I live in a very small town. It’s a slice of old America, old houses with strong foundations, family owned stores in the town square and everyone knows everyone. Well almost everyone is known. There is a singular unknown person. Maybe unknown is also the wrong description. He’s some sort of hellish amalgamation of odd fixations and questions that he assaults people with every chance he gets. Despite being a known quantity, very little was truly known about him.
We all knew he referred to himself as the Grill Master. We all knew he smelled like hotdog water and unclean boxers. We all knew that he was a little off. We knew we all wanted him to mow his god damned lawn. His house was an absolute blightful eyesore on the neighborhood. We didn’t know what went on in his house, we didn’t know his real name, and we didn’t know why he smelled like microwaved ball sweat.
He was considered a nuisance when out and about on the town. People in this town were usually pretty chatty, but almost everyone clammed up when they saw the Grill Master approach. The sudden silence and lack of eye contact never stopped him though. He would launch into nonsensical tirades that were filled with constant obvious falsehoods. One of his favorite falsehoods was his age and build. One day he would be asserting he was a 15 year old demi god who could bench press a truck, despite looking like a 37 year old who couldn’t jog at a brisk pace. Then he would besiege you another day, completely unsolicited, claiming to be 6 foot 7 and 285 lbs of pure muscle. This he would assert with absolute confidence, despite him being clearly 5 foot 5 and 290 lbs of blubber.
No one knew what to make of Grill Master. My wife always told me he just needed friends, and we should all try to be nicer to him. While I am sure she had the best intentions with this observation, it was this very statement that would land me in the lair of Grill Master. I remember that spring night vividly. The crickets were chirping and the stars shined in the sky brighter than any city folk could imagine. I was walking my trash cans to the curb before turning in for the night. Then I heard the Grill Master walking up the street whistling. It was always the same tune, a breathless and offkey rendition of Entry of the Gladiators. Or as you might know it, that song that you always associate with clowns.
“How’s it going, Grill Master?” I asked, in a flat tone.
“Can you imagine a dog the size of a Great Dane?” He asked, in his usual hyper active tone.
“Yeah, that would just be a Great Dane. Right?” I said, ponderously as I tried to process the question through the grinding gears in my brain.
“No, not like that. Like what if a Labrador was the size of a Great Dane?” He said, his speech growing faster and slightly disjointed.
“Uhm…well I guess that would be a pretty big Labrador.” I responded.
“Do you think a pack of giant Labradors could take down the military?”
This was the problem with Grill Master. Engaging with Grill Master was an open invitation for him to fire off more questions than an episode of jeopardy. It became an exercise in patience no human could possibly complete.
“I don’t know Grill Master, maybe if like all the military planes stopped working, and there were like an overwhelming amount of them?” I said, trying to find a way to disengage.
“That’s actually not a bad note.” He said, before walking behind me.
I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I had just dodged the world’s most long winded bullet. Then his voice hissed into my ear, a smell of dental infection wafting through the air as he did.
“I have so many more questions to ask you though.”
My world became a whirl of electric pain before everything went black. I awoke a few times momentarily. I could feel my skin abrading against the rough sidewalk and could hear that incessant song being whistled. This only occurred a few fleeting times. Mostly it was a heavy darkness and dull aches of pain.
I awoke an indeterminable amount of time later with a panicked start. I was soaking wet and freezing. I tried to stand up, but found that my arms and legs had been zip tied to some creaky wooden chair. Through bleary eyes I could see the form of Grill Master. He laughed in long wheezes and pranced about the room. I looked around the room and saw two other people restrained to chairs as well. Our local reverend Father Hal and the local crazy cat lady Gertrude. They both looked terrified, a feeling that soon crept into my own eyes as I gazed around the room.
The room we were in was in complete disrepair. The room was covered in thick heavy dust and decorated with horrific animatronics that looked like they had been fished out of the trash cans behind Disney world. Paintings of clowns and dogs adorned the walls with intermittent slashes and stains obscuring the original work. Every part of the walls not occupied by horrible machines and artwork was covered in acoustic foam. The floor was stained dark red and black. It all screamed psychopath. The weight of my predicament sunk slowly deeper into my very being. A brisk terror gripped my chest as I understood what was happening.
“Welcome to the world of the living Paul!” Shouted Grill Master, as he pressed his nose against mine. “So glad you’re awake. I thought I might have hit you a little too hard and killed you. How hard do you think I hit you? Like on a scale from 1 to 10?”
He rapidly fired this all out as I recoiled from the horrendous smell leaking from his poorly maintained mouth. I attempted to squirm out of the chair again, before I heard a metal twang and felt the skin on my cheek begin to inflame.
“What the hell do you want, you lunatic!?” I shouted, before being slapped again with what was apparently a large spatula.
“Only I get to ask questions here! If you answer my question with a question it’s not going to go well for you! So I ask again. On a scale from 1 to 10, how hard do you think I hit you?”
“I don’t know, like an 8.” I said, as I felt him caressing my face with his spatula.
“Hmm, what do you think would have happened if it was a 9 or 10?” He asked, grinning with broken and blackened teeth.
“I guess I would be dead.” I said flatly, trying to conceal the rising fear in my voice.
“You are probably right.” He said, flexing his flabby arms in some mock display of musculature.
While he put on his little show, I looked over to Gertrude. Her face had very serious fresh abrasions along the right side. Then I looked over to Father Hal who had several shish kabob skewers in his legs. He made a tired eye contact with me. It was hard to look at our church leader in that condition. A man normally so filled with fervor and love for life seemed broken, his eyes seemingly dusked over in defeat.
“See, I have an ambition! I want to write a great horror novel involving my two favorite things! Creepy old animatronics and giant animal hybrids. Maybe we can put some clowns in there too. Clowns are popular these days. The problem is I am not an idea guy.” He said all this quickly while clumsily leaping from person to person in the room. “I am more of a question guy, so you three are gonna be my idea guys. If you all cooperate with me everything is going to go great for everyone. Can you guys imagine what is going to happen if you don’t cooperate?”
“No.” Said Gertrude quietly, in a voice that sounded like she smoked glass and drank tobacco.
I saw a fire rise in Grill Master’s eyes as he turned to face her. He stormed over to a hook on the wall that held a grimey grill apron. As he put it on I tried to read the words that used to be on it, before I was quickly distracted by the multiplicity of grilling paraphernalia tucked into the oversized pockets. He stomped over to her with a huff, while removing a wire grill brush from one of the pockets.
“What have I told you Gertrude? When I ask a question you have to answer constructively.” He said in a slow calm voice that shook me more than his normal manner of speech. “I guess you’re going to have to be punished.”
Gertrude started to scream as he raised the brush to her face. He grabbed the back of her head and forced it into the wire brush which he began rubbing vigorously along her already abraded face, the sound of the flesh being torn by the brush was more chilling than the screams.
“Grill Master, my son, you don’t have to do this.” Said Father Hal frantically. “God will forgive you if you just stop and repent.”
“I have had enough of your moral nonsense.” Said Grill Master with a snarl. “I always heard that The Bible was one of the greatest books of all time. I thought maybe that would mean you knew a thing or two about literature, but all I have heard from you is moral grandstanding.”
He removed a cleaver from his grill apron and walked over to Father Hal. Father Hal began to squirm, attempting to scoot his chair back with his limited leg movement.
“Oh, please, no you don’t have to hurt me. I will help! I can help! Maybe…” His sentence was cut short by the sound of metal cracking bone.
Grill Master had driven the cleaver into the reverend’s skull. The only sound escaping his mouth now was the sickly gurgling of his sinuses filling with blood. Grill Master struggled to remove the cleaver for a few seconds before freeing it with wet pop.
“YOU CAN’T HELP ME! YOU CAN’T EVEN HELP YOURSELF!” He shouted, before laughing maniacally. “Woooo! Look at him bleed. I need to make a mental note of what that looks like! Give my novel the gravitas and realism it deserves.”
Gertrude was still crying audibly, seemingly having lost her struggle with the horrifying situation she found herself in. Grill Master turned to her with a scowl and sighed.
“You know, all you’ve done is cry since I brought you here. It’s honestly not helping with my creative process.” He raised his cleaver and started walking towards her.
“Hold on!” I shouted, through gritted teeth. “Ask me your questions. I am more than happy to help you buddy.”
He turned to me with a dead eyed stare. His greasy unkempt hair further moistened with sweat from his frenetic state. He walked slowly and deliberately over to me. He placed the flat side of the cleaver under my chin and raised my head so that we made eye contact.
“Truly you want to help me?” He hissed at me. “Cause If you’re lying I am more than happy to go grab your wife and have her help me study blood splatters.”
The thought of this psycho being anywhere near my wife grabbed my spine like the icy hand of death. Normally I would like to think it would have filled me with rage, but in my current situation fear was the only reasonable emotion.
“I promise.” I said, before trying to swallow the growing lump in my throat.
“You’re a lucky lady Gertrude.” Said Grill Master over his shoulder. “Ok, Paul, so I need a really big monster for my novel. What do you think would happen if a 20 story tall animatronic Chihuahua made landfall on the east coast?”
The question ground my brain against the bottom of my skull. It was a typical Grill Master question. It was such an open question that I hardly knew what to say. I just had to hope I was creative enough to answer satisfactorily.
“Well I imagine a lot of people would be running and the local police force would respond. The National Guard would probably also be deployed.”
“Yeah, Ok!” Said Grill Master with a childlike enthusiasm. “But, imagine if the giant Chihuahua also barked up giant animatronic scorpions. Also the scorpions shoot lasers and have zebra fur!”
“Well I personally imagine that is some pretty wild imagery Grill Master. I think the Military would definitely have some trouble with that. The novel could focus on a special forces group trying to find a way to disable the animatronics.” I said, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible.
“No, see, imagine that the animatronic Chihuahua is the hero of the story. Can you imagine that?”
I was definitely struggling now, this was one of those questions I didn’t have the wherewithal to actually answer. I barely read books, I have no idea how to write from an animatronic villain’s perspective.
“Why is the monster the Hero?” I blurted out without thinking.
Grill Master’s face grew dark as he withdrew a pair of tongs from his apron and grabbed my ear lobe with them. He then pulled and pushed the tongs to force my head back and forth.
“Use your head dummy. Obviously the Animatronic Chihuahua is the good guy. Can you imagine like a giant group of termites that erupt from the ground and start sucking out people’s brains? What do you think that would look like?”
“Probably very grotesque. I am assuming they eat brains through a sharp proboscis.” I replied.
“Yeah see, now you’re getting it! That’s some good shit you got right there. What color do you think the termites would be?”
I racked my head for the answer he probably wanted. I wanted to just say “Normal Termite Color”, but obviously that was going to be wrong. Right? So I went with the dumbest thing I could think of.
“They have like Cheetah Fur!”
“Cheetah Fur! Why would they have cheetah fur?” He shrieked out.
“Uhm…because the animatronic scorpions have zebra fur and cheetahs are their natural predator. So it’s like a good thematic contrast?” I offered, wondering if I had used the term ‘thematic contrast’ properly.
“You know what, that’s actually a pretty damn good idea. Can you imagine the blood spray when the termites are done sucking out a person’s brain?
He said this as he removed a metal drinking straw from his aprons pocket, and then walked over to a table. He placed the straw on the table and sliced the end of it at an angle with his heavy cleaver. It was now a sharp metal drinking straw. I looked at it in horror as he gingerly tested the point on it.
“Probably like the spurt out of a house after you turn off the water!” I offered frantically.
“Yeah, that sounds about right. I just can’t imagine it though you know. I need to see it.” He said this before striding over to Gertrude and tilting her head to the side and lining up the straw with her temple. She began to scream again.
I was panicking now. I didn’t want to watch her die. Despite having an ungodly amount of cats, she was a perfectly normal and likable woman. Not a mean bone in her body. Then I heard a faint sound of hope. It sounded like sirens. A small amount of red and blue light broke through Grill Master’s blackout curtains. The police were on their way. At least that is what I hoped. I did the only thing I could.
“Why can’t you imagine it? You have no trouble imagining people want to be asked a million questions everyday!” I shouted.
Grill master stopped struggling with Gertrude and turned to me slowly. There was a rage in his eyes that was utterly indescribable.
“I told you! I ASK THE QUESTIONS AROUND HERE!” He drew himself to his full height of 5 foot 5 and glowered at me. “My questions tickle the imagination of every person I speak with.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. No one can stand you. You smell like a pair of rusty testicles on a hot summer day. You are a delusional, habitual liar, and you treat the world like it owes you something.” I started raising my voice even louder.
Grill Master began taking slow deliberate steps towards me now. He was rummaging in his apron pockets. He had a look of murderous intent on his face, and I knew in that moment I had very much poked a bear that was better left unpoked. My heart fluttered frantically as my head tried to come up with a way to stall him further. Then a moment of relief as I heard the faint sound of car doors slamming. I just had to wait for the cops to kick in the door or hear screaming. Thankfully, Grill Master obliged the need for screaming.
“PEOPLE CAN’T STAND BEING AROUND ME BECAUSE I SCARE THEM! I AM 6 FOOT 11 AND 270 POUNDS OF PURE MUSCLE! IT’S NOT MY FAULT I AM BUILT LIKE A BRICK SHIT HOUSE.”
A pounding came at the door as two muffled voices seemed to be shouting outside the house. I just needed a few more seconds. I began racking my brain for more insults to hurl as I saw him withdraw a filleting knife from his apron pocket.
“I have to look down at you when I speak to you, and I am 5’7 you dingus. The only resemblance you have to a brick shithouse is the contents left in the toilet of said shithouse. You’re delusional and the only reason you scare people is because you’re clearly a fucking murderous psychopath. Quit being a giant uncreative prick and mow your fucking lawn!” I shouted, as loud as I could.
I saw Grill Master raise his knife as the door to his house was battered in.
“Drop the weapon, son!” A police officer shouted behind me.
“Can you imagine if I actually dropped my knife?” He asked, turning his head to face the officer.
It wasn’t something I had to imagine. I saw him drop his knife after his head erupted from a fatal gunshot wound.
—
There were a lot of questions after that. Which was horrible considering the company I had just been in that night. Turns out Grill Master had been squatting in that house, and none of us ever noticed. He apparently had a habit of jumping from small town to small town, abducting people, murdering them and then repeating the process. Gertrude was rushed to the hospital, and I was eventually released to go home.
My wife was apoplectic after I described the events of that night. She never thought Grill Master was a murderous psychopath. She just thought he was quirky. I can’t blame her, she always sees the good in people. She still apologies constantly for even suggesting I humor Grill Master. It’s not her fault though.
Thankfully she called the cops when she noticed I was missing. Father Hal had also been reported missing. It didn’t take too many questions for the cops to figure out Grill Master was a likely suspect. I am in some ways grateful he was such an oddball, that very public fact may have saved my life.
They say there is a thin line between genius and insanity, I like to think maybe there is a version of Grill Master out there who finished his own novel. Maybe it even has giant animatronic chihuahuas and brain eating termites. Maybe it’s a really good novel. I wouldn’t mind meeting that version of Grill Master. As for the one I knew of, I hope to never meet someone like that again.