Terror Shorts
Kitty McFarlane, a 38 year old actress and resident of Bel Air, went in for her weekly botox injection, only to find that her usual doctor, Dr. Raymond, had flown to Australia for his aunt’s funeral. In his place was Dr. Mulrooney, a stocky, red-faced fellow with two days of sobriety, and a right hand that trembled unpredictably as he attempted to prep a needle.
Mindy Hathaway, 22, drove her Volkswagen Cabrio down Melrose Avenue at 11pm on a Saturday night, nine days after moving to Hollywood from Madison, Wisconsin. She heard a loud pop, and after continuing on for half a mile or so, realized that one of her tires had gone flat. She pulled over into an empty Winchell’s parking lot, rolled up her windows, locked her doors, and sat in her car with the engine running. Cursing the fact that she had ignored her mother’s insistence to get AAA, she dialed 411 on her rhinestone-encrusted Sidekick, and was connected with a tow truck company. Fifteen minutes later, a Hispanic man tapped lightly on her driver’s side window, and shocked into a state of paralysis at the sight of a Latino, Mindy clenched her eyes shut and squeezed the alarm button on her keychain. Ernesto, the man at her window, waited a few minutes for the girl to calm down, but when he felt there was nothing left for him to do, he got back in his tow truck and drove away.
Randy Paulson, 18, during his first week at college, was invited by his roommate and a few other boys to smoke pot in the group bathroom. Wanting to fit in and appear cool, Randy refrained from telling the others that he had never so much as seen a joint in his life. Four and a half minutes after taking his first hit, while the other boys laughed, talked about the girls they planned on banging before the end of the first semester, and quoted lines from Will Ferrell movies, Randy felt a stirring in his pants as his penis became engorged with blood.
Dr. Newman Bindle, 53, was admitted to the split risk ward of the very same psychiatric hospital where he had worked as Chief Psychiatrist for 26 years. Two days later, his first roommate was transferred to outpatient, and on his third night, Dr. Bindle woke to find the familiar face of Calvin Putman, 32, looming over him. “Remember me, Doc?” Calvin said. “You promised me the nightmares would stop,” he added before pressing a pillow against Bindle’s face, muffling his cries and pressing his body weight against Bindle’s flailing limbs only seven minutes before the night nurses began making their rounds.
Rebecca Colby, 27, was deathly afraid of dogs. The underlying reason for her phobia had become acutely repressed over the years, and she would have been happy to leave it that way was it not for the fact that she had recently fallen in love with Truman Welby, 29, a handsome and charming real estate broker whose love for Rebecca was matched only by his love for Ramona, his standard poodle. So as not to surrender her love, Rebecca began seeing a hypnotism therapist who had come highly recommended by friends who were able to quit smoking under his care. Five sessions into her therapy, Rebecca had a breakthrough on the therapist’s couch. In a hypnotic state, Rebecca took on the voice of her four year old self, and told the story of a family friend’s Christmas party, and how when all the other guests were occupied in the living room with Christmas carols and eggnog, Rebecca had wandered off to another room of the house, where she was cornered by Fritz, the family’s 120 pound Saint Bernard, who pinned little Rebecca down and made love to her stomach before falling asleep atop her. Unable to move under the massive dog’s weight, Rebecca’s cries for help went unanswered until the party died down two and a half hours later and the guests came into the room to retrieve their coats.
