Short Story:
PRIME ELEMENT
by Wolf Janus
Harvey Woolridge grasped his last cat and tossed the orange-furred, tiger-striped tabby on top of five other tranquilized felines within a large burlap sack. He gazed down thinking cheerily, “Six in a single haul! Pity there’s no blacks.”
Locking the drugged cats in separate wire mesh cages beneath his truck’s silver canopy, Harvey slid behind the wheel of his Dodge pickup. He dropped a loaded tranquilizer pistol between his seat and driver’s door, then started his engine. The truck continued through stinking, dingy citadels of back street brick and mortar, eventually merging onto a main viaduct spanning the core of the city.
The sun dipped onto the western horizon as a lone hitchhiker loomed ahead, the hitcher walking alongside a concrete thoroughfare barrier while thumbing due south. Harvey pulled over and smiled as he watched the hitcher’s running approach in the rearview mirror.
Pulling open the passenger door, a red-haired man in tattered blue jeans, an olive drab canvas jacket and sneakers, said, “Where you headed, Mister?”
“The Trillium District south of the core.”
“Outstanding! That’s on my way!”
“Hop in, Sonny.”
The hitcher happily obliged and Harvey accelerated, hard merging back onto the far right lane of the urban freeway, the move momentarily restricting the flow of rush hour traffic. Peering through the rear window, the hitcher asked, “What you got in the back, Mister?”
“Just craft supplies,” said the older man, keeping both eyes on the crowded road.
“What kind of crafts?”
“I’m a sculptor.”
“Outstanding! Always a pleasure to meet a fellow artist.”
“Really?” Harvey said. “What kind of art do you specialize in?”
“I used to sculpt. Just little things like birds, small dogs, historic human busts and, of course, a few cats.”
“Cats?” said Harvey, cutting off a full-sized van to pass the car ahead of him. “What kind of cats?”
“My ambition was to eventually sculpt full-size, premium predators like lions, panthers, cheetahs or maybe even a Stone Age Saber Tooth Tiger. But I never got past molding and selling common domestic cat statues and figurines.”
“Maybe you could create a Tabby, Siamese or even a Midnight Black for me.”
“You serious, Mister?”
“You could come with me and sculpt as much as you want,” Harvey said. “I promise to buy your creation at a fair price.”
“I’ve been out of practice for quite a while.”
“Oh?” Harvey said. “What’ve you been doing lately for a creative outlet?”
“Actually, I’m more of a collector now than a sculptor.”
“What do you collect?”
“Money.” The hitcher pulled a revolver from under his jacket and aimed it at Harvey’s head. “Now, what’ve you got under the canopy, Pops?”
Concealing his anger, Harvey glanced at the gun barrel, then back toward the road. “Name’s Woolridge, Harvey Woolridge. What’s yours?”
“Need to know basis, Old Man. Now, hand me your wallet real slow.”
Harvey cut across three crowded lanes. The pickup lurched from 45 to 60 mph.
“Hand me your goddamned wallet or I’ll spray your brains all over this windshield,” the hitcher said.
Harvey remained silent, keeping both eyes on the road. The speedometer now pushed 70 as two cars pulled out of his way.
“You hard of hearing, asshole?” said the gunman. He cocked the revolver’s hammer. “Slow down, you miserable sack of shit or I’ll kill you!” The hitcher blasted a single shot through the driver’s window, leaving a fractured web evenly around the bullet hole.
Harvey said, “You’re going to kill me, eh, Sonny? What’s going to happen to your sorry ass when this truck wrecks doing 70 plus? You don’t have any seat belts and we’re surrounded by rush hour traffic.”
The gunman said, “You’ll either die with a bullet or with that steering wheel in your ribs!”
“Maybe. But I’m an older man who’s lived a good deal of his life already. I doubt you’re over 30.”
“Goddamnit! Do what I told you!”
“Nasty pickle, eh? Better toss that hog leg on the floorboard.”
“Or what?”
“Or that.” Harvey pointed through the windshield. A Washington 
State Patrol Car cruised 200 yards ahead.
“Oh, Jesus!” said the hitcher. “You turning me in, Pops?”
“Not if you dump that revolver,” said Harvey. “And you’d better decide fast.” Silently clutching his hidden trank gun, he added, “That State Trooper will pull me over when I pass him on the right. He can’t miss this bullet hole.”
“Shit!” The gunman dropped his revolver.
Harvey fired two darts into the hitcher’s neck.
***
The hitcher woke up in his boxer shorts, hanging by his wrists above the top of a 10-foot-diameter, 12-foot-deep, dry stone well. The top of hole appeared level with the concrete floor of a 40-x-40-foot room which surrounded the deep chamber. He stared down one side of the stone maw, making out a closed, eight-by-four-foot wooden door with a pointed arch.
A pungent, semisweet odor crawled up his nostrils and combined with the rancid, musty smell of stale beer and soiled rodent nests. He pinpointed the source of the stench; it was wafting from his bare skin.
Movement caught his eye; the sight churned his stomach. Six domestic cats were milling below him in nervous, random patterns, each gazing upward. The imprisoned animals had been completely shaved down to milky-white hides, and each displayed gore-encrusted razor blade nicks around the soft, sensitive flesh of their eyes, ears, noses, paws and hideously tentacle-like tails. The felines shivered while yowling like torture victims.
“Awake now, Sonny?” asked Harvey Woolridge from 15 feet away. He wore overalls and was sweeping up the last remnants of multicolored cat hair off a smooth, ceramic-covered worktable. He emptied the full dustpan into a small, black cast iron cauldron resting on the tabletop.
“Where am I?” said the hitcher. His wrists and armpit sockets strained from the gravity of his own weight.
“Need to know basis, Sonny,” Harvey said, hanging up the brush and dustpan. “You refuse to tell me your name. Therefore, I refuse to tell you where you are.”
“LET ME GO, YOU CRAZY, TWISTED, SENILE SONOFABITCH!” screamed the hitcher, kicking hard enough to start his arm chains swinging like gymnastic hand rings.
“Need to know basis, Sonny.”
“All right!” said the hitcher. “My name’s Purvis, Mark Purvis!”
Harvey smiled taking out a tiny notebook and a white tipped pencil from the front pocket of his overalls. “Is that spelled with an e or with a u?”
“A u--asshole! Where in hell am I, you demented bastard?”
“I may be old, but I was man enough to haul you over one shoulder and manacle your arms before hoisting your ass into mid air. But under the circumstances, I forgive your bad manners. After all, you’re tonight’s guest of honor at Cypress Root Cemetery. I’m the caretaker here and I’m preparing to cast some beautifully elaborate, lifelike Halloween Cat Statuettes out of those annoying strays on the cobblestone floor beneath you.”
“Who would pay for these grotesque monstrosities? They’re the most pathetically hideous animals I’ve ever seen!”
Harvey applauded. “Very colorful vocabulary. Maybe you’re more than just a brainless, lumbering, gun-toting thug after all. But to answer your question, I can’t sell those beasties the way they look now, but they’ll get better soon.”
Mark Purvis pulled up on both chains to temporarily ease the tension on his arms. “Why’d you shave these poor creatures? Look at them! They’re all shivering from the cold of that dry well!”
“Not from cold, Purvis, from hunger.”
“Hunger? For what?”
Harvey smiled and kept both arms crossed.
Mark screamed in revelation. “Oh my God. Those things are ravenous for me.”
Harvey said, “Scream all you want, Sonny. Nobody’s going to help. Law abiding citizens never venture near a metropolitan cemetery after nightfall. And any transients within earshot wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn.”
Harvey pressed a button connected to the motorized hoist chains manacled around Mark’s bleeding wrists. The hitcher’s bare feet dropped within four feet of the tallest feline. Two of the boldest creatures leaped onto Mark’s insteps, digging every agile claw into whatever soft flesh they could snag. Then Harvey lifted Mark back to maximum elevation.
Despite Mark’s rigorous kicking and lurching, both cats held onto their prey and began gnawing and scissoring off flesh from the hitcher’s toes. Blood flowed off and trickled unevenly into the gaping mouths of the other felines below. Raw, unbridled horror meshed with his sharp pain. Purvis screamed once more.
He watched as the feline horrors made their way up his body, searching for more concentrated patches of stench. His skin hackled in bunches wherever their quivering noses and abrasive tongues caressed it. When they anchored fully extended claws into both armpits, their pale, rat-like tails randomly stroked Mark’s face. Soon both animals gnawed into the meaty hollows above his collarbones.
Mark’s teeth savagely clenched one cat’s tail, and then whipped the cat into the side of its partner. Both felines slashed at each other in mid air, then slammed onto the cobblestone floor.
“Not bad, Sonny!” said Harvey. “Although half your face resembles fresh sushi, I’ve never seen quicker reflexes. But don’t worry. More dinner guests will arrive.”
Overcome by the hitcher’s potent scent, all four feline stragglers attacked the two lame cats. “Goddamn it!” said Harvey. “You just cost me two statuettes; that’s $2,000 apiece!”
Mark spit feline blood, said, “My heart bleeds for you, Methuselah!”
“Not quite yet, Mark, but you’re getting there.” Harvey lowered the chains again.
Mark watched Harvey use a pestle to pulverize greenish, crystalline beads within a smoky-stained mortar. Mixing it with thick, bluish syrup poured from a corked glass bottle; the caretaker thoroughly mashed the ingredients into a viscous, amber-colored paste before spooning it into the smoldering cauldron.
Mark said, “You don’t have to kill me, Harvey. After I’ve donated enough to these gore-scabbed bloodsuckers, you could erase my memory and turn me loose before it’s too late.”
“Probably too late already,” said Harvey. “This is the first time I fed four cats from a single human being. My Plasticity Spell demands the cats to feed on living human blood until they’re satisfied. Otherwise, they could turn on me! And since they’re obviously still hungry, I must allow nature to run its course.”
“Plasticity Spell?”
Harvey began to knead a pile of clay into identical proportions. “You don’t think I can produce sleek, perfectly proportioned, black cat statuettes out my ass, do you?”
While Harvey finished pressing the clay into smooth patties that resembled raw pie dough, every cat began convulsing uncontrollably, as if they’d ingested strychnine. To Mark’s surprise, each cat fell dead against the cobblestone floor.
Harvey ambled to the edge of the well. “Looks like you’re in luck. You’ve survived my quadruple cat frenzy. I thought they’d be hopped up enough to drain you before they all vapor locked. Well, you never can tell about something until you try it out. Now, each one’s suitable for encasement.”
“Why did they die?”
“Essential part of the spell. Each creature ingests living human blood and whatever flesh they crave mingled with the special tincture they licked off your skin until they drop dead. However, their post mortem flesh remains so pliable that physical features can be molded at will. But the plasticity spell only lasts for 30 minutes, so if you’ll excuse me.”
“Let me down, Harvey. Please?”
“Even if I did, you can’t escape my chamber.”
“Please. My arms and wrists are killing me.”
“All right,” said Harvey. He pressed the down button. “Have it your way.”
Eventually, the gravity strain on both of Mark’s arms vanished. He sat flat on the floor with his back propped against a sidewall. His arms dropped limply as footsteps descended from behind a sidewall of his circular cage.
Mark blinked as Harvey emerged through a narrow door. The caretaker carried a large burlap sack in one hand plus a compressed butane torch and striking plate in the other. Setting his torch down first, Harvey gingerly scooped up and stuffed every bald, dead, naked feline into the bag and departed leaving the door open. Shortly afterward, the hoist hauled Purvis back up by the wrists until his mutilated feet dangled twenty-four inches above the chamber floor.
An eternity elapsed before Harvey returned to the dry well. He silently picked up the torch and striker plate before igniting the pressurized gases. Harvey stuck a tongue out one side of his mouth in concentration, adjusting the flame into a narrow column of blue-tipped fire.
“You can’t be serious,” Mark Purvis said, instinctively jerking his feet away from the conical flame.
“Cats took a lot out of you, Sonny, and you’re still leaking. Better cauterize.”
“Nooo!”
“Either I sear the worst of those gory leaks shut or you bleed the rest of the way out like a slaughtered hog.”
Mark passed out while Harvey blackened a dozen major wounds. Then he opened a workshop refrigerator and retrieved an oversized, flexible, plastic pouch of human blood, and a syringe and plastic tubing. Hanging the blood pack from an elastic strap attached to one chain, Harvey connected the tubing before jabbing the syringe into a vertical vein running the length of Mark’s left forearm.
Harvey returned to his worktable. Stretching a triple layer of latex gloves over both hands, he laid each bald, feline corpse on flattened clay, basting a few ladle fulls of the black, viscous, cauldron brew over their hairless flesh. After thoroughly rubbing hot liquid into every pore, Harvey rolled each one up into a blanket like an oversized burrito.
Harvey manipulated each smooth-shelled creation one-at-a-time: One was fused into a pre-lunging crouch with wide-open fangs of fury. The second arched its back toward an unknown threat. Three stood on its haunches, claws scratching at the air. The last lay on its back biting and clawing as if pinned by some invisible attacker.
Harvey admired his handiwork. Each beautifully smooth, yet muscularly defined cat was rapidly locking into animate poses of incredible realism. They almost seemed to breathe again.
But the eyes proved the icing on Harvey’s artistic cake. Each one was glazed over in a dazzling yellow that contrasted with the obsidian-black coats. Each sightless orb seemed to follow its observer no matter where they moved.
“What do you think of my artistic creations?” Harvey asked.
“My God! Are those the cats you stuffed in the sack?”
Harvey puffed with pride. “You got that right, Sonny!”
“But all your statues are black.”
“What’s your point?” said Harvey.
Mark pulled up on the chains again before answering, “I saw the hair you swept into that cauldron. How’d you get all four statues black as midnight?”
“Just something I add to the brew that stains their hides. I’d prefer to work with black cats to begin with, but even in our impersonal, bustling, human anthill of a city, people guard black cats so closely around Halloween.”
“Even from this angle, those statuettes are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!”
“Some?” said Harvey.
“Well, let’s be honest. Those cats can’t compare with Michelangelo’s David, for instance, or even the sight of a naked woman, could they?
“I concede your point.” Harvey said, picking up a covered pail and a hand-powered insect sprayer off the floor.
Mark said, “What’s that?”
Harvey pulled off the pail lid. “Take a deep whiff, Sonny.”
The familiar stench of skin tincture watered Mark’s eyes. “You’re feeding my blood to something else?”
“Afraid so, Sonny.”
“Why?”
“You give good blood,” Harvey said. “Living human blood has always been the prime element for my plasticity spell, but yours appears to be ultra-prime. After all, you survived quadruple cat frenzy.”
He sprayed Mark with another dose of tincture. “Now, I’d like to attempt an idea I’ve pondered for years. But to tell the truth, I’ve never had the nerve to drain a man dry merely for the sake of an experiment. That is, until tonight.”
“Why am I so easy to murder?”
“You’re an armed felon,” Harvey said. “I’m not in the habit of letting violent criminals go unpunished.”
Mark Purvis grasped both chains and shook them. “You’re fucking insane, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Harvey lowered Mark to the chamber bottom, then popped open his wrist manacles. Mark heard a furious, high-pitched, scream behind the door along the wall, and instantly recognized the savage call of the predator now slamming against it.
Harvey unlatched the door, and the charging weight of a shaved, razor nicked, full-grown, Florida swamp panther pushed inside the round chamber. The ravenous cat lunged toward Mark.
Mark screamed.
“Cheer up, Sonny! I’m granting you a lifelong ambition to sculpt a great cat. This critter may not be your legendary saber tooth tiger, but it’s a close cousin. Anyway, that’s life in the big city. One minute you’re a predatory gunman, the next you’re defenseless prey.”
Digging its fore claws into Mark’s shoulder and ribs, the leaping panther sank its fangs into the captive’s throat and clenched its powerful jaws. Mark’s cries died beneath a gargling fountain of fresh gore and a crushed windpipe.
Harvey Woolridge ambled to the closet and wheeled out two 50-pound bags of sculpting clay on twin piano dollies. The Caretaker of Cypress Root Cemetery added a bag of panther hair to a larger cauldron resting on the workshop floor. He studied the unopened clay bags. “In the criminal’s own words, outstanding! I hope three pints of blood are enough. That’s an awfully big cat.”
About the Author:
Wolf Janus is a resident of Northwestern Oregon with his wife and two children. He specializes in the horror genre and has written several short stories along with a novel and a screenplay. He enjoys movies, reading, chess, swimming and beach combing for agates along Oregon’s versatile coastline. But his true passion is attempting to craft stories that provide unusual quirks to otherwise conventional horror themes.