Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Rematch Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE REMATCH

The deep fryer scent gets lonely on a day off and somehow that makes it stink doubly; partly, maybe, it’s the day-old-ness of the grease, or maybe it’s the lack of the pizza oven or the popcorn machine, or even the missing aerosol disinfectant shoe spray scent that has the overall smell awry. The quiet vacancy of the bowling alley is equally off-putting, though in sound and sight rather than scent.

The Patricks came second place last year in the league championship.

It had been good sort of league, fair and competitive, a point solidified by Patrick Morrison’s brother, Corey, being the owner of the joint. Though I guess a fair outcome was the one thing that had gone out the window last season, at least in the finals. For the first time in fifteen years, The Patricks were up for the Slam-O-Rama Cup against The Smiling Skulls—a group of bankers and advisers who’d never had a team before and only really showed up as contenders come playoffs.

To hear Patrick Marlowe tell it, the ref was basically accepting cash right there on the spot, claiming line violations and awarding The Smiling Skulls what amounted to two mulligans because of unforeseen distraction: “Gave’m re-shoots ‘cause the crowd was hyped!”

I didn’t tell that I was there.

There, but not in the league. Four years ago, I’d come to town for a spot at the local graphics shop as a layout and design guy. Bowling has been my game since I was ten and my grandpa took me to the alley two towns over and had me rolling balls that seemed as big as watermelons.

“Smug as you can guess and slick as grease,” Patrick Shelby told me the same Saturday afternoon the offer had come. “Especially that captain they have.”

Shelby had come up to me after I’d finished the third solo game in a row—high that day was two-sixty, so I was rolling—and he asked if he’d heard correctly that my name was Patrick. I told him yeah and he filled me in on a series of events that I knew already but was polite enough to let him tell.

The crowd was big, drunk, and loud on the day The Patricks and The Smiling Skulls went head-to-head for bragging rights and a name on the trophy. The crowd was on The Patricks’ side almost wholly, and I’ll admit, at first, I was rooting for the underdogs. Though to consider it in afterthought, those bankers weren’t really underdogs, cheating or not, the world was pushing for them. They wore matching Dexter The 9 shoes in black and red—retail close to four hundred a pair—Nike Dry-Fit pants in charcoal, black custom H5G shirts with the SS logo embroidered in Red on the front right breast and their names stitched on the left, and the logo huge on the back. They all had fine, pale brown leather ball bags—customized with The Smiling Skulls logo patched small on the side—and Brunswick Quantum balls that looked like milky planets, influx while rolling. They were thin and clean cut; in their twenties with blond and dirty blond hair, trimmed short and styled with gel. They looked like they could model for a university date rape warning pamphlet. And to top it off, they were okay all season, but killing it in the playoffs.

But the time had come and Patrick Morrison threw thirteen strikes in a row—going back to the first round of the playoffs—before the match started and opened up The Patricks’ run with a fourteenth consecutive winding knockout toss that crashed a symphony every bowler knows by ear. I remember thinking he should’ve been pro throwing with that much boogie on it.

Then the oddities started to go on and to the crowds’ defense, they cooperated with the red-faced, sweaty, old referee who was actually voicing issues.

Even with the bull calls, The Patricks were only nine pins shy of taking the championship in the final frame. Of course, Morrison was up, his streak had continued and he was about to bury The Smiling Skulls and earn his first championship.

The crowd fell to a hush. Morrison lined up his shot, gaze like a panther’s eying an easy kill.

He started into the delivery and then out of nowhere, someone sounded off an air horn and the ball jumped straight for the gutter as it left Morrison’s hand.

Everyone looked for the culprit and then to the ref—he’d given Bobby Bannon, the captain of The Smiling Skulls, two re-do shots for noise coming from the crowd. The ref wasn’t moving, just sweating and waiting for the next shot.

Morrison shrugged it off and smirked. This was his, that much was blatant in his expression, in the way he carried the ball. Like he knew his destiny. Like he’d seen the outcome written in stone.

He lined it up, licked his lips, and threw the most perfect shot in the history of championship shots, but just before the ball reached the pins, the ref blew his whistle.

“Toe over the line,” the man said and turned to the newcomers who’d just stolen the championship.

Everybody else, me included, looked to Patrick Morrison’s feet. His toes were back a few inches, but I supposed, at the time anyway, that he could’ve, maybe, lost track of where he was.

The crowd was crickets aside from the hooting young men. Then Patrick Simpson’s voice rang out, “Somebody call a doctor!” Morrison was on the floor, twitching.

That was two months before I joined The Patricks and exactly ninety days before I showed up at the Slam-O-Rama on August 3^rd. A sign written in magic marker stated the alley was closed that day for maintenance.

I stepped inside and everything looked normal, just un-busy.

Patrick Shelby, the new captain after Morrison’s passing, told me every year, a week before the new season started, the finalists from the season prior had a fun match. I got there last of my teammates, but long before the first of The Smiling Skulls arrived and that same red-faced, sweaty, old ref.

“Ready for another beat down?” Donald Kearns said to me, obviously not noticing that I was new and had a blank yellow shirt instead of a team shirt. I recognized his face, not only from the alley, but also from the paper; he sold private commercial mortgages. Rumor around town was that he also laundered money, but people always talk.

Moments later, a man named Peter Harper and a man named Watson Hillman came through the door in their team colors. It was a couple minutes before the ref showed up and a few more minutes before The Smiling Skulls started texting their captain.

I’d sat under the lane four scoring monitor, shoes tied and ready to toss when the owner, Corey Morrison, went over and said, “You ready to start?”

“Bobby’s not here,” Watson Hillman said.

Corey sneered. “I got shit to do, put him last. He can hop in when it’s his shot, once he gets here.” He turned then and stared down lane three. 

Shelby got up, tossed, left the seven standing, but cleaned it up with his next throw. Kearns looked to his teammates, stood, and absolutely slammed a strike—a shot he was lucky he didn’t split between the seven and the ten. A shiver rode my back and, baby, it was on.

—

I’d shot fourth and eighth, and to my credit, I was the only Patrick throwing strikes. So Shelby whispered to me that I was also going to be throwing the tenth frame.

I shrugged, but I was pretty pumped about it.

Watson Hillman stood up then, looked to his teammates as if hoping to delay longer. Their captain still hadn’t answered any text messages and that had them sweating. He was obviously their best and they’d left as many open frames as we had, though were still up by two points.

When none of his teammates said anything, Hillman grabbed his milky white ball, his initials inlaid in gold by the finger holes, and started to his position. He closed his eyes, kissed the ball, and tossed. There was hardly any flare, like a good rookie might throw—kind of shot that gets lucky about half the time, but if there’s a split, he’s probably screwed. He wasn’t, the pins crashed and Shelby hopped up. A grin had spread and I just couldn’t figure it. He was having a pretty mediocre match and we were getting further down every time he threw.

Up, ball in hand, he hardly paused and hooked from right to left with way too much drift, leaving the one, three, five, six, nine, and ten standing. He stood by the mechanical ball return. His ball burned up from the dark recesses of the machine and along the rubber track a half-minute later. He spun on his shoes, almost like a dance move, almost like he was giddy to lose, and pumped back without eying and knocked down everything but the king pin.

I tried not to look at him, but I was a little frustrated.

One of The Smiling Skulls actually hooted.

Kearns was having a good game and nearly totaled us with a strike. I whispered a thanks to the strong and firm ten pin still standing. He cleaned it and I stood.

I was going for my personal turkey—though it didn’t really count that way as there’d been a ton of crap shots between my two—so I took my time. I eyed and envisioned and exhaled a deep breath. I wound back and knew instantly that I’d put too much on it.

I closed my eyes and listened to the lackluster crash.

It could’ve been worse. A lily is doable, it’s not the coffin nails of a seven-ten, but you still need to rely on a messenger pin to bounce one side to the other.

“Look at that sour apple,” one of The Smiling Skulls said.

I went to the ball return to wait, not acknowledging the uncouth sonofabitches on the other side of the aisle.

The ball return was a steel hump that jutted from the waxy floor. The paint is obviously refreshed often—an inoffensive tan hue in high gloss—but the track is sometimes slow and the design reveals its age.

My ball returned and I readied myself, psyched myself, and began.

The air horn sounded and I barely managed to keep hold of my ball. I spun and sneered at those high finance buggers. They tried to look innocent and confused, but one had his hand in his ball bag. I turned to my teammates and they all wore grins. I couldn’t figure it. This was it, if I didn’t clean up and then strike, we had to rely on at least one gutter ball from the opposition and that wasn’t likely.

I faced the lane and took a deep breath. I threw quickly so as to put off the timing of anymore interruptions. Muscle memory was my only hope and my body knew what it was doing. The drift carried my ball from center-right to far-left, smacking the outside of the seven pin and sending it on an expedition, into the five, into the ten.

It was my turn to hoot. My ball burped from the return and the air horn sounded as I was in mid-delivery, but I’d been expecting it and was still riding the high from crushing the split. The crash was Beethoven and the groan following from the other side was Mozart.

We were up, though not exactly safe, in the last frame and I could be happy about my game. My eyeballs burned into Kearns who was having the best game of his teammates and was there therefore tossing the cleanup round.

“Hey, where’s my ball?” he said.

The Smiling Skulls looked over and I looked over, but I don’t think any of my teammates bothered. They sat there grinning.

“Hey, buddy, send out my ball!” Kearns shouted this down the lane.

“Oops, coming right up!” Corey Morrison shouted, obviously somewhere in the pit.

The ball return seemed to chug then and we all turned to face Kearns as he had his hand out to stop his ball. The burp was wet and a subtle, unusual pop followed. Kearns stood dumbly for a couple seconds, his hand blocking Bobby Bannon’s wide-eyed, severed head.

“No fuck, no fuck,” Kearns mumbled and draped his body over an empty seat—cushioned, molded plastic—before falling to the floor after a loud thwack!

From where I was, and by the way he’d turned, I could see into his head. The bone was glaringly white amid the reds and the pink meat of his brain.

Kearns’ eyes rolled and his tongue jutted in and out of his mouth like a snake in slow motion. “Oy-oy-oy,” he said. “Oy-oy-oy.”

The blood from the wound had sprayed and dripped through the ball return track and onto the fine waxy hardwood beneath. My gaze left the hole in the skull and zeroed in on those tiny splashes, not fully comprehending.

Kearns’ Oys fell away into mumbles.

A moist thump pulled me from my reverie and I looked up to Corey Morrison wielding a bloody bowling pin like he was a caveman taking a bride from one of the trashy pulp movies from the ‘sixties. The second shot with the bowling pin was what stopped Kearns, dislocated his jaw, made his eyes all whites.

My teammates grabbed for anything, one Patrick reared back a glass beer stein, another Patrick had his can of shoe disinfectant—his index finger on the trigger—another Patrick hefted his ball above his head like a gorilla with a stone. The young men didn’t know what to do, they were on their feet, arms raised, jazz hands-ing and saying “Nonononono.” I was utterly dumbfounded. The wails and the blood, the wet smacks and the crunching of bone. Corey Morrison kept shouting, “This is for Patrick! This is for Patrick!” and Kearns’ face became a chunky smear like a melted ice cream sundae with all the fixins.

Watson Hillman became my next focus as the scream that left his mouth was high and shrill. Patrick Simpson had the shoe disinfectant aimed and was firing a sudsy wash over the kid’s face. Patrick Marlowe cocked the heavy glass beer stein behind his head and thumped it three times off Hillman before it shattered. He used the edge and started cutting the unconscious figure while Patrick Simpson disinfected the wounds.

The broken glass also activated Peter Harper and he hopped the row of seats and started for the door. “Where the hell he think he’s going?” Patrick Shelby asked and reared back with his bowling ball—a sparkly Brunswick that had seen a lot of throws—and pitched it overhand. Twenty feet from our lane and twenty-five feet from the locked exit, Peter Harper flopped face first with the impact of the ball to the back of his head. “Steeeeerike!” Shelby shouted and broke after the fallen man. He began slamming Peter Harper’s head into the hardwood floor until crunches joined the smacking sounds.

Silence followed and The Patricks, one-by-one, turned to the ref, who’d been silent, wide-eyed, and shaking ever so slightly at the lip of lane two. My new teammates converged. Corey Morrison dropped the smeary bowling pin he’d held and opened the casing for the ball return—any screws holding it together had obviously been pre-emptively taken out. The steel clanged as it fell. He then grabbed two junior balls from the community-use racks and whipped them down the gutter of lane four. He did it twice more and then turned to me briefly. The look was ice cold and I gripped the underside of my seat, petrified.

“No, guys...they paid me...I needed—no!” My teammates had the ref like a torpedo, his arms pinned at his sides and his legs pinched together. “No! Goddammit! No!”

They carted him to the ball return that had just begun rumbling, activated by the balls Corey Morrison had tossed. The ref pleaded until he screamed, the scalp of his balding head peeled free in the gears like leather. The patch covering his cranium rolled along the track like it was business as usual.

The ref screamed one last time until the bone finally lost to steel and began grinding through the machine. It reminded me of those first bites from a bowl of Corn Flakes. The machine stalled then and short-circuited, sending out three flashes of blue before a greasy smoke floated on air.

Corey Morrison and The Patricks all looked at me then, and I gazed around the room, stupidly. All that remained were four mush puddles and bodies to go with them...and a head still on the ball return track. I swallowed and they walked slowly, eyes burning into me like they were slasher creeps. My heart began dancing triple time and I tried to speak. Shelby grabbed a duffle bag from the floor and pulled out a box from within.

“Guys. Guys.” I’m not sure if I actually said this or just mouthed it. “Guys.”

“We can do this one of two ways. That way,” Shelby nodded at the ref’s corpse, “or this way.” He tossed the blood-smeared box at me.

—

It’s been seven months since The Smiling Skulls disappeared and the round robin round of the playoffs are about to begin. The decision I’d made to keep my mouth shut comes to mind now and then, guilt-tinged, but when I think about opening that box and seeing my moniker on that The Patricks’ shirt breast, I know I made the right choice.

We’re good, maybe not good enough to pull off a championship, but if we get on a roll, you never know.

XX