times he’s almost succeeded. I don’t know why he hates me. I don’t know why he does what he does. He’s just a force of hate and malice that I know won’t rest until I’m in the ground.

I grew up in Starke, Florida, the son of a man who owned a hardware store and a mother who had skills in baking for home. I grew up, like most kids did, working in my father’s shop. I remember catchin’ a few thieves trying to sneak screws and bolts out the doors, in their pockets. The old timers couldn’t tell the difference between the clankin’ of coins and the clankin’ of bolts in a youngster’s pants. But I could.

I remember catching this one kid, this Johnny Redel, sneaking a wrench out the door in his pants, pretendin’ it was his pecker. Flauntin’ it n’such. I didn’t believe that there for a second. We had the brat pull his pants down right there outside the store and go put the thing back. Yeah, ain’t nobody could steal from us. Not in those days.

Things changed after my pa’ died. The store up and closed down, got turned into a storage shack by some big business. ZICOM, or something. My ma’ worked out the house and some of our neighbors pitched in the get me through schoolin’. I moved after my ma’ died of a broken heart nearly eighteen years later. That was back in 1939.

I’ve grown up since then, now. Got a place of my own, out in Palatka. My whole life I ain’t ever left Florida. When I got out there I took to driving a lot more. I tried entering into the sales and hardware trade, but no matter how well you know something nowadays, go one town over and people go about it completely different.

So entered in to welding. Got myself an apprenticeship under a guy named Joe Dirnt, flew on the wing a few years and established myself on the other side of town after Joe went into retirement. Joe was a kind man, wise, like them wizards some folks read about in Tolkien. he was a good friend, but an even better teacher.

When I finally had my business up and runnin’ I took out a few hundred for alcohol I’d keep stocked up in the house. Never thought I’d be one to drink so much, but the truth of the matter is that I never cared much for the whiskey, like everyone else I knew did. My go-to was always the red pinot noir. God, what I wouldn’t do for fresh peaches dipped in a glass of wine.

The collection I’d accumulated at home consisted of bourbon, whiskey, rum and the red. I only ever drank the wine as the rest was for entertaining. Plus I liked having the brown bottles on display, adding a southern charm to my dining room, as it were.

Eventually I did taking to going out to bars. Not to meet a woman, but to switch up my routine so I didn’t end up sitting on the couch til’ three in the a.m. and drinking away to radio hosts. It was when I decided to go round to the bars that my fears of good-old-boy confrontations became a reality.

Growing up in Starke, I knew how it was. Florida was south, but it wasn’t too south that all you had was folks with no teeth and trailer parks for miles. Florida was better than that, lightyears away from Georgia where colored folks were considered free game. But the night I met the man who tries to kill me, I would never look at bars or small-town boys the same way again.

Now I ain’t no weakling. A man ought to be able and hold his own. Standing five foot-eleven, I ain’t too much of a threat, or too much of a pushover neither. Before the arrival of the man who tries to kill me I had only been in three fights. I don’t count wins or loses. being able to assert your dominance over another human being by saying your stronger, or they’re weaker, is nothing but an ego stroke. Fights are fights, and long as one party inflicts pain, as another one receives it, well in my eyes nobody wins. It’s just a mess’a hurt.

Now all this went down at the Ribshack. It was this wooden throw-together that sat on the side of a backroad between Palatka and Gainesville. When I came pulling up there were the beginnin’s of a brawl brewing in the bar between two biker sorts. One a blonde, the other a bearded killer.

I never got their names, but what I can tell you from that night is how their utter drunken rage tore apart everything that tried to break the two apart. I’d never seen anything like it. I was out of my car, ready to head inside by the time they came rolling out of the bar. A crowd had gathered and the two men, both armed with shotguns, proceeded to just beating each other with them, like they were bats.

The bearded killer, as I called him, got his gun knocked out his hands by the blonde guy and stumbled back for it after the thing had fallen at my feet. The bearded killer turned back, holding his arms out to me, demanding I pick up the gun and throw it to him. In the chaos of the crowd looking on, I froze, unable to retrieve the gun.

I stepped back and as I did there came the firing of another shotgun. Shrapnel ripped through the back of the bearded killer as the blonde biker had finally gained the brains to use the gun as a gun, and not a club. The bearded killer fell at my feet, damning me for not handing his his shotgun. He stunk of whiskey and vomit as he coughed up blood, dying quick to the slow.

The blonde biker, who was still standing when the other guy had fell, nodded to me, thanking me for not retrieving the killer’s gun. But before I could think the words that explained that I had to part in their brawl, ranger gunfire raged from the side of the highway beside us, as sheriffs shot the blonde biker dead before me.

That night I was questioned by police and set off back home to try and deal with what I had just witnessed. You think violence was like how it was on the radio, but in real life it’s so much different. There’s so much more pain for all those involved.

That night I went home I kept waking up with nightmares. I seen folks get run over by automobiles in my time. I seen folks get gridded up in machines. But I ain’t never seen anything like that fight. There was never such a picture of hate, of two people desiring nothing more in the world than to kill the other, even if it meant their own death. Sickening.

But that night, after the police had got away, as I woke and headed into the living room, I could smell the stench of southern whiskey in the corner. And when I looked over there was the figure. I figured it was a home intruder, come to rob and kill me in my sleep, but when I flipped on the lights there came the shape of the bearded killer, standing in the corner of my house with his fists clenched.

I back up and headed for the kitchen. I had no time to think as I went for my knife drawer. When I had opened it the killer had turned the corner. As he stepped forward I had gotten the knife in my right hand, turned and shoved it into his head, through his ear, as he was closer than ever by then.

I stumbled back, foolishly leaving the knife in his head. Something like that should have killed any person, but the killer just pulled it out, dropped the knife and came closer. I ran through my house and he chased after me, knocking over my whiskey shelf and pinning me down. I took one of the bottles and smashed it over his head. His grip on my left arm was loose as I shoved the end of the broken glass into his throat.

This was it. What I had feared most in life. One wrong move could land me dead. I had no time to think about it thought, and as I tried to comprehend why he was so hard to take down, me shoving the glass into his throat seemed to hurt him some. he stumbled back and I kicked him in the jaw with my right loafer. He fell back and I went to retrieve my revolver from my living room that I had in a box.

Thank god, I had enough time to get the gun, which I kept loaded, and turned to see the bearded killer coming for me from across the room. I put two bullets in his chest, one thought each upper lung, and he fell back.

I ran around him, not trusting what would happen next and thought up an idea if he did get back up, given one last burst of adrenaline. After knocking over the shelf the killer was caked in whiskey, making him flammable. I ran out to my car, opened the door and grabbed my pack of matches.

When I turned around to head back inside, he was there! I felt a knife pierce my shoulder, and as I did I unloaded three rounds into his stomach. After stumbling back I pointed the gun at his stunned body. My sixth and final bullet went into the right side of his forehead, making him fall onto his back. I wasted no time and lit up two matches, setting him ablaze and stepping far back, about ten to fifteen feet.

Like clockwork, he began to move again. By this point his leather jacket had burned into his flesh and every surface of his skin had been turned charcoal black. His head was like that of a skeletons, burned black all around, as he stood up in a struggle and began to walk towards me. I waited for the fire to spread and saw him collapse again, this time for good.

I headed back inside, phoned for the police and waited. When I met the cops again the body of the bearded killer was gone. I would go on to learn that night that his body did, in fact, disappear from the morgue. The rangers were confused at first, but got the idea once I made the story believable enough for simple minds to swallow.

Since that time I’ve moved around. I didn’t make too much of a stink about his body being missing in front of the officers. I didn’t want them thinking I was insane and locking me away, just for the killer to track me down again. Even after that night I could never get a name. The cops ran research on the killer’s body while they had the guy in the morgue, but nothing came back. He was a total ghost.

I’ve seen my stalker three times since that night, over the years. Each time I take a chunk of him with me, but he gets stronger. I feel like there’s some butter force warning me of his attacks, as I always wake from nightmares feeling that he’s near.

In fact, before I chose to recount all this I had woken from a night terror containing my favorite biker. I know he’s close now, approaching slowly. I think this time I’ll decapitate him. Maybe that’ll put him out for good.