Hell’s Outpost

© 2009 by Ron Sanders

Oh dear God, shake me out of this nightmare. Rouse me, unbind me, before I succumb to the
horror . . . free my arms and legs—get this warm sticky mucus . . . get it off before that thing comes
back. Wake me, please! It’s closer, it’s closing in—that huge, ruby-winged monstrosity of my mind,
serrated legs and long sucking feet, chainsaw-buzzing mouth and a dozen feelers; no eyes, no eyes,
only black searching pits. I can’t move, God—pull me out before I drown. It’s leaping on me—long
slick tongue, crushing press of legs. That curved stinger, rising, plunging, jacking into my chest. That
burgundy abdomen, turning about, sinking onto my face . . . and my mouth a sump, a choked pit
retching in red putrid slime. No, please . . . don’t wake me—let me pass right now, let me die in my
vile dreams.

Doctor Freedman waddles back into the examination room. Elderly, white, artificially hearty,
but now with a lateral crease to his smile. He motions me over to the little stainless steel desk, places
my scan on the polished easel, backlights it. “Here’s the source of your stomach complaint; no doubt
about it.” We’re looking at an x-ray plate of my fisting, semi-spiral gut, all swollen and contorted.

1
“Forget carcinoma, forget ulceration, forget diverticula. That’s why you’re so sick, that explains the
dramatic weight loss. Your complaint’s parasitic.”
I stare at him uncertainly. “You’re telling me I have worms?”
Freedman shakes his head. “Singular. At least as far as the preliminary goes. But it’s not a
hookworm, not a tapeworm, not a pinworm. How it’s surviving in a gastric environment is beyond
me.” The doctor lifts the scan to view against the fluorescents. “That,” he gushes, “simply has to be
the largest parasitic growth ever encountered in a living human being!” He looks at me as though
I’ve just won the lottery. The good doctor sets me back down. “Go home and relax while I research
this little anomaly. If you show signs of anemia call me immediately. But first, let’s go over the fine
points once more. You say that your income is inherited, that you live on a boat right here in our
marina, and that you keep your personal area scrupulously clean. You mention becoming sick after
eating a burrito at a little cantina in town. Describe that experience again.”
“It was awful,” I say, and a rottenness comes to my palate. “Beef and cheese. I didn’t check it
out first; I was hungry. I took one swallow, gagged, and spat out the rest. It was such a horrible taste,
doctor. I couldn’t flush it; not with mouthwash, not with bicarb. I tried to walk off the whole thing,
but I simply got more and more depressed. Eventually I stretched out on a little harbor bench and just
lay there with my head lolling and my stomach clenching. When I opened my eyes there were all
these sea gulls and pelicans standing around me; dead-quiet, riveted, just staring. Creepiest minute of
my life. I guess I was hallucinating, but that strikes me as the first piece in the nightmare puzzle; I
mean that flying thing in my boat I told you about.”
“Okay. We all know an unhappy stomach can play tricks on the mind. ‘. . . a bit of undigested
beef,’ and all that, coincidentally enough. There are no indications of toxic ingestion or of food
poisoning, and despite the weight loss and overall haggardness your blood count is normal, so it’s
safe to say your mental stress is a direct outcome of your body’s stress. I’m not prescribing any
medications until I’m clearer on this thing. Go home and take your mind off it. Get some rest, Mr.
Rowan. Relax.”

I’ve always been a man on the water. The California marinas have always been my home. I’ve
lived on this little sailboat, moored in Mer Harbor, for the last twenty years, in East Basin’s deepest

2
slip—farthest from land, farthest from the profane enticements of neon, farthest from your silly press
and scatter. I’m a loner, rooming only with the sea. And, because of my self-enforced isolation, I’m
aware of the breadth of things; things shut out by the glare of civilization. I am, by my own honest
evaluation, far saner than all you so-called normal people put together. So I have no qualms about
laying out my thoughts and experiences on this dictaphone. It fits in my pocket. It’s going with me
everywhere.
And I swear I can see them from my port window: giant crimson fireflies in the night, moving
like embers slung in a line. They pass low over the waves from one beach community to the next.
Housefly, dragonfly, gremlin, harpy—what are you things—a new breed, a mutation, some kind of
alien stock? And why are there no reports of sightings, no observations other than mine? Maybe
because you’re, like me, under the radar, outside the window, obscured by the Glare. I’m tying down
the tarp over this roofless cabin, though the pressure in my gut demands I rest. But how can I rest in
the open air, vulnerable? The knots are secure, the tarp as taut as a drum. If you come back again
you’ll have to earn me.
The water boils around my boat—another hallucination? On a distant yacht a housecat wails
on and on, and the leathery sound of wings hammers in my skull. My stomach swells and sinks. I’m
being eaten alive, sucked dry. Got to recline, got to rest.
But to rest is to sleep.

“Dr. Freedman?” I breathe into the mouthpiece, and sag against the glass. My stomach
squeezes into a knot, relaxes, squeezes again. “I got your message on my pager. I’m calling from a
pay phone. What’d you learn?”
“Mr. Rowan—I’m so glad you called! I’ve conferred with specialists who’ve gone over your
scans in depth. That’s not a worm in your stomach after all.”
I jerk upright at a sudden spasm, and grate, “That’s a relief.”
There’s a long pause on the other end. Finally Freedman says, measuredly, “Mr. Rowan . . .
it’s a maggot.”
I sag again. “Pardon?”

3
 “I know, I know. Damnedest thing. But we can’t argue with these results. Now, I need you to
come to the hospital right away. We’ll run a series of tests, all painless, and there are a number of
people who want to speak with you personally. The hospital will of course pay for everything—these
are amazing circumstances, Mr. Rowan.”
“Amazing,” I echo.
“How are you feeling? Have you noticed any improvement?”
The receiver grows slippery in my hand. The booth reels, and I can feel the blood trickling
down the backs of my thighs. “Oh, ’bout the same, I guess. How’s about yourself?”
“Good, then you’re stable. Get thee to the hospital, Mr. Rowan, ASAP. These are some
extraordinary times!”
“That they are,” I mumble, and let the receiver fall.

It’s back.
I can feel it approaching, even as I feel the goo congealing at my wrists and ankles. It’s
worrying at the canvas tarp; a scattering silhouette of wings and legs dancing port to starboard. Let
me wake—can it only find me in my dreams . . . the scratching and tapping picks up; the tarp sags at
its center.
The stretching canvas produces a space between knots, and a black spiny leg works its way
inside. The leg kicks about, reaching. Can’t scream, can’t back away; I’m fastened here, with my gut
leaping and locking spasmodically. The black body bounces above me, trying to force the leg deeper.
There’s a snap, cotton-soft in my delirium, as the shift in weight redistributes tension in the tie-
downs, causing the tarp’s edge to tighten and cleanly sever that questing limb.
The tarp vibrates furiously. In a moment there’s another scratching at the point of entry, then
the great silhouette lifts and passes. The throbbing in my gut subsides.
The nightmare is over. All my impressions succumb to the deep.

I know where they’re going. They’ve passed below the horizon, but they were in descent
before disappearing. Hell’s Outpost. It’s on my chart, though it’s more a footnote than anything.

4
Dead and porous, only six hundred square feet and barely sixteen feet above sea level. Useful for
bearings, otherwise a navigation hazard. The ocean is a fractured mirror as the dry wind tugs me on;
silent running. My little boat leaves a black arrow of a wake, far behind that low-flying red arrow, a
carpet of tiny blinking stars below the bright gibbous moon.
I’ve stocked the boat with five-gallon cans of gasoline, ’cause I’m gonna burn out those
bastards’ nest or hive or whatever, and try to save what’s left of my sanity. If I can just survive this
lurching pain. There’s a flat smudge on the horizon; a dried-out scab on the ocean. No sign of
activity. I’m pulling up smoothly, one eye to the waterline.
The whole island stinks, even against the night and sea. But it’s not a guano smell. It’s
unhealthily foul—makes you want to up-and-heave. There’s a slight cove to moor in. The rocks
gleam dully; a sick air breathes over this place. I creep rock to rock in new rubber boots, a flashlight
between my teeth and four full gas cans clamped under my arms and in my fists. I’m Hell’s
Outpost’s lone scuttling crab, carefully making my way under a white hanging moon.
The smell just gets worse and worse; now it’s godawful vile. The island’s gutted, pocked,
honeycombed; big fissures lean in, some almost parallel with the water. I pause at a wide opening,
set down the cans and transfer my flashlight. The beam’s torn by crags, baring only hints of the
sickness within . . . that stench, rising round the openings—if I gag I’ll puke. A man can just squeeze
in on hands and knees. Got to keep my mouth and nose covered while I walk in the cans behind me.
Spiny, slimed-over rocks, fouling my fingers, catching my clothes. And I’m in.
It’s a cavern, a low rocky vault eaten away from all sides. My light glances off mounds and
mounds of rotted and rotting flesh—sharks and dolphins, pelicans and gulls, cats and dogs . . .
people, of all shapes and sizes, children and adults. The whole sprawling mess is wildly alive,
crawling with pallid glistening maggots and juvenile versions of those scarlet flying monsters. The
stench is . . . Christ, I’m suffocating. And now my stomach’s ripping in half, a leaping cavity of
unbelievable pain. Air. I’ve got to get out. Air.
A flurry at the opening drives me back. Two long saw-toothed legs feel about, and the filtered
moonlight becomes a dull bloody glow. Staggering in reverse, slipping on the slime-humped rocks—
then I’m hollering on my back in a clinging, crawling web; maggots in my hair, on my lips, round
my ankles and wrists, pulling me back into that bleak clotted nightmare on the boat. Strung between

5
two worlds, my stomach blows apart and the fat white maggot erupts glistening with gut, just as the
scraping shape breaks through the opening and moonlight floods the cave.
The pain drives me to my feet. Roll on the rocks, slap off the remaining maggots. I spin off a
cap and toss handfuls of gas on that closing crimson specter. It backs away kicking, but won’t
relinquish the opening. It’s a lock, man, an impasse; and there I am, back on my feet, shaking gas on
the writhing mounds, can after can, swirling and splashing the stuff wildly, saturating everything that
moves. I strike and toss my lighter, and the flare-up almost knocks me over.
And I just lose it, in all that horror, eclipsing those flames. I see myself, almost as though
watching a film, laughing madly at the sick triumph while the blood pumps down my legs. And I
hear myself staggering to the opening, my arms and hair on fire and my voice breaking in the fumes:
Come on, bitch, here I am. How do you like it? I’ll kill you, I’ll fry you, I’ll roast you right
back into Hell. You want some of this? Then come on!

This is the whole tape-recorded journal found aboard Wesley Rowan’s boat The Loner. The
District Attorney’s office is treating it as a suicide note, and the coroner has ruled Mr. Rowan’s
demise as Death By Unknown Causes. We at The Harbor Herald have permission to print a
verbatim transcript, and present it here in its entirety for our readers’ interpretations, whatever they
may be. While Rowan’s narrative is disjointed and manifestly impossible as a real-time recording,
given the circumstances he describes, it is certainly well within the parameters of a taped dramatic
reliving on a subsequent return in The Loner, as posited by at least one analyst. At any rate,
comments are solely those of the journalists assigned, as subscripted by the editor, and are not meant
to reflect the paper’s overall point of view.
Hell’s Outpost was indeed visited by a mariner on the night of 6-4-09; there are mooring
marks on the island’s rocks, and these marks match scrapes found on the hull of The Loner.
Furthermore, the island’s interior was completely burned out in a petroleum blaze, and Rowan was
subjected to third-degree burns over thirty-five percent of his body. These data fully support the
journal’s storyline. The journal itself only buttresses the evaluation of Rowan’s personal physician,
Doctor Ruben Freedman, as to his patient’s fickle state of mind.

6
 The Loner was discovered crashed into its slip; the vessel unmoored, the cabin a bloody mess.
Wesley Rowan was deemed, even in deep rigor mortis, to be misshapen and resolved in a manner
beyond the pale of all historical pathology. According to the coroner’s final report, a large object of
unknown specificity had been forced, or had in some manner independently worked its way, through
Rowan’s digestive system, beginning in the stomach and making egress at the anus, distorting and
mangling the tract’s every twist and turn in the process. This drawn-out passage contorted his body
into a bizarre arch the report describes as “physically improbable.” Forensic findings demonstrate
that Mister Rowan was alive and conscious throughout the ordeal.
This case, while officially closed, will certainly draw the attention of those interested in tales
of the bizarre. It seems likely, too, that associations will be made between Rowan’s tape-recorded
ravings and the recent spate of reports involving lost children and pets, along with all these supposed
sightings of a humming blood-red creature swooping around the beach communities in the wee
hours. It is not The Herald’s intent to throw fuel on these fancies, so we submit this column solely
for purposes of elucidation, and beg our faithful and intelligent readers to make of it as they will.

Thanks for reading Hell’s Outpost, one selection from the

Mad From The Farting Crowd
collection, a work in progress.

In the meantime, why not blow your mind with my utterly unique novels:

Microcosmia
Signature
Freak
and
Carnival

and take a trip through the literate maelstrom known as

7
 For Readers Only.
And please don’t forget my lush morbid verse:
Moth In The Fist—
all available as free downloads right here at Scribd.
http://ronsandersatwork.com/

ronsandersartofprose@yahoo.com