Tales of the Macabre: Books 1-4 | Collector's Edition | Paperback Boxed Set

Invasion of the Hipster Beards
2016, London, England

The air in Compton’s was thick with the scent of beer, sweat, and cheap cologne. Elric stood near the sticky bar, sipping rum and orange juice through a straw, his gaze sweeping the room.
Elric had a thing for beards. A serious, all-consuming, borderline inappropriate thing. Bear Night was an all you can eat buffet of large bodied, hairy men.
Leaning on the bar next to him, his best friend and fellow twink, Jon nursed a pint. “Anything primeval on the horizon, l’Eric?” his voice was barely audible over the pulsing music. His smirk, however, was very visible. Jon had coined the nickname ‘l’Eric’ after Elric spent a transformative week in Paris at the tender age of sixteen. It stuck.
Elric was about to make a witty retort when he walked in.
The man was a vision. Or rather, the beard that enveloped his face was. A dense, curly thicket of deep brown, shot through with flecks of grey. It was the beard of a pirate captain or a feral Saxon, almost inhumanly large. Part Gruffalo, part Wookie.
Elric’s eyes widened. The dad bod, the dishevelled attire, and the clumsy gait were all irrelevant to him.
“Oh no, don’t tell me that you are into that?” Jon muttered.
“Don’t judge me!” Elric continued to stare. Usually, Elric was notoriously loud and confident. Until that day, he had never seen such a beard. It was a work of art, woven from keratin.
“Okay, well, whatever, just don’t ditch me again like… l’Eric!”
Elric pushed away from the bar, straightened his spine, and strutted towards the bear. He considered his approach to be relatively glamorous until Jon gave him an encouraging shove. “I said don’t ditch me, you toad!”
“Unhand me, wart!” He snapped. “I’m just saying ‘Hello’. Back in a min.” Having regained his composure he continued to sidle across.
The man, seeing his approach, waved a small, chubby hand. “Hey.” His smile was pleasant enough, but Elric could barely focus on it. The beard was all Elric saw. He struggled to maintain eye contact, his gaze wanting to dip, to linger, to drown in that facial forest.
“My name’s Elric,” he managed, leaning on the bar next to him.
“I’m Toby. Drink?”
“Sure. I’ll have a…” Elric scanned the bar. “Vodka with ginger beer.”
Toby nodded. “Double vodka, ginger beer, and a pint of sour cherry ale, please.”
As they waited, Elric could not resist. He glanced down. The beard looked soft yet substantial. Heat rushed through Elric, prickling his skin as he blushed. “Do you come here often?”
Stupid question. Stupid. Stupid.
Elric grabbed his drink, sucking eagerly through the straw to distract his hands from temptation.
Toby nodded, a serious expression on his face. “Bear Night is the only night I come to Soho. People are less judgemental then.” He paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “Have I got something in my beard?”
Elric’s eyes snapped up. Caught. “No, not at all. Just thinking about… Eurovision. I’m not voting for the UK. What about you?”
Idiot.
The Eurovision he was contemplating was currently sprouting from Toby’s face.
“Should we go somewhere else?” Toby asked, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He nodded towards the men’s room.
Elric’s heart leaped. Did he ever? “I’ve never cottaged before,” he lied.
Fuck. Why did I say that?
Toby did not seem to notice. He turned and walked towards the toilets.
The scent of lemon soap and other less sanitary smells hit Elric like a wall. He did not care; he spotted Toby waiting by a cubicle and minced over in what he hoped was his most demure strut.
Elric went in first and sat down on the toilet, Toby following him and closing the cubicle door. The sound of generic pop music was numbed by the closed door, replaced with heavy, repetitive bass sounds that vibrated Elric’s teeth. In the cubicle next to him, he could hear the sounds of people doing cocaine. From this angle, he could only see the beard, not the face.
His life had become pure, unadulterated beard. A shiver of pleasure ran down his spine.
He mumbled excitedly as he reached for Toby’s flies. “Now then Beard Daddy, just lean back and let me do all the work. I call this the slip’n’slide.” He pulled out a packet of lubricant and ripping it open, smeared it over his hands.
His plans were thwarted when Toby reached down and lifted him up for a kiss.
Elric blushed. “I don’t normally kiss on the mouth.” But he reached up, his hands sliding under the luxurious facial foliage. As his lips got close, he felt Toby’s beard wrapping around his wrists, tightening.
What?
He ignored it, but curiosity led him to open his eyes.
He jerked back, a searing rip at his chin as filaments, barbed like tiny fishhooks, tore free from his skin, leaving a raw, bleeding patch. He screamed at the sight in front of him. Toby’s eyes were wide. His mouth stretched open, drooling. His beard had snaked around Elric’s wrists, holding him fast, and was coiling towards his face once again. A pair of purple eyes with vertical pupils opened deep within the beard.
A snigger came from the cubicle next to him. “Someone’s having fun.”
“Fuck off.” Elric yanked hard with his arms, freeing one of his lubricated wrists. “Get help!” He scrabbled in his hoodie pocket, fingers closing on the familiar cold metal of his Zippo. Flicking it on, he held the flame to the tendrils of hair. “Help me!” The hair erupted into flame, the eyes within clamped shut. Toby raised his gaze to the heavens and let out a long, earth shattering roar.
Elric scooted back as far into the corner of the cramped cubicle as he could. As the ‘beard’ died, Toby’s body collapsed against the cubicle door. As the beard turned to ash, Toby’s body collapsed. His flesh turned to slime, his bones dissolving into the spreading green puddle. Within moments, all that was left of the once hirsute, chubby man was a river of foul scented, grotesque jellylike liquid.
The cubicle door was shouldered open. The bouncer’s lip curled. He gagged, holding a hand over his mouth as he saw Elric alone and crouched in the filth, with disgust. For a moment the two of them stared at each other in stunned silence. Then the bouncer growled, “Right you, out. You are barred, you sick fuck.”
Behind the bouncer, a pair of large men in leather harnesses peered over his shoulder. The larger leather daddy recoiled. “What did you eat?”
Elric scrambled to his feet and fled Compton’s.
In the street, Elric doubled over and gasped for air. He stumbled back and looked at the group of smokers outside Compton’s. They watched him curiously, commenting on his state of disarray.
His phone rang.
It was Jon. In his panic, he had forgotten about his best friend. He was being FaceTimed.
Quickly accepting, Elric looked at a pixelated mess. Poor signal. “Get out of there! Get out!” he shouted. He looked at the door and contemplated racing in to grab him, but cowardice gripped his heart. Instead, he ran into the Admiral Duncan to use their WiFi. As his phone connected, he gasped.
Jon was smiling at him, now sporting a massive, fully-fledged beard where previously he had been clean shaven. “Come back l’Eric, all is forgiven. We can make this right.”
His hand went slack. The phone clattered against the floor.
“Are you alright?” The Admiral’s barman looked at him with concern, a thick, bushy beard on his chin.
Elric ran out of the pub. He raced for the tube. Everywhere, he saw hairy men. As he passed them, they stopped dead still, their heads rotating to track his flight.
It’s not over.
The beards are everywhere.
And they’re spreading.