‘Lighting the Corpses’ (a short horror story)

Introduction to “Lighting the Corpses”

I don’t remember what went into the creation of this story.

I was in the throes of love withdrawal.

I was angry and wanted to hit back at the world.

I was beginning to find my feet as a writer.

I wanted to sell a story to the Horror Writers Association anthology “Robert Bloch’s Pyschos.” So “Lighting the Corpses” came to pass.

(By the way, I hate that title. I went with it because I couldn’t think of something better.)

This story is a tad overwritten but reading it all these years later, I’m surprised at how good it is. I mean, it’s really good. It works on multiple levels and I’m happy with it.

That’s all. A brief introduction.

Except this – I hope you’re happy with it too.

—

LIGHTING THE CORPSES

Searching, searching, Zeke roared across the night, pausing only to burn a man and watch him die.

So easy, now, in the focus of his rage. So viciously fun. But he couldn’t linger too long. He had others to burn. And one, a very special man Zeke called “Father Baptist,” a man who could not wait Zeke’s tenuous grasp on this world, would burn cell by cell, molecule by molecule, down to the ash of his soul.

Once Zeke found him.

Like this man, who was dying slowly and horribly as Zeke watched him, on the sidewalk outside Zeke’s old apartment. Zeke had come here hoping to find Father Baptist gloating over his crime, but the apartment had been empty. Instead, he’d seen this man. A 53-year-old CPA, divorced a year-and-a-half, who was slowly losing touch with his life for the want of companionship. The man was loitering on the sidewalk, two doors down from his own unit, hoping the woman in 3F would open her door and step outside. If she did, he’d talk to her a moment, just a moment, and not ask her for a date – he wanted to do this thing gradually – and build on the innocence of another encounter tomorrow. He wanted to believe he was an attractive and witty and intelligent man, and he wanted to believe she would recognize those qualities in him, and he wanted to believe she would be the solution to his loneliness.

Zeke could see it. He could see it all, as if it had been printed in careful block letters on a third-grader’s blue-ruled writing pad. He could see into the man’s heart.

And this is how Zeke burned the man:

You are a fat, over-the-hill, dumb bastard, and you’re gonna be alone until you finally get sick of it and ram the business end of a 9mm up your trap and pull the trigger.

Zeke chuckled as the man suddenly frowned, unsure of himself, and turned, shuffling unsteadily to his apartment, one hand lightly brushing the wall and dragging a little, as if he were about to faint and wanted to catch himself. The man saw himself differently now. Gone was the hope he might have a chance at this woman, or any other woman. His hair seemed to bleach gray as Zeke watched; his stomach sagged over his belt and his spine softened and he aged to death in an instant, the flesh sliding from his bones in slippery, wet clumps of despair.

The man went back into his apartment. Six months from now, on a night that would have no end, the man would load three hollow-tipped bullets into the clip of a Reuger. …

Zeke smiled. So easy, now, in the focus of his rage.

So easy, now that Zeke was dead.

 —

Fire.

Fire was the great reducer, making everything simple, a brief rage of combustion and then a satisfied ash that could be reduced further to a mere black mark, a scar of carbon that said nothing more than something was burned by somebody.

Zeke likes fire.

He likes his fires.

A pile of leaves raked into the gutter. A candle made from melted crayons. His sister’s Barbie Beauty Salon, spirited out of the house and into a weedy lot down the street as she and Mom sit in the pediatrician’s waiting room to have a fake pearl tweezered out of her ear, stupid brat.

Zeke likes his fires. They say to him: Something was burned by Zeke. A nightmare, scorched from memory.

If Father knew, if Father knew, if Father knew … oh God, if Father knew.

And Zeke likes that, too.

 —

Zeke roared across the night, stopping at a convenience store he’d stopped at weeks ago, hoping Father Baptist would be there, reliving his own torment or renewing his hatred. The store was closed and vacant and dark. A large patch of floor tiles by the counter had been scraped up. Zeke remembered why.

Zeke had always wanted to put the match to somebody. Sidle next to them, unnoticed, as they picked through undercooked scrambled eggs and grease-soaked fingers of sausage at a Shoney’s breakfast bar, for instance, and scrape the business end of a kitchen match against the zipper of his Levis and touch the flame to the trailing edge of their shirt sleeve and watch the whole works go up in a cough of combustion, their sudden intake of breath and their screams tickling that part of his brain no other act of pleasure ever touched. …

Zeke chuckled and did not hear himself. He never heard sounds now – the crack of a jalousie window as he worked the pane from its frame, the breaking-bone sound of a door jamb being chiseled away from a deadbolt. He could no longer taste the bitter highball of perfume and sweat; he could not feel a woman’s fingernails digging trails of fire across his cheek, the vibrating spasms of her throat shaking loose with a scream as he ripped her panties from her thighs. …

But he could see, the living people around him and the fears about themselves that secretly ate out the center of their lives. The deadness in them. They were corpses of hope and self-delusion and fantasy. Touch a flame to those things and you burned off the good parts about themselves people so desperately needed to believe and you uncovered the real person hiding inside, a tight little cinder of terror.

But there would be no second burning at the convenience store. Nobody was home, not even a security guard to keep away the curious from the scene of Zeke’s final crime.

Certainly not Father Baptist.

 —

It is time to burn something again.

Mom and his sister are gone somewhere. They’re gone a lot after Father gets home from work. Funny, how they’re gone so much after Father gets home from work.

Now Zeke is going somewhere too. The weedy lot. To burn something. He has one of Father’s empty Falstaff beer cans, filled with charcoal starter, and a book of matches. Maybe he will burn the lot, or write his name in flames.

Maybe he will make an effigy of Father in twigs and leaves and burn that.

But he will burn something.

He is walking away from the house, the beer can hidden in front of his thigh, when he hears the front door bang open and a deep voice boom across the yard, “Where are you going?”

Instantly, his heart becomes a slab of meat in his chest.

“Just down the street,” he squeaks out.

“Come here,” his father commands.

He pivots to the left and sets down the beer can behind the bole of a pine tree.

“And bring that with you,” Father says.

The slab of meat in his chest rots in a way he can feel throughout his body. He trudges back to the house, feeling as though he his walking to his execution.

 —

Zeke roared. He dipped briefly at the hospital to see if Father Baptist had burned himself. While there he paused to show a 9-year-old girl that she would not beat the cancer spreading through her rickety bones, and for good measure he showed the girl’s mother that yes, it was true, she really was to blame for what had happened to her daughter. The girl became a skeleton before Zeke’s eyes. The mother grew fangs and began to eat herself, ripping chunks of flesh from her arms, her calfs, and swallowed them in bloody lumps.

Zeke crossed the interstate and torched a truck driver with the realization that he’d failed as a medical student and there was never, ever any chance he’d pass his GRE for that master’s in counseling. The trucker became a cloud of fly-blown ash.

He torched a waitress who had dreams of becoming a model. He torched a would-be jet jockey. And the pale little man who looked like a boy and rocked himself to sleep with idiotic visions of becoming a golf pro – Zeke lit him up with a bolt of self-doubt and the man-boy popped like a 100-watt bulb.

They were all dead. Burned out and dead.

Except Father Baptist.

 —

Father sniffs the can. His nose wrinkles.

“There’s something in there,” Zeke offers meekly, “but I wasn’t going to drink it.”

“Empty your pockets,” Father whispers. Zeke’s stomach drops a couple of notches, because the matches are in his pocket, and Father is not stupid.

And because he knows his father will search his pockets anyway, no matter what Zeke does to satisfy him or please him, Father will search his pockets because he is speaking in the doctor whisper he uses to search Zeke for cancer the way every good father searches his son, or the policeman whisper he uses to search Zeke for concealed drugs, or the coach whisper when he must check to make sure Zeke is still a boy and didn’t change into a girl overnight, so Father will search his pockets and then search beneath his T-shirt and then into his Fruit of the Looms and then. …

The whisper is strangely hoarse, coming from deep within the voice box, and it is all rattly and trembly as if Father were afraid of something.

“What’s this?” Father says, producing the matches as if he had just performed a magic trick. “Let’s see now … lighter fluid and matches. Were you planning to have a barbecue?”

Zeke stares at the floor, not saying anything.

So Father says, “Let’s see what else you’re hiding.”

 —

Dead.

It was a stupid thing, really. After being so careful for so many months, Zeke had screwed up. Once. Just once.

The cops had given him a name: “The Backroads Killer,” because he worked the rural roads, the isolated house trailers, the yuppie castles in the woods with satellite dishes aimed through gaps in the trees and BMWs parked beneath enclosed patios. “The Backroads Killer.” A joke to Zeke. Cops always named criminals they couldn’t catch, as if a name implied mystical abilities. The cops hadn’t caught Zeke.

But Father Baptist had.

Zeke had been careful. Pantyhose over his head, the car parked off in the distance, that sort of thing. But he’d screwed up with the girl at the convenience store at that intersection between two state roads, the intersection giving a reason, he guessed, for the convenience store and a boarded-up John Deere distributorship. That and a traffic light that blinked yellow for one direction and red for the other, and you had what passed for a “town.”

Zeke could have continued on to the farmhouses and shanties he knew were hidden in the woods downroad, or he could have turned left or right. But he’d stopped, there where the roads intersected like the crosshairs in the scope of some celestial hunting rifle.

The girl behind the counter was pretty and nervous and he liked them that way, and he liked her, and he liked dragging her by the hair of the head to the storage room at the back of the building, her screaming and crying and the way she knocked over the stacked six-packs of Evian only inflaming his lust. She begged him not to hurt her and she told him her father was a minister at the Klamath Briggs Baptist Church and how could he do this to a minister’s daughter, but it was afterwards, as he was wiping off his dick on her shredded blouse, that she turned mean and said she’d have the law on him and there were a hundred men in the community, her father included, who would track him down and cut off his balls, and that she hoped the video camera had gotten a good picture of him.

Video camera.

God, that had pissed him off. A video camera, a fucking video camera. How could he have been so stupid?

He stalked out into the store and found the camera, hidden above the coolers so that it filmed anybody who came through the door. Jesus Christ! he swore. Stupid! He ripped the camera from its mount and smashed it against the floor, and at that moment the girl made a dash for the front door. A spike of anger shot through him, from his stomach into his throat, and he hurled himself at her, knocking her into the counter. He grabbed her by the side of the head and slammed her skull against the floor and bellowed at her to tell him where the recorder was, but all she did was whimper, the spittle bubbling between her lips like beer foam, so he pounded her head against the floor, again and again, then one more time.

Finally, he stopped. She was out. Her body was limp. Her hair had created Rorscach dragons and thalidomide bats in an orangish-red smear of blood on the dingy floor tiles.

He yanked a set of keys from her belt and went behind the counter, where the safe was hidden. The recorder was inside another locked box. When he popped the cassette, the breath rushed out of him in a relieved gush. For a moment, he considered simply taking the cassette with him, but as he went around the counter, past the magazine racks, he paused by the neat rows of Zippo lighter fluid cans. The idea alone suffused him with a kind of energy that transcended sexual pleasure.

He torched her. He left the cassette on her chest and doused her with three cans of lighter fluid and then set her off like a Fourth of July barbecue.

And as he shifted his car from reverse into drive and headed off down the yellow light-blinking road, his heart pulling in a multitude of directions, a white Ford turned into the parking lot.

A white Ford.

He’d forgotten about the white Ford as the days, then weeks went by after he’d burned up the clerk and then watched as his handiwork played on the six o’clock news and the local newspapers. He felt the secret swell of potency crest as the cops and state Department of Law Enforcement agents fumbled about, clueless as usual, and all the delicious details of those murderous minutes began to fall out of memory.

Zeke would have to do it all again.

But he never had the chance.

A knock on the door. A nervous peek through the Venetian blinds. A white Ford parked in the guest space in front of his apartment, too battered and rusted for a government car, or a cop’s. Zeke opened the door. A man in a red-and-blue flannel shirt, blue jeans, hiking boots – nothing special about him. Except his eyes. His eyes were so old, so filled with some emotion that had gone beyond hate that Zeke actually felt a tittering thrill of terror squiggle up his spine.

Then Zeke saw that the man was holding a gun.

The man said, “You do understand,” and pulled the trigger.

Zeke felt something – the bullet, a force, something so elemental that it couldn’t be resisted, slam him into the wall, and then the joints in his knees came unpinned and he slumped to the floor, waves of pain crashing over him and threatening to send him under.

The man loomed above him. He looked as big as God, but he looked meaner, crazier than any brimstone-preaching backwoods Baptist’s version of God. He’d put away the gun. Now he had a gallon can of gasoline. He was unscrewing the lid.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “All these weeks. I saw your car. After you, you – ” and his voice split into a sob, “killed my – my – daughter – ”

He splashed gasoline, and Zeke’s terror rose convulsively above the pain and he tried to crawl away, a hitching groan gurgling out of his throat. The man spilled a trail of gasoline to the door, tossed the can aside and fumbled a Bic butane lighter out of his jeans pocket.

“You force me to do this,” he said with a wistful smile. “But I want you to understand something.”

He spun the flint wheel.

“As a servant of God, I love you.”

Zeke roared.

 —

Father is searching and mumbling in his sweaty voice, “You could have something here or maybe something in here and it’s my responsibility to find out what’s going on, and if punishment is required then punishment it will be, because it’s my job to raise you right; you know that, don’t you? Don’t you? You’ve put me in this position – you’ve forced me to do this and I’m only doing what every good father should do. …”

Zeke is half-sitting, half-lying in the bathtub, his clothes tossed hurriedly on the bathroom floor, and Father is searching him, and Zeke’s mind is a blood blister hidden somewhere beneath a callus of fear and shame as he waits for Father to groan suddenly and twitch as if he were having a seizure and then finish his search. His father’s words sink into Zeke’s thoughts like thunder muffled by distance, and with some kind of fevered half-awareness Zeke knows a storm is out there and he must seek refuge, so he imagines a wall of fire rising all around him, a protective ceiling of flame that evaporates the rain and absorbs the lightning and scours clean the dirty, nasty things falling from the sky of Father’s eyes.

 —

Zeke roared across the night. Dead. Burned and dead and revived by his rage, a force of hatred now. He blew into the Klamath Briggs Baptist Church and burned each and every person there, from the matronly choir director who knew she would hear the angels sing when she went to her sweet bye-and-bye, to the church softball coach who lived alone and gave teen-age boys rides to games and someday planned to have a private session in the dugout with his 15-year-old star pitcher.

He torched them all, moving silently and invisibly through the pews, the back rooms, the musty basement stacks of hymnals and cheap Bibles that were passed out to the homeless. And as he drifted back upstairs and swept down the aisle, his rage gathered about him like cassock, he encountered an elderly couple who had just arrived, who had come looking for news after hearing the terrible story about Reverend Lockwood, and did the county jail allow visitors because they wanted to see him, to talk to him, to hear it from his own lips that he’d murdered that man because they just couldn’t believe it, they couldn’t.

The county jail. Zeke smiled. Then roared.

 —

The fire flickers and dies.

The search is over.

Father is saying, “This is your doing. You know that, don’t you? You were sneaking off to start a fire. Fires are bad things, and you should know that. I thought I’d taught you better than that, but apparently I haven’t. It’s my responsibility as your father to raise you right, to make sure you know the difference between good and bad. Fires are bad things and you were going to do a bad thing, and now I have to make sure you never do such a thing again. Until you demonstrate to me that I can trust you, I’ll have to search you every day. Do you understand? And I want you to realize that this is your doing, that you are forcing me to do this. If I were you, I’d be ashamed. I’d be very, very ashamed. I’d be so ashamed that I’d never breath a word of this to anyone, because if you do everybody will make fun of you, or worse, they’ll think you’re crazy and send you off to reform school or jail or the insane asylum. So if I were you I’d just keep my mouth shut, and as long as you keep your mouth shut, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Do you understand?”

Zeke nods. His thoughts are consumed by a single idea.

“I want you to understand something else, too,” Father says in a firm voice. “I want you to understand that I’m doing this because I love you. I really do.

“I love you.”

Zeke’s thoughts are consumed by a vision of fire.

 —

He burned them. Stupid wads of people, eaten alive with fear. He left a trail of fire across the land, and when he arrived at the jail it was like a hot breath of desert wind, stirring papers and swinging open doors shut and setting the overhead lamps to penduluming, so that surly deputies looked up with frowns and inmates tossed in their bunks or cut loose with inexplicable snarls. A deeper shade of gloom seemed to fall over the place.

Zeke drifted down the corridors. An embezzler was here, and a man who had grabbed a moneybag from a restaurant manager, and a man who’d beaten his wife, and a car thief, and even a couple of drunks.

He passed them by.

It was in the final cell, in the deepest recess of the building, that Zeke found his prize. Lying on a bunk, his hands behind his head, his eyes closed but his mind deliciously open, notions of God and sin and the frailty of human spirituality spinning in his absurd circle of thoughts. Zeke became a shadow beneath the bunk and listened to Father Baptist, the former father, the former emissary of piety and forgiveness, dance around the rotten core of doubt that lurked beneath everything he was telling himself.

Zeke sent inquiring tendrils of himself snaking up the bunk posts, pouring through the wire mesh that supported the mattress and curling beneath the sweat-soaked, olive-drab blanket that covered Father Baptist, and he took his time doing this because, like the man he’d torched back at his old apartment, he wanted it to be a gradual thing, a search across the night and now a slow, stealthy approach, building the anticipation to a climax that would surpass the hatred he felt for this man. He went patiently, parts of him sliding up the wall like a curtain being raised, flowing into then out of cracks and cemented joints between cinderblocks, and parts of him drooping from the ceiling in leechlike, squirming gobbets that slipped silently beneath Father Baptist’s flesh.

There.

Zeke could see it clearly. All the things this man had done to cover it up, and still, Zeke could see it, could touch it, could burn away the deeds and convictions this man had formed over his lifetime to bring the terror squirming to the surface, into the light of what passed for truth, everything else withering in the heat of awareness.

This is what Zeke told him: What you fear about yourself is true. You are your devil.

Zeke backed away.

The man’s eyelids snapped open. His muscles cinched into rigid cords, the way an epileptic’s body galvanizes during a seizure, and the humanity flowed out of his face, a cold shock of terror freezing his expression into a stare so blank, so devoid of any human quality that Zeke actually moved back another step, fascinated but at the same time a little apprehensive, the way he’d felt when he torched Father Baptist’s daughter and the fire began to spread to the counter and the surrounding racks of candy bars and potato chips.

Father Baptist’s hands crawled beetlelike to his chest, where his heart slammed against the walls of his ribs like a diesel engine torn loose from its mounts. Flames that only Zeke could see began to consume Father Baptist’s body, whipping higher, through the ceiling, wrapping into a funnel of heat that scoured the flesh from his bones and the bones from his soul and transformed the tiny room into a smelter from which a lifetime of pain began to melt and run. Zeke retreated to the opposite wall. The heat was too intense, the light too bright, and he looked away. But still, he loved it. He loved it more than the look on a woman’s face when he broke down her door, more than watching flames ripple across the prone body of the girl at the convenience store, more than any of the dumb bastards he’d torched tonight. This is what he’d waited for, the depths of this man’s convictions fueling the pyre of his doubt, and it was beyond anything he could call satisfaction to watch the need that had given purpose to this strange afterlife flame up with such cataclysmic agony. He settled into the pits in the cinderblock wall and shouted gleefully into the inferno, “How does it feel, you son-of-a-bitch? How does it feel for a man like you, a goddamned minister, to know the devil inside you?

“How does it feel to burn?”

The room winked black and a voice that sounded like a doctor’s voice as he searches a patient for cancer, a policeman’s voice as he frisks a suspect for drugs … or a father’s voice as he searches his son for matches, “It feels pretty good, Zeke.”

Visions of fire.

Zeke liked his fires.

Something was moving on the bunk. Something he couldn’t quite make out. Something plated over with snake scales and bristling with stingers, and it skewered Zeke with a ray’s tail that sent pulses of raw pain scalding through him, jerking him aloft, an acid tendril slithering into a hangman’s noose around his neck.

“I want you to understand something,” it whispered. It had Father Baptist’s eyes, but that was all, and when Zeke’s rabbiting gaze darted into them he saw fire that only a minister could imagine.

“You force me to do this,” it whispered again, wrapping him with more tendrils, and pulling him closer.

Then closer still.

“But I’m doing this because I love you,” it said.

“Yes,” Zeke whispered, understanding again the ragged agony of this peculiar love as it licked over him in a smear of pain, reducing everything to its most simple form, a black ash that said nothing more than: Something was burned here.

Zeke roared.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image courtesy of PickPic by way of a Creative Commons license.

INTRODUCTION

Does comedic horror exist?

The producers of the “Scream” movies would say so, I think. But in fact, is “Scream” funny?

Well, it is my studied opinion that within the context of horror, yes, it is funny. I would call it gallows humor. It is funny the same way that “American Werewolf in London” and even the “Evil Dead” movies are funny.

These movies, and their cousins in book form, don’t take themselves seriously, not like “The Exorcist” or “The Shining.” And you know what? That’s OK. There’s a place for black humor in horror. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, would give that statement a thumbs up. I think.

When I sat down to write “Siren’s Song” I didn’t intend to produce a work of comedic horror. That’s just how it happened. I mean, c’mon. How could you write a story about a man who kills and dismembers his wife because of her relentless singing and now she haunts him from the faucets, toilet and shower drain where he disposed of her body, and it not be funny? That’s humorous, not in a literal, family relations kind of way. For horror, anyway.

So here you go. Meet Myron, long-suffering husband to Phyllis, who yodeled her way to an untimely demise. Myron carved her into small pieces and flushed her down the toilet or pushed her down the shower drain, and now she’s singing his … well, certainly not praises. More likely his negative attributes. And that’s where they exist at the moment of this writing, an uneasy, horror-stricken balance of power between murder and retribution.

And isn’t that the way it goes so many times in a marriage, two negatives holding each other in a kind of check – not mate, just check – that goes on and on until their collective life comes to and end. …

Or does it?

—

SIREN’S SONG

Myron heard his wife singing in the shower.

Only problem was, Myron was in the shower too. And Myron’s wife was dead.

“Not fair,” Myron said miserably, staring at the drain – your average, Norman Bates “Psycho” shower drain – from which his wife’s warbling song emanated. “Phyllis deserved to die.”

And it was true. Phyllis had deserved to die. A frustrated Ethel Merman – and only a person of Myron’s generation would have known who Ethel Merman was – Phyllis had sung to Myron and sung and sung and sung until one day, Myron had simply –

“MOOOOON RIVERRRRRR,” the drain squalled –

– snapped, like the proverbial rubber band wound too tight.

Myron left the water running but stepped out of the shower. He tiptoed across the icy tiles to the vanity and opened the cabinet. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror; “Oh God,” he shuddered and slammed the cabinet shut.

Every bit of 58 years. With tits like his grandmother’s and that poochy, old man’s gut between his navel and his dick. And gray chest hair, for God’s sake. Gray chest hair smeared in cold, slimy strands across his sagging, grandmotherly titties.

“Not fair,” he muttered and scuttled back to the shower. He remembered a day when he liked what he saw in the mirror, when he could run his hands over his flat chest and press his palms into taut skin and let his fingers wander to his crotch, imagining they were Sophia Loren’s fingers, or more forbiddenly, Mrs. Andrew Williamson’s fingers as she handed him a Coke while he throttled back the lawnmower. She’d wanted him all right. But he’d been too stupid to know it, a kid mowing lawns for spending money. But she’d wanted him.

“YOUUUU LIGHT UP MY LIFEEEEEE!” the drain yodeled. Myron sighed and stepped into the warm spray.

Then Phyllis had come along, and he’d settled for her, the operative word being “settled.” Thirty years he’d settled for her, their marriage no less than hell’s mortgage where you paid off the principal the first year and spent the rest of your life trying to overtake an interest load that only grew larger and larger, no matter how much money or attention you threw at it. The debts and the misery and the anger had piled so high Myron could see nothing else, and Phyllis had sung through it all no matter how many times he’d told her just to shut the hell up, her off-kilter contralto ever reminding Myron that he had been a fool for marrying her and a coward for not leaving her.

“THAT’S THE WAY – UH HUH UH HUH – I LIKE ITTTTT!” the drain tittered, and Myron rolled his eyes. Disco? Death did not become Phyllis. But then she had not died easily, Myron thought, remembering the afternoon when she had launched into a verse of “Ave Maria” and he had gone after her with a machete. She had fought him the good fight, screeching all the way, and he had liked the sound of her screams. But in the end he had cut her into tiny pieces, rinsing all the gooshy stuff down the bathtub drain; the bigger chunks he’d flushed. The last to go had been her tongue, still languidly waggling as he yanked the trap from the bathtub drain and forced it down the pipe with the handle of a plunger.

Then the singing had begun.

Petula Clark. The Cure. Threepenny Opera tunes. Diana Ross. Nursery rhymes. And Ethel Merman, god forbid, baaaaad Ethel Merman. It hooted from the drain pipes and gurgled from the toilets, and while Myron could not put a stop to it, he had one way of changing Phyllis’ tune.

“Just shut the hell up, Phyllis,” Myron whispered, squatting in the bathtub, his old man’s belly pooching out even farther. He uncapped the bottle of lye and poured it down the Norman Bates drain.

The song faltered, and became a hitching scream.

Now that, Myron said to himself, his knees creaking as he stood, was something he thought he could live with.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

“John Wick Chapter 3 – Parabellum” Starring Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and Asia Kate Dillion. Directed by Chad Stahelski. 130 minutes. Rated R.

Mladen’s take

John Wick and I are a lot alike, if the essence of freshly released film, “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” is the yardstick. John’s life and work in “Wick 3” are hampered by all sorts of rules, procedures, constraints and layers of management. I face those same obstacles daily.

Of course, there’s a difference between being a celebrity assassin in a wildly popular movie franchise and my often frustrating effort to keep health insurance for my family, a roof over our heads, and our cars running. I am leashed to others. Wick is not, unless he chooses to be. What the director chose for John in “Wick 3” was to leash him to the memory of his dead wife, which, thankfully, leads from one glorious scene of hyperviolence to another. But, that choice also produced a couple of chinks in the armor of the formidably entertaining Wick saga.

“Wick 3” is merely a good movie and the weakest in the franchise because of two problems, one with the story and the other with an important character.

“Wick 3” should’ve been more like its two predecessors, an intimate tale of personal redemption or, at least, a movie with a good excuse for all those heads getting blown apart and dogs attacking men’s groins. In Wick 1 we see John addressing very personal slights – a dead puppy and a stolen muscle car. I can sympathize with both. In Wick 2 he’s a hesitant, duty-bound killer honoring a marker. In those movies, John wanted out of the assassin racket. In “Wick 3,” he wants back in to stay alive to remember his wife, but changes his mind later. That wishy washiness is unbecoming of the planet’s most accomplished hitman. In Wicks 1 and 2 we see that it’s the world’s fault for keeping John a servant of the High Table, the gang of 12 thugs running Earth’s underworld. Bad people don’t leave John alone, so he has to defend himself, his property and his memories to impose order. Because of his do-rightness he, himself, is rendered ex communicado persona non grata for whacking a mob boss inside a hotel. In Wick 3, the HOTEL is punished by being “deconsecrated.”

On top of blacklisting a hotel, “Wick 3” offers other tidbits of bureaucratic and legalistic nonsense such as the notion of “fealty” to the High Table and the High Table’s dispatch of an “adjudicator” to settle its score with John and anyone who has helped him. “Wick 3” begins to meander, including a dip into mysticism, as a result. Of all the characters flowing through “Wick 3,” the adjudicator is the most frustrating. She is supposed to be a prim and proper bad ass representing the High Table’s interest, which is to keep everyone in line to make sure crime and profit go uninterrupted by rule breakers such as John. Instead, the adjudicator is a meek, stiff, uncharismatic, unintentionally droll and unconvincing enabler of the High Table’s will. Yes, the adjudicator’s flimsiness is somewhat offset by the strong female character, Sofia, in “Wick 3,” but damage to the story had already occurred by the time she’s introduced. The High Table and the adjudicator, instead of seeming to be all powerful, just seemed to be on their way toward stepping into John’s line of fire which, I suspect, will be the plot of “Wick 4.”

“Parabellum” is a dead language’s phrase for “prepare for war.” When you go see “Wick 3,” prepare to be disappointed. “Wick 3” lacks the emotional grit and gristle of Wicks 1 and 2. “Wick 3’s” bad girl is particularly unsatisfying and the film’s High Table assassin, campy. The weak motivation for “Wick 3’s” hyperviolence renders it something approaching gratuitous. I hope “Wick 4” corrects that weakness or Wick world-building will go the way of Star Wars. “Wick 3” gets a B from me. See it in a theater with vibrant projection and good sound.

Del’s take

Once upon a time there was a little movie about an undercover cop who infiltrated a car theft ring to bust the ringleader. That little movie, “The Fast and the Furious,” made the late Paul Walker a star and provided Vin Diesel with a hit on his resume.

So they made a sequel.

Then another.

Then another, where they rebooted the series.

Then another.

And another, ad finitum.

Each of those sequels required more action, bigger plots and higher stakes than its predecessor, until now Lamborghinis are being chased by nuclear submarines and Ferraris tossed from cargo planes as the “Fast and Furious” crew saves the world from (name your favorite apocalyptic nemesis).

In other words, silly.

Unfortunately that’s the trajectory being followed by the John Wick saga. What started as a personal and, dare I say, charming story of revenge by a man whose puppy got shot and his car stolen, is slowly evolving into something I no longer recognize – a bastard child of James Bond and “The Matrix.”

I don’t like it. I want the old John Wick.

That’s not to say “Parabellum” is a bad movie. It’s just not what I expected, and as Mladen pointed out, it deviated in ways I don’t think will work.

(FYI: Mladen is nothing like John Wick. I’ve never seen him chop off a person’s head with a samurai sword and he doesn’t even like dogs.)

The plot careens along as Mladen described it. I’ll further explain it picks up where the second movie left off, with Wick and his pit bull running for their lives after the ruling elite of the assassins’ guild, something called the High Table, excommunicates him and puts a price on his head. Every other phone on the street is ringing with the news that Wick’s bounty stands at a cool $14 million, which makes you wonder how all those killers manage to operate without putting each other in the unemployment line. There are THAT many. Think about it next time you’re in a crowded grocery store.

The methods of death are inventive and graphic. If I had to choose a favorite it would be Wick slapping a horse on the ass and the horse kicking an assassin into a wall, dispatching him to that great Died of a Horse Kicking paddock in the sky.

Mladen described the action as hyperviolent and he’s not exaggerating. Apart from a few slogs through muddy pacing in the second act, the movie is almost nonstop violence with people getting shot, chopped, sliced, diced, kicked, burned, or having their genitalia ripped out by vicious German Shepherds.

It was cool to see Keanu Reeves on the screen once again with Laurence Fishburne, and it was disappointing that Halle Berry’s role was so small. For Christ’s sake, she’s an Oscar winner. Put her to work.

Maybe she could have done a better job than Asia Kate Dillion as the Adjudicator, who came across as Mladen described: devoid of menace. And Keanu? Well, what can I say? Keanu was Keanu. He’s never had a lot of dialogue in these movies and “Wick 3” is no exception.

My big gripe is with the direction the movie took, with its emphasis on the worldwide mystery cult of assassins and all their rules, talismans and functionaries. It was like watching a tiger team of GS-12s stumble upon a cache of Uzis. It carries the Wick saga farther afield from its humble origins, from a man with a grudge who has payback on his mind into some kind of mystical figure fate has anointed with special powers. Maybe they should change his name to Neo Wick.

The action is exquisitely choreographed and the special effects spot on, but beware: “Wick 3” is a bloodbath, and it’s probably not what you were expecting after having watched the previous iterations.

There’s a sequel coming and I’ll likely see it. But it may be the last time I bump into John Wick in a movie theater. I like my action movies smart, not silly.

I give it a B.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.

Image courtesy of eOne.

“Your Son” (“Tu Hijo”) starring Jose Coronado, Ana Wagener, Asia Ortego. Directed by Miguel Angel Vivas. 103 minutes. Rated TV-MA.

Del’s take

It isn’t often a movie pisses me off. I hated “Natural Born Killers” so intensely I wrote a newspaper column about it. Unfortunately, “Your Son” falls into that category.

The movie is well made but I’m not going to give it a favorable review. I thought it was a useless piece of shit, not only unworthy of the time I spent watching it but a detriment to the human experience.

The story takes place in the Canary Islands where a successful surgeon (Jaime Jimenez, played by Jose Coronado) has just saved the life of a young boy. The surgeon, who is married with two kids, receives the desperate gratitude of the boy’s parents with the understated (and possibly condescending) humility of a man who’s often sanctified by overjoyed relatives when the prognosis results in the patient remaining on this side of the dirt.

That comes screeching to a halt when his own son Marcos (Pol Monen) appears in the ER. Marcos has had the living shit beat out of him, and floating around out there is a video record of the crime. In an instant Surgeon Jaime Jimenez is deprived of his calm, confident control over events and must trust his son’s fate to other surgeons and the cops investigating the assault.

Or must he?

Thus begins Dr.Jimenez’s odyssey for revenge. Suffice it to say things are not as they seem. Both Dr. Jimenez and the audience will receive a brutal instruction in the shortcomings of human moral anatomy.

I’ve seen movies like this, and some of them can be entertaining as hell. “No Country for Old Men” comes to mind. But something about “Your Son” triggered my anger reflex. Maybe it was the horribly sexist male-centric point of view, or the “What if it were YOUR son?” question the movie seems to ask.

Speaking to that point, I would answer that if it were MY son, I wouldn’t have done ANY of the things Dr. Jimenez did. Not one. His actions seem born of a monstrous selfishness I can’t wrap my brain around. Worse, the movie, by not exploring anything beyond Dr. Jimenez’s immoral choices, seems to approve of them, as if no reasonable person could have reacted otherwise. Seriously, what would you have done if it was YOUR son?

What a crock.

I think my overall objection has something to do with the fact that in every movie about man’s capacity to be a shit to his fellow man, the story always proceeds from the assumption that, hey, these things are wrong, so don’t do them. I don’t think “Your Son” does. I think its moral center is agnostic, which sounds fine for a psychiatry thesis but sucks for entertainment.

As I said, the movie is well made, albeit slow to the point of boring throughout much of its running time. The actors do a fine job. The script is well-written. The tone is consistent with the theme.

But “Your Son” is a piece of shit. I hated it, and I won’t recommend it.

I’ll give it a C-, because despite its vile message, it’s a well-made film.

Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.

Image courtesy of PickPic, Creative Commons license

On Sunday, Mom and I went to a garage sale at the Murder House.

“Murder House” is how the neighborhood describes the residence at 11 Pryor Road in Fort Walton Beach. Last month, William Butler snapped and stabbed his wife to death, then loaded a shotgun and killed his son and daughter. Another son managed to escape by climbing out a bedroom window and fleeing to a neighbor’s house.

I don’t know what compelled me to go there, because I have felt nothing but horror over those awful events, and pity for the 17-year-old who is now an orphan. I am not the kind of person to gawk at car accidents and I have no interest in the terrible things that sometime happen in our midst.

Still, there I was, feeling shitty at looking over their stuff … but looking nonetheless. This is what I saw.

At least one member of the Butler family was an avid fisherman. Leaning against the side of the house was a corn stack of fishing rods and reels, surrounded by tackle boxes with every kind of fishing lure you can imagine, the hooks all rusted, suggestive of salt water, not fresh water. Bluefish and speckled trout, not bream and bigmouth bass.

One table featured heaps of camouflaged clothing, which to me said: paintball. But it wasn’t paintball, because there were no masks or “markers” (i.e. guns). Instead, sitting on the ground next to camo table were two sets of archery equipment. Maybe a family member was into bowhunting.

I saw a lot of old technology, including boxes that contained reel-to-reel tape. Old movie soundtracks, music from the ‘50s and ‘60s. In some cases the tapes fluttered from the boxes like old, brittle streamers. Who listens to that stuff anymore? Where do you even find a reel-to-reel tape recorder/player? Ebay?

There were several laptops, and I could tell without looking too closely they were old. How? Because they were thick, with lots of ports for peripherals that probably no longer existed. One tablet had a shattered screen.

Another box contained hundreds of vinyl records. I could imagine collectors snapping up those LPs. I did not even look at them because I have nothing that will play a 33, but I could have bought something there that did. I saw numerous hi-fi’s and record players of varying sophistication.

There were other things – clothes, knick-knacks, candleholders, computer parts, and a paperback book with the cover ripped off.

Then, in one box, I found the item that sent me and Mom on our way.

A yearbook. From Meigs Middle School. Belonging to Katelyn Butler, who was only 14 years old when the world ended. Signed by her friends. Testimonials about their friendship, her future, the usual stuff. Notes tucked into the pages, in envelopes I didn’t open. Color photos.

Her short life, captured in a few glossy pages.

So we left.

I didn’t buy anything. I felt like a ghoul for even being there.

And now I feel even more horrible for a family I didn’t know, but one that, through their tragedy, brought a little more meaning to my life.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image courtesy of Marvista Entertainment.

“Most Likely to Die” Starring Chad Addison, Jake Busey, Tess Christiansen, Heather Morris, Perez Hilton. Directed by Anthony DiBlasi. 90 minutes. Unrated.

Del’s take

Hollywood has exhausted its trove of mask themes for slashers these days.

Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason Voorheis, Ghostface – they all have distinctive face coverings to make them scarier than what they really are – close-to-middle-age white dudes with mommy issues. A close-to-middle-age white dude is scary only when he shows up as your Tindr date, so if you’re John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper, you put your killer in a mask.

Hoping to join that cadre of baddies is The Graduate of “Most Likely to Die,” a room-temperature horror flick that never receives its diploma. Our Graduate wears an overbaked pot roast of a mask, which bears no resemblance to the conflict or subtext. To complete his ensemble he’s wrapped in a graduation gown, with a cap so sharp and deadly that if it were a human being, it could trade barbs with Bill Maher.

Too bad the script and acting aren’t equally cutting edge. The only thing they’re cutting is the cheese because this is one stinker of a scary movie. Don’t waste your time.

“Most Likely” features an ensemble cast starring Gaby (Heather Morris), a world poker wannabe who attends a reunion of her old high school clique at buddy Ray’s (Jason Tobias) remote hillside pad. She’s joined by eight others as they await their host, who’s mysteriously AWOL.

It takes no time for this Band of Mother******s to fall back into its high school pecking order, led by Brad (Ryan Doom), a recovering narcissist TV star who knocked up Gaby and dumped her when they were seniors (yet he still secretly pines for her, despite the presence of his supermodel shack job Bella – Tatum Miranda). But Gaby is having none of it. She’s already “lost big” to Brad once and she’s not going to do it again. We both know she’s lying through her fashionably bleached teeth.

Meanwhile, where the heck is Ray? It isn’t until the second act that somebody decides to go looking for him, and even that is a ploy to get a certain poker expert away from the others for some wooing and cooing.

They find a mysterious wooden shack where one of their members has been separated from her life by way of a slashed throat. Others turn up similarly murdered, and the story proceeds from there.

Clues are left along the way, but they aren’t developed. The manner of death might suggest a motive – that isn’t pursued. Nor is the possibility that one of them is the killer. It’s as if screenwriter didn’t know what to do with those complications and let them die on the vine.

The dialogue is as blah as unflavored yogurt and the pace as brisk as a jar of sun tea on the sidewalk. I’ve seen scarier episodes of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper.” Acting is similarly uninspired. The sole breath of life is Freddie (Perez Hilton), and even he is saddled with the stereotype of the over-the-top token gay boy who runs from the fight because he doesn’t want to break a nail.

I hated everyone and didn’t care who died. I wasn’t scared – not once – and stuck around only for the reveal, which was oddly anticlimactic and sprang from the ethers with little setup. My emotional investment lay in Gaby’s pricey convertible, which I hoped wouldn’t be scratched.

It’s a shame because “Most Likely” could have been a funny, sexy horror movie, like “Happy Death Day” or “Buffy.” Instead, it’s a paint-by-number middle school video project where every single part was phoned in.

I saw it Netflix, the online equivalent of the crappy Grade Z movie section in your old video rental store. But let me do you this favor:

Don’t bother. Grade D.

Stone is a former journalist and author.

“No Country for Old Men” Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald. 122 minutes. Rated R.

Mladen’s take

The most interesting part of “No Country for Old Men” comes at the end of the film during the credits.

The film’s makers claim, “This is a carbon neutral production: 100% of carbon emissions offset with Native Energy.”

Dang, what a bold, confident statement. How did producers know the movie is carbon-neutral with such certainty? Did they calculate the oil- or natural gas- or coal-based energy it took to train the animals in the film? Or the noxious, atmosphere-heating gases produced by a burning car? Or using blanks in the silencer-equipped, 12-gauge shotgun wielded by the delightfully remorseless killer portrayed by Javier Bardem?

“No Country for Old Men” is a good movie, regardless of its carbon-neutrality. Why it got the nod for best motion picture of the year is beyond me, though.

It’s a slick film with Texas’ austere plains and mountains as backdrop. Dialogue is good and all of the characters interesting but “No Country for Old Men” is, essentially, little more than a shoot ’em up movie. The plot is tired, despite the penumbra of some hifalutin philosophical talk and events looking at the way fate plays with mankind.

“No Country for Old Men” lacks the dastardly humor of the Coen brothers’ “Fargo” or the flippant violence in “Raising Arizona,” which are better films.

If you go to a video store and “No Country for Old Men” is rented, don’t worry; it’s not a must-see despite its credentials.

Del’s take

Like Mladen asked, “No Country for Old Men” was a good movie but was it worthy of an Oscar?

Maybe in a weak year. Apparently 2007 was just such a year.

In “No Country for Old Men,” Josh Brolin stumbles across a drug deal gone bad. He makes off with the cash. Meanwhile, the druggies hire Javier Bardem to track him down. Tommy Lee Jones is the sheriff who seems to be one step behind the bad guys – on purpose.

The visuals are excellent. Dialogue is excellent. Performances range from good to excellent – I wasn’t impressed by Brolin’s interpretation of the Llewelyn Moss character but Bardem truly deserved an Oscar for his portrayal of killer Anton Chigurh.

I’m not sure what to make of the movie’s overall subtext. I mean, clearly it meant to say: The country has gone to hell in a hand-basket. Bardem’s character is a killer who attributes his amorality to fate, an easy balm for the conscience. Jones’ character is easily understandable as the reluctant sheriff who only wants to survive until retirement. But dirty deeds done dirt cheap have been with us a long, long time, and I’m not sure you can attribute them to Mom and Dad letting Britney dye her hair green.

Bardem is T-boned in an accident that leaves a bone protruding from his arm. He buys the shirt off a teenaged boy’s back and uses it to make a sling. Then he walks away from the accident as sirens wail in the distance. Is this an illustration of the amorality of fate, or a kind of karmic balancing of the equation?

“No Country for Old Men” doesn’t answer that question, and I think that’s where it falls short.

I would say watch it and make your own judgment.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.