The Terrible Thing That Happens Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  CARLTON MELLICK III

  “Easily the craziest, weirdest, strangest, funniest, most obscene writer in America.”

  —GOTHIC MAGAZINE

  “Carlton Mellick III has the craziest book titles... and the kinkiest fans!”

  —CHRISTOPHER MOORE, author of The Stupidest Angel

  “If you haven’t read Mellick you’re not nearly perverse enough for the twenty first century.”

  —JACK KETCHUM, author of The Girl Next Door

  “Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction’s most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale.”

  —CORY DOCTOROW, author of Little Brother

  “Bizarre, twisted, and emotionally raw—Carlton Mellick’s fiction is the literary equivalent of putting your brain in a blender.”

  —BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising

  “Carlton Mellick III exemplifies the intelligence and wit that lurks between its lurid covers. In a genre where crude titles are an art in themselves, Mellick is a true artist.”

  —THE GUARDIAN

  “Just as Pop had Andy Warhol and Dada Tristan Tzara, the bizarro movement has its very own P. T. Barnum-type practitioner. He’s the mutton-chopped author of such books as Electric Jesus Corpse and The Menstruating Mall, the illustrator, editor, and instructor of all things bizarro, and his name is Carlton Mellick III.”

  —DETAILS MAGAZINE

  “The most original novelist working today? The most outrageous? The most unpredictable? These aren’t easy superlatives to make; however, Carlton Mellick may well be all of those things, behind a canon of books that all irreverently depart from the form and concepts of traditional novels, and adventure the reader into a howling, dark fantasyland of the most bizarre, over-the-top, and mind-warping inventiveness.”

  —EDWARD LEE, author of Header

  “Discussing Bizarro literature without mentioning Mellick is like discussing weird-ass muttonchopped authors without mentioning Mellick.”

  —CRACKED.COM

  “Carlton is an acquired taste, but he hooks you like a drug.”

  —HUNTER SHEA, author of Forest of Shadows

  “Mellick’s career is impressive because, despite the fact that he puts out a few books a year, he has managed to bring something new to the table every time… Every Mellick novel is packed with more wildly original concepts than you could find in the current top ten New York Times bestsellers put together.”

  —VERBICIDE

  “Mellick’s guerrilla incursions combine total geekboy fandom and love with genuine, unbridled outsider madness. As such, it borders on genius, in the way only true outsider art can.”

  —FANGORIA

  Also by

  Carlton Mellick III

  Satan Burger

  Electric Jesus Corpse (Fan Club Exclusive)

  Sunset With a Beard (stories)

  Razor Wire Pubic Hair

  Teeth and Tongue Landscape

  The Steel Breakfast Era

  The Baby Jesus Butt Plug

  Fishy-fleshed

  The Menstruating Mall

  Ocean of Lard (with Kevin L. Donihe)

  Punk Land

  Sex and Death in Television Town

  Sea of the Patchwork Cats

  The Haunted Vagina

  Cancer-cute (Fan Club Exclusive)

  War Slut

  Sausagey Santa

  Ugly Heaven

  Adolf in Wonderland

  Ultra Fuckers

  Cybernetrix

  The Egg Man

  Apeshit

  The Faggiest Vampire

  The Cannibals of Candyland

  Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland

  The Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2

  Zombies and Shit

  Crab Town

  The Morbidly Obese Ninja

  Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands

  Fantastic Orgy (stories)

  I Knocked Up Satan’s Daughter

  Armadillo Fists

  The Handsome Squirm

  Tumor Fruit

  Kill Ball

  Cuddly Holocaust

  Hammer Wives (stories)

  Village of the Mermaids

  Quicksand House

  Clusterfuck

  Hungry Bug

  Tick People

  Sweet Story

  As She Stabbed Me Gently in the Face

  ClownFellas: Tales of the Bozo Family

  Bio Melt

  Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen,

  Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes

  ERASERHEAD PRESS

  P.O. BOX 10065

  PORTLAND, OR 97296

  WWW.ERASERHEADPRESS.COM

  ISBN: 978-1-62105-224-1

  Copyright © 2016 by Carlton Mellick III

  Cover art copyright © 2016 by Ed Mironiuk

  www.edmironiuk.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’ve been trying to write a book a month every month this year. It’s not something I expect to accomplish, but I like to challenge myself this way, especially since I’ve been falling behind on my quarterly release schedule lately. I already did this with my books Exercise Bike, Spider Bunny, and Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes. All of these were done at a beach house on the Oregon coast, written within week-long writing marathons. Some people think writing a book in a week is insane, but it’s really not that difficult, especially if you’re writing a 20,000-30,000 word novella. You just need to make sure to write at least 3,000 words a day and pretty much anyone can do that as long as they actually sit down and do the work without going online or giving up when they get stuck. Pretty much everyone I’ve gone on writing marathons with have been able to accomplish at least 30,000 words in a week. When I wrote The Terrible Thing That Happens, I went with bizarro author Vince Kramer. He’d never done a marathon before and hadn’t been able to finish a new book in a couple of years, yet he was able to write 7,000 words a day, which was far more than I am typically able to do. Like me, he plans to write books exclusively during writing marathons from now on.

  The first day of a writing marathon, I typically go out for drinks and brainstorm my book. When I started this book, I didn’t even know what it was going to be about. I went to a bar with Vince and tried to figure out which book I was going to write. I had the idea for a book called Fruit Box about a group of people trapped inside of a children’s cereal commercial, but Vince wasn’t all that excited about the idea. Whenever I write a book with another writer, I always bounce my ideas off of them. If they don’t react in a positive way I won’t use my ideas. So I scrapped my original idea and looked over my notes. I have lists of thousands of story ideas on my computer, but choosing the right one is rarely easy to do. When I threw out the idea for a story called Open 24 Hours, about a haunted grocery store in the post apocalypse, Vince got really excited about it. If you know Vince Kramer, he’s somebody who wears his emotions on his sleeve. If he hates something, you’ll know. If he loves something, you’ll know. When it was obvious that he loved the concept, I decided to write this one. But both of us were in agreement that the title had to go.

  I spent the rest of the night trying to come up with the right title. I won’t ever start a book unless I have at least a working title that I like, because sometimes a good title w
ill encourage me to write a good book. Vince and I brainstormed titles all night. We came up with things like The Last Grocery Store, The Last Shopping Spree, Fallout Market, Plague Market, and Beyond Thunder Mart. But nothing appealed to us. I settled on Plague Market and used that as a working title, but it didn’t feel right after a few days so I changed it to The Last Grocery Store, which was boring but suitable. The Terrible Thing That Happens didn’t come to me until the end, but I feel like it’s the perfect title. This book is meant to have a children’s book feel to it, and this title is the only one that worked in that way. In fact, every person who has heard this book title has asked if it’s a children’s book, so I feel it’s the best option.

  Besides being a children’s book version of a post-apocalypse story, this book is also meant to be a parody of the ghost story genre. I absolutely love ghost stories, especially in film. But, to be honest, I kind of have a problem with ghost movies. Why is it that just because a person dies they automatically gain super human powers? Ghosts have the ability to fly, walk through walls, teleport anywhere, possess people, control dolls, create illusions, change temperatures, pull kids through televisions, shoot beams of ectoplasmic energy from their eyes, they can find anyone anywhere no matter how well they hide, can become invisible whenever they want, they have super human strength and are masters of telekinesis. They also happen to be completely indestructible unless their remains are discovered and properly buried. So what’s so special about dying that gives spirits all of these crazy powers? Is there some kind of afterlife wizard school they attend? And since they get such amazing powers after death, why don’t ghosts ever use those powers for good instead of just to torment some lame family? They could become world-saving superheroes with all those ghost abilities. And also, how come when a ghost kills a guy he doesn’t just kick that ghost’s ass once he arrives in the spirit world? They’d have the same ghost abilities (unless he needs to attend afterlife wizard school first). And even if ghosts couldn’t hurt each other that guy could just use his find-anything-anywhere ability to locate the ghost’s remains, teleport over to them, then telekinesis the bones onto hallowed ground. Movie over in ten minutes.

  This book focuses on an equally absurd concept involving a haunting, but it’s not the ghosts that are the absurd part. It is the location. Although the book is not a comedy, the idea of a people in a post-apocalyptic wasteland surviving solely on food from a haunted grocery store made me smile. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t think I ever would have had the guts to actually write it if it wasn’t for Vince Kramer’s enthusiasm. So if you happen to like this one you have Vince to thank. I hope you enjoy it.

  —Carlton Mellick III, 5/28/2016, 7:14am

  Chapter One: Chocky

  The hills were made of bone and metal. They stretched as far as the eye could see, twisting the landscape into a grotesque maze of debris and wreckage. It was a bustling city once. Long, long ago. A place where millions of souls jittered with life. Now it’s a flattened graveyard, rusting beneath the ever-black sky.

  As he climbed through the ruins, Chocky knew it was pointless. He knew nothing could survive on the surface anymore, not for another hundred years. There was no food, no water, no life of any kind. But he had nowhere else to go. He couldn’t go back home. There was nothing left to go back to. All he could do was move forward, counting down the seconds until he finally met his fate.

  The ground was jagged and sharp, cutting his leather boots to muddy shreds. His soft feet were bruised and bleeding, infected with irradiated dust. The mask he wore did little to protect him from the toxic atmosphere, the filters all worn out. His eyes were swollen and red. He choked and gagged on every breath he took.

  As he continued forward, Chocky could barely see where he placed his steps. The last batteries in his last source of light were fading. Once gone, he would be in complete darkness. He wasn’t sure if it was day or night. The sun had been covered in clouds of ash for decades. Once the batteries died, he’d have no way to recharge them. He would not be able to see even his hands in front of his face and could continue no farther.

  When the flashlight began flickering, he knew it wouldn’t be much longer.

  “At least I got to see the surface…” Chocky said to the dimming light.

  He had been underground his whole life, always curious about the big world above. He never thought he’d actually get a chance to see it in his lifetime. He was told that with luck his great grandchildren would return to the surface one day and reclaim the Earth. But that was no longer a possibility. He wasn’t going to have great grandchildren. Nobody was. Unless there was another bunker out there, somewhere in the world, the human race would die with him.

  When the light went out, flickering its last flicker, Chocky fell to his knees and removed his mask. He closed his eyes tight and breathed in the toxic atmosphere as deeply as he could, hoping that it wouldn’t take too long to kill him.

  But as he opened his eyes, the landscape wasn’t completely dark. There was a light in the distance. He coughed the ash from his lungs, rubbed it from his eyes, and looked again. The light was still there. He was sure it wasn’t there before. It couldn’t have been.

  “What in the world are you?” he said to the new light.

  He put the mask over his face, got to his feet, and hiked in the direction of the twinkling brightness. Unable to see the ground below him, he tripped several times as he hiked through the rubble. But he didn’t care about a few scrapes and bruises. He had to find out what could possibly be generating such a light.

  “Could it be people?” he asked the rubble he stomped upon. “Could anyone be alive up here after all this time?”

  He knew that it was impossible. He was told over and over again that nobody could survive on the surface. The atmosphere was toxic, the temperatures below freezing, the water undrinkable, food could not grow. The light had to be something else. A glowing mineral deposit, maybe. Or a natural gas fire. Maybe it was even a mere delusion. Whatever it was, Chocky wouldn’t let himself die until he found out for sure.

  When he was close enough to make out the source of the light, Chocky couldn’t believe his eyes. A glowing sign that read “Super Foods” illuminated the landscape, and beyond the sign was a grocery store. Surrounded by miles and miles of rubble, the building still stood. It was perfectly intact, completely untouched by the devastation that took place over fifty years ago. Chocky had seen the same kind of grocery store in movies before. It looked exactly as it did in those ancient dramas from the old world. It appeared to be in perfect condition, clean and new, not blemished by even a speck of the dust that coated everything else in the wasteland.

  As Chocky stepped into the parking lot, he figured it had to be some kind of trick. There was no way it was actually real. There was no electricity to power it, nothing to keep it so spotless. He looked into the windows. The place was even brighter and cleaner within. The shelves were fully stocked with more varieties of foods than Chocky had ever seen in his life. It was a secret oasis. A miraculous paradise.

  “Am I dead?” Chocky asked. “Is this Heaven?”

  The doors opened for him as he stepped up to the entrance. Warm air hit his skin as he stepped in from the cold. He removed his mask, brushed the dust from his face and clothes. The air inside was fresh, breathable. His bloody feet tracked red prints across the tile floor.

  When the door closed behind him, Chocky finally believed it—the place was actually real. He was not dead. It was not an illusion. There was no possible explanation for it, but there it was. The place was a miracle.

  There were no other people in sight, just aisles and aisles of freshly packaged products. He went toward the closest food he could see, right into the produce section. The scent of fresh fruit was strong and pleasing. He picked up the closest piece of fruit he could grab—a bright red apple. When he bit into it, moisture exploded into his dusty dried-out mouth. The flavor was tart and sweet. He’d never tasted anything like it before
.

  There were so many fruits he’d never tasted before. Grapes, kiwis, oranges, cucumbers, pineapple, blueberries. The hydroponic garden that grew fruits and vegetables underground had only a few varieties, and he rarely ate them when they were fresh. He had no idea where all of these fruits could have possibly come from, where they could have possibly been grown.

  He went from fruit to fruit, tasting every single one. Even though they burned the sores in his mouth with their potent acids, the flavors were so powerful and delicious that he couldn’t stop shoveling them down his throat.

  “Oh, God…” he moaned as he bit into a mango. Even though he bit through the bitter peeling, the insides of the fruit were the most delectable of any he’d tasted so far. He ripped off the skin and sucked on the squishy yellowish-orange meat. He put three into his pockets, then moved on to the papayas.

  Chocky was so busy tasting everything he could find that he didn’t realize the woman standing behind him. It wasn’t until he turned around, to go toward the berries, that he saw her.

  The sight of her made him jump back and drop all the lemons and grapefruit in his arms. In her clean blue dress, with matching high heeled shoes, she was dressed like a woman from the old world. Her dyed red hair was styled into a short bob that curled into her neck. Red nail polish painted her fingers and toes. She carried a shopping basket, filling it with fresh produce—leeks, rainbow chard, portabella mushrooms, and sweet Hawaiian onions—casually shopping at the grocery store as though gathering ingredients for a dinner party.

  He was frozen in his place by the sight of her, unable to blink or make a sound. She was the most beautiful woman Chocky had ever seen. In the underground bunker, women and men did not look much different from each other. They wore the same clothes, had the same hair styles. There was no makeup or nail polish, no hair dyes or fancy dresses. This woman looked just like the ones from the movies, the ones the young women idolized, the ones young men drooled over. Chocky always thought of them as mere fantasies, not real human beings. But there the woman was, standing before him, as real as the fruit he’d just eaten.