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    Libertines: A Horror Story
    Libertines: A Horror Story
    Libertines: A Horror Story
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Libertines: A Horror Story

    By Grant Palmquist

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    About this ebook

    When Samantha finds an advertisement in a tawdry magazine that promises to jumpstart her sex life, she can’t help but tell her husband about it. All they have to do is pay fifty bucks and listen to a subliminal recording daily, so there’s nothing to lose.

    Only once they buy it and begin listening to it, they start to change, subtly at first, then dramatically, for they’ve been listening to messages from somewhere else, somewhere other, and those messages will alter their lives ... forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrant Palmquist
    Release dateJun 10, 2013
    ISBN9781301152827
    Libertines: A Horror Story
    Author

    Grant Palmquist

    Grant Palmquist is the author of the science-fiction novel Azure and four horror novels: A Song After Dark, Permanent Winter, Dirge, and The Seer. His short stories have appeared in Chizine, Dogmatika, and Underground Voices.

    Read more from Grant Palmquist

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      Book preview

      Libertines - Grant Palmquist

      13-04-09_LibertinesPhase1Option1Apple&Amazoncover.jpg

      Libertines

      Grant Palmquist

      Libertines

      Copyright © 2013 by Grant Palmquist. All rights reserved.

      First Smashwords Edition: June 2013

      Cover: Sharm Murugiah

      Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

      This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

      Libertines

      When our love life went south, Samantha suggested something she’d found in the back of a sex magazine.

      She was reading those magazines on the sly, spurred on by the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. She’d loved that book, though I didn’t know why. I’d tried reading a few passages myself and tossed it to the floor in disgust. E.L. James couldn’t write worth a damn, but if she was going to provide some much needed spark to my sex life, then I was game.

      Samantha wouldn’t tell me what she’d found in the back of that magazine, just kept giving me a knowing smile when she mentioned it. She’d brought it up shyly, almost reluctantly, while we were lying in bed one night. I had the bedside lamp on and was reading a book entitled Curfew. It was trash, but sometimes I liked my horror trashy, apparently the same way Samantha liked her smut smutty. A strong wind beat against the bedroom window, which gave a scenic view of the smoggy downtown Houston skyline. She was lying on her side, when suddenly she flipped over and rested her head on my shoulder and looked up at me coyly. I set the book down on my stomach.

      What is it? I asked.

      I was thinking …

      Yeah? About what?

      Just us.

      What about us?

      The way we don’t ever touch each other anymore.

      We touch each other.

      Not like we used to, she said.

      Well, passion turns into love, right?

      I guess, she said, sighing. But sometimes I need …

      Need what? I asked.

      Sex, she said. And not just rote sex, but good sex. Her cheeks flushed.

      I thought we always had good sex.

      She rolled her eyes.

      What? I said.

      You don’t let yourself go like you used to. Now it’s like … there’s just no passion anymore.

      Like I said—

      You need passion, at least during sex.

      Look, I said, every couple has their honeymoon period, then it dies down.

      But what if we could get it back, make it last forever?

      How would we do that? I asked.

      She reached over the side of the bed and pulled something from beneath it. It was a magazine called Sex Tales. In the classified section she had circled an ad twice which read, DOES YOUR SEX LIFE NEED A JUMPSTART? WE HAVE JUST THE TRICK TO REV IT UP. NO DRUGS OR FANCY PRESCRIPTIONS NEEDED. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS … CALL THIS NUMBER AND ASK ABOUT OUR GREAT SEX SUBLIMINAL RECORDING. The phone number was directly below the ad. I set it on top of my book and laughed out loud.

      What’s so funny? she asked, her jawline pulsing.

      I could sense she was waiting to jump on me if I said the wrong thing, so I stifled my laughter. It’s just … it sounds like so much bullshit to me.

      We could at least give it a try, she said. It couldn’t hurt anything. It’s not like we’d be taking pills. We’d just listen to a recording every day.

      "Every day?"

      I think it’s every day.

      Christ, I thought. We could give it a shot. I shrugged.

      If you don’t want to—

      No, I want to. Why do I rope myself into this shit?

      That was how it started: I gave in to her pleas. Maybe I wanted it, too. Life had grown boring since our marriage, and we were in our early forties, so if we didn’t get our acts together we probably never would. We’d become that old couple who argues constantly due to pent-up sexual frustration, and neither of us wanted that.

      213385.jpg

      The subliminal was an MP3 that they sent to your email after you paid them fifty bucks through PayPal.

      The first time I listened to it I thought it was a hoax. It was basically peaceful music coupled with the sound of waves crashing, and a breeze in the background. I didn’t say anything to Samantha about my suspicions, but I hated wasting money, even fifty bucks. She didn’t say anything either, just listened to the recording as she fell asleep at night, probably hopeful it would work somehow.

      I checked my bank account online to see the business name of this outfit and it read BOUNTIFUL MINDS. I laughed to myself. These guys were good. Maybe I’d splice together some peaceful music and sell it as an aphrodisiac too, make myself some money on the side.

      It was on the seventh day I began to notice something different inside me. You see, when Samantha and I got married, I turned off my lust motor, which is what I called it when I looked at other women and got riled up. I’d done really well, too: I never looked at a woman too long, nor fantasized about any woman but Samantha, which lately didn’t do much for my sex drive, but loyalty was more important than

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