S15E08 - "To Sit On the Throne" - Horror Hill

**Erik Peabody** (0:02)
Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.
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Greetings, friends, and welcome back to Horror Hill. As always, I'm the voice whispering into your ear, Erik Peabody. Tonight's episode features a story by one of my favorite regular authors on the show, JR. Hamentaschen. The story is titled, 7099 Brexville Road, Independence, Ohio. Those of you familiar with J.R.'s work know that he's a master of dredging through the psychological sewer of the human mind. But tonight's story is a bit different. Sometimes JR cuts loose a bit and delivers a story that's direct and truly blood-soaked. I'm not spoiling anything here when I say that this is a creature feature of the highest order. So without further hemming and hawing, let's settle in for something both vicious and viscous.
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And now, from author JR. Hamantashian, I give you 7099 Brexville Road, Independence, Ohio.
There were three toilet stalls in the men's room at the Sunoco gas station at 7099 Brexville Road in Independence, Ohio. One of them was occupied. If you were, say, washing your hands and looking at the stalls for whatever reason, a mistaken glance perhaps, you'd see in the space below the door, a man's feet, his black work boots and dark blue Wrangler jeans. This was one of those bathrooms that had a distressing amount of clearance room between the stall doors and the floor. The man's feet flexed a bit, not staying stationary, but not in any unusual way, just in the usual fashion of a man using the toilet, shifting in the usual way a man does as he distributes his weight. The stall had been occupied all day. Men came in, most used the urinals, less fortunate travelers whose activities required the use of a toilet, obviously selected one of the two unoccupied stalls. If any of those less fortunate travelers accidentally opened the door on the stall occupied by the man with the black work boots and dark blue wrangler jeans, they'd see that the disguise ended at his waist. From there, emerged a man-sized praying mantis of vivid turquoise. Each armored eye extended several inches in front of its face connected by stocks. Each eye came protected by its creator with three cruel-looking scorpion tails that shook with anticipation. The mantis' oversized claws were angular spiders whose legs ended in sharpened shoots. If the claws got to eat, their waists would excrete through the legs and drip out the shoots.
No one accidentally opened the door. Despite the door always being left unlocked just for such an occasion, no one would see what lay inside. A pity. Someday someone would walk in on one of Ormond's creations. The mantis' creation was his personal favorite, and it hadn't had any action for years. He'd been proud of that one, and he placed it in the stalls of truck stops and gas stations that had inspiring names like Your Independence, Ohio, Your Liberty, Texas, or Your Prosperity, South Carolina. That working creation had been one of his proudest moments. A shame. One day someone would accidentally push one of those bathroom doors open and see what lay in store for him.
Another gas station, this one in Schenectady, New York. Schenectady, what an evocative name for so routine a town. In the spirit of that evocative name, Ormond tried something different. The legs in that stall wore straight leg Levi's and steel-toed black Doc Martens. The body came furnished with Ormond's attempt at a long sleeve brown athletic shirt in the style of a lawn stale or some other brand a 60s UK street punk might wear. He couldn't get the shirt right though, and in frustration didn't put much effort into the texture work, telling himself that this subtle sartorial aberration made the monster more singular and otherworldly. He had a working man's backstory in mind for this one. The face was a classic skull, but with blood-capped stalagmites for teeth and pulsating anemones for eyes. The trick here, or so Ormond thought, was that the eyes would pulse, but they would not shift or follow the movements of its prey, giving the creation a detached, almost disinterested mean which, he hoped, would make it seem somehow scarier. But Ormond ended up not liking the creation, and neither did his superiors. He tried to create works of art to impress his superiors, even though he didn't have that much time left in his tour of duty. He wanted to inspire, come up with new ideas to keep the job interesting. Not like it mattered anyway, he thought ruefully, as his creation occupied the stall undisturbed for the entire shift. Ormond would need to talk with the higher-ups about some ways to get some more intake opportunities for his creations to interface with the public. They were a wary group, and he knew we would need to mollify their concerns, let them know he would preserve the integrity of their venture. But they had to infuse some new ideas. Otherwise, the whole operation would be requisitioned off.