M is for Matty-Bob (A-Z of Horror Book 13) Read online

  The thought of having his family subjected to this maniac’s fantasies brought Iain’s mind back into focus. He climbed to his feet, leaning against the wall for support.

  “Matty-Bob?” he asked, once his balance had returned.

  “Yes?”

  “You know I grew up on a council estate, right?”

  “Yes, you grew up poor and managed to make something of yourself. It’s such a wonderful story.”

  Iain nodded. “Then allow me to give you something from my past.”

  Matty-Bob grinned, but the smile was soon wiped off his face when Iain booted him between the legs like Pele kicking a football. He fell over backwards like an ironing board, groaning all the way.

  Iain was straight out the front door and yelling for help.

  Three kids playing cards at the side of the road screamed when they saw him running towards them naked.

  One little girl pointed a finger at him and shouted. “You won’t fiddle me, you pervert.”

  Then the three of them took off, screaming for their parents.

  Iain looked around, seeing no adults to help him and wondering what the hell people would think of him standing there in the buff. His penis had shrunk to a raisin and his fat belly was heaving in and out. If this ended up on Facebook, he was ruined.

  Matt-Bob came staggering out the door behind him. “Why won’t you just love me,” he pleaded. “All I’ve done is support you. I have all of your books. Even that shitty one, Thrillobytes, that you took off sale. When I heard Amazon banned D is for Degenerate, I sent them my own shit in the post. Everything I do, I do for you, Iain.”

  Iain backed off, gravel biting his heels and making him wince. “Just… just wait until the next time I do a convention. We can hang out all day then. You have my hair, what more do you want?”

  “I want you in me?”

  Iain pulled a face. “I don’t even know what that means, but it doesn’t sound like something I would agree to.”

  “You’re so wonderful, Iain. So much better than that talentless hack, Matt Shaw. You and me should take a trip together. I know it’s hard work being a father, so let’s go to Vegas!”

  Iain kept on backing away. In the distance he noticed the children were returning with their furious looking parents. They were looking to beat up a pedophile, but it was not what it seemed. Iain was the one who needed help.

  “You know,” Iain said, trying to stall. “Disney is really more my thing.”

  Matty-Bob gritted his teeth and started beating his own head with his fists, over and over again. “Damn it! I knew that, I knew that. So dumb, so dumb!”

  Iain put a hand out. “It’s fine, Matty. Just calm down.”

  Matty pulled his fists away from his head and glared at Iain. A line of blood formed from his hairline down to his nose. “My name… is… Matty-Bob!”

  Matty-Bob rushed towards Iain, the knife held out in front of him once again. But this time it didn’t look like he was coming for hair.

  Iain turned and ran, arms flailing in the air. “Jesus, God, oh bloody ‘ell. Help me, somebody. Oh bloody ‘ell.”

  Matty-Bob yelled strange obscenities. “You mother-humping ass-butt!”

  Iain looked at the children and their arriving parents, cried out to them for help, but he only made them confused.

  They would never make it over to him in time.

  Matty-Bob closed the distance between them. Raised his knife. Snarled.

  The screech of tyres.

  A maroon Nissan Qashqai squealed around the corner, almost going up on two wheels.

  Matty-Bob froze, looked confused at what he saw coming towards him.

  Then the large family car thumped into him, sent him toppling into the air, over the panoramic sunroof, and back down to the unforgiving road.

  There the man lay now, panting in the street, his antique tuxedo torn and wet with blood.

  Sally pulled on the handbrake and leapt out of the car. She approached her naked, panicked husband with caution. “Iain, what the hell is going on?”

  He shrugged. “You know, just work.”

  Sally grabbed Jack out of his car seat and moved Iain away from the injured maniac on the road. The neighbours arrived and tried to understand what they were seeing. Pretty soon they seemed to get a grasp on the situation and didn’t seem to mind the fact that Iain was naked at all. In fact, both the men and women in the crowd seemed delighted by what they saw. They couldn’t help themselves but wink and purr in his direction.

  One of the members of the crowd stepped forward to speak with Iain. “I’m sorry we weren’t here to help, Mr Rob Wright. A man as talented and handsome as you should always have someone watching out for him. Rest assured that from now on, no one in this street will ever fail you. We are forming an Iain Rob Wright Protection Society and will never again allow you to come to harm.”

  Iain nodded and shook hands with the man. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Iain?”

  Iain opened his eyes and saw his wife staring at him. “Sally?”

  “Yes, I just said the police are on the way. Come on, we need to go inside and get you covered up. You’re freaking everybody out. I think you messed yourself a little at the back.”

  Iain looked down at the shit on the back of his thigh and realised he must have done it when he was running in terror. He was usually due a toilet break around now – he’d missed it. He looked over at Matty-Bob who was still down on the ground, semi-concious. “Is this the price of fame?” he asked his wife.

  “No,” she said. “This is the price of you being a dope. Now come on, inside.”

  ***

  Later on his official blog, Iain Rob Wright wrote concerning the incident:

  “I don’t know if I can ever get over something like that… It’s weird. Even though I know Matty-Bob is institutionalised, I still think about him once in a while.”

  Following the blog post was a single comment, left by a fan named Brian Stone. He simply stated: Didn’t you steal that from Misery?

  END.

  Alternate Version.

  What follows was taken from the diary of institutionalised patient, Matty-Bob Cash, concerning the events of Spring 2015.

  Although Internet access is limited to mental patients, Matty-Bob is sometimes active on his Facebook account. It can be found here:

  www.facebook.com/saintflacco

  Matty-Bob Cash’s version of events.

  "Wake up fat boy!" I heard as a boot rocketed into my groin, instantly waking me up from my drug induced coma.

  I lay naked on the cold, tiled floor, shivering and screaming in pain.

  "Put this on!" A husky voice that sounded like the person was trying to be Batman said to me and flung something red at me.

  It was a child's superhero cape. I held it over my genitals, hiding what little modesty I had, even though the cape was no way near big enough to cover my foot long – average sized – well average for a man from Ipswich – penis.

  "Not there, SuperCock. Wear it properly." The mystery man stood in front of me dressed in black wearing a cardboard mask of some skinny, bearded horror writer who I had been told not to read.

  Fingers trembling I fastened the drawstrings of the cape up around my neck.

  The man grunted satisfactorily, "Mmm, man, I should do you again now you've got that on SuperCock, you've got me a-twitchin." The man pulled down his black sweatpants and I stared in horror at the monstrosity that was his penis. Gargantuan and black veined it reared and hissed with a black forked tongue.

  "Are you the Devil?" I stammered, pulling myself into a tight ball, my testicles and penis shrunken to the point of inversion.

  He chuckled and turned his skinny, quite anti-climactic- compared-to-the-devil’s-dick, white arse to me and bent over.

  Something that appeared to be a white flower bloomed from his anus, it wasn't until he pulled and plucked at what I thought were petals that I realised it was a massive pair of white y-fronts. />
  The material seemed to go on forever – like when a kiddie magician does that trick with the knotted handkerchiefs – as he yanked the y-fronts out of his anus. He flung them at my face and I screamed as the stained material came into contact with my delicate ginger skin.

  "Put them on."

  I did as I was told.

  The man approached me and crouched down to my level. His cold eyes bore into my very soul. "Now you will do everything I say."

  I nodded. What choice did I have with this psychopath before me?

  "You will go home and erase everything you own by Iain Rob Wright. Completely delete any record you have on him."

  I couldn't believe what he was asking. I idolised this writer – he was the epitome of perfection in every way possible. A living deity. The Second Coming. The man was like a God in my eyes. Every time he released a new book I would be the first in the line on Amazon to download it. Paperbacks adorned my bookcase. Each time he posted something on Facebook I was the first to like it. I followed him everywhere online. He was an inspiration to anyone who wanted to write horror. They would make films of his books, films of his life. A statue would surely stand erect in his home town some day.

  Blue plaques on everything he had used.

  IRW sat here.

  IRW ate his Subway at this table.

  This man was clearly a jealous writer who feared for his own sales, but surely what good would just me erasing him from my life achieve? I am but one man.

  I shook my head, even though I feared it would cost me my life. I thought about my pets at home, my wife Manjo, and my triplets Iain, Rob, and Wright. How would they cope without me?

  But I would never strike a blow against the man I secretly had a little shrine to at the back of my coat cupboard. Never.

  I forced myself to my feet and stood defiant, jaw raised in determination. "Never. I won't do it."

  Using the karate skills I learned from watching all five Karate Kid films, I raised both arms in the air, span around, and hit him with the hardest, most powerful, noxious fart I could muster. I'm not ashamed to admit I shat.

  The combined gases and rank skidmarks from my perpetrator's own arsehole were enough to render him unconscious giving me the upper hand.

  I bent down and took the skinny, bearded horror writer mask off and was shocked to see the same face underneath.

  In his pocket I found a piece of paper, which had my hero's home address, bank details, clothes size, and, oddly enough, favourite pizza topping, along with the message. "I'm going to kill you, Ian."

  Iain hated it when people misspelt his name.

  On the reverse was a printout of a screenshot. A rather rubbishly photoshopped photo, that anyone with half a brain would see through, cruelly depicted my face on the body of what appeared to be an overweight middle-aged woman. ' Ian Rob Wright FTW' was written in red across the doughy belly.

  I peered down at my own chiselled torso, the light glistened off my six-pack as I tried to contain my manly rage.

  I should have killed the man outright, but I didn't have it in me. I did the only thing someone in my shoes would do. I took the details and went to warn my hero of the potential threat to him and his family.

  I ran, cape billowing out behind me, y-fronts pulled up under my armpits, and the unconscious man's muddy boots on, and dived through the window like Superman.

  Only I wasn't him.

  Strange visions echoed through my mind.

  Wizards eating cheeseburgers.

  A talking arse with a moustache and eyes on one buttock spoke Spanish to me whilst simultaneously puffing out smoke rings from it's opening.

  The word 'Dave' walked past on legs in cartoon form like something out of The Yellow Submarine.

  Music that I could taste, touch, and smell seeped visually as well as audibly out of a colossal bronze statue of a question mark.

  An inside-out dog walked up to me and repeatedly said the word, "pinprick."

  My head swirled and swam with insane imagery, and as they began to dilute into the real world, their madness was left inside me.

  I pushed myself to my feet and gazed back at the window I had dived through. I was lucky it hadn't any glass and was on the ground floor; otherwise I might have grazed my knee or something.

  The box of acid tabs that I landed in, Hicky's Happy Times printed on the box, had addled my brain and left me in a delusional fugue.

  My eyes focused on the piece of paper in my hand and I headed for the address, the purpose of my mission slightly confused.

  I was disappointed when I sat on the Wright’s lawn. It was extremely unkempt and tainted the image I had of my hero somewhat. Mowing the lawn in his sandals and shorts whilst his baby – Jack, according to the details on the paper – played with his beautiful wife and mother. Iain's wife and Jack's mother. The same person obviously.

  I started plucking at the grass, to help him keep up his professional image, I knew deep down that he was so busy giving his fans wonderful writing that he had no time for such mortal things as grass cutting.

  I tried to gear myself up to approach the house, but the visions, and the fact I was dressed like some backwoods inbred adult baby, shattered my confidence and wrecked my nerves.

  Then I saw him, God Incarnate, and I lost myself for a moment.

  "Can I help you?" The man said, "You're in my garden."

  He turned slightly to admire his perfect reflection in his shed window and a freak gust of wind blew my sheet of paper with my evidence that I wasn't a complete whacko away, whilst rather strangely adding a pair of glasses to my face and making my hair look slightly ginger.

  I leapt up to try and catch the paper but it was gone so I improvised. "I know, I know, you're Iain Rob Wright. You call your fans Wrighters. Well, I'm your biggest Wrighter. I love you..." A hiccup stopped me from continuing my sentence to say. "I love you when you write horror but am equally fond of your thriller stuff also."

  "How did you know where I live?" he asked staring at my y-fronts lecherously.

  Not knowing how to go about telling him of his dangerous possible nemesis, I panicked and spoke gibberish.

  I told him the basic stuff I knew about his address being listed at Companies House.

  A look of intense hatred, or maybe trapped wind, crossed over his face and he shouted at me. "What do you want?"

  "To meet you, of course. Did you get my email, my picture?" I had sent him a photo of his entire collection, which I owned, even the shit one Thrillobytes, but he didn't seem grateful, the arsehole.

  He told me that I shouldn't be there, and clenched his fists angrily.

  I stepped forward, hands raised to show him I meant no harm. I tried to distract his obvious violent tendencies towards me by praising up one of his books but I made a foolish mistake by getting one of the words wrong.

  His rage was reaching boiling point. I had to try and blag my way out of it. I made up some crap about relating to the main character in the book thinking it would please him.

  "Not really. You need to leave. I will chat to you happily via email, but you can't come to my family home. My family deserve privacy."

  I needed to calm him down. He had mentioned his family. That should do it. "How is little Jack, and Sally, too, of course? Where is she?" I thought that seeing his wife and baby would help quell the fire within him.

  "Out," he lied. I could see them peering out of the window of a room filled with crappy nappy fumes.

  I tried my best to keep him talking and seeing as he seemed to be up his own arse I thought it best to continue conversation about his books.

  This didn't go down too well and my offer of having a calming cup of tea only antagonized him more.

  I said my farewells and even that made him suspicious.

  He asked me what I meant by it and I was overcome with fear. "Nothing." I said lip quivering, "Keep writing Iain." I remembered something about him being a council estate chav at some point, so added some slang that he may
be familiar with. "You da man."

  Iain growled at me and stepped forward. I ran towards the nearest fence and tried to leap it. My foot tripped over a gnome – that he had specifically had made in his likeness – as I jumped and the elastic in the filthy y-fronts caught on the fence. I dangled foolishly, the pants exposing my penis and testicles and giving me a wedgie that drew blood.

  "Jesus," he said out of pure cock envy. "Let me open the back gate for you."

  2.

  I legged it down the road, the acid induced visions finally dissipating and I realised that I must have come across as a right psychopath to Iain. I was still concerned for his precious little family's safety with the real psycho still out there.

  I had noticed that I was getting a bit cold, what with my current outfit, and coincidentally I found myself standing outside Freaky Frankie's Pawn Shop. A young, dark haired woman, with a scary backcombed coif stood in the doorway and beckoning me with a finger. She would have been attractive, if not for the drool dripping down her grey sweater.

  She made a lecherously guttural noise at me as she took in my manly physique and whispered in the filthiest voice imaginable, "Oi, oi, saveloy "

  She was obviously some kind of pervert, but I eyed the clothing rack in her shop and wondered if we could come to some arrangement. I told her my predicament and she led me into the shop.

  She smelt quite nice, of avocados and banana bread.

  As I followed her, she walked up to the counter, one hand down the back of her dirty sweatpants scratching frantically. She pulled her hand out and ran her fingertips along beneath her nostrils like she was playing some kind of nasal panpipes. She offered her hand towards me and grunted. "Arse?"

  I politely declined her offer and watched as she switched a CD player on. An excruciating rendition of Careless Whisper, played on saxophone, filled the shop.

  "Dance! Dance for me and I'll give you an outfit for your outfit."

  Feeling like a piece of meat, I slowly started swaying in time with the music.