Weirdyear

A Weird Couple Of Years

2013-02-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

Weirdyear is a weekly weird fiction magazine and part of Thunderune Publishing's free fiction lineup.

Though this magazine is currently closed to submissions, you can still read some great stories in the archives by picking an author name from the drop down menu on the right or by picking a date from the menu (also on the right.)

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2/15/13

2013-02-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Rhona of Old
By David Edward Nell

My bride had returned. There she was, in the flesh, passing before me in the distance. For minutes, watching by the window, I waited in glee for Rhona to turn her head, run up to my arms. Yet, as if stricken with amnesia, she never glanced once at her home. I left my cottage atop the Torridon Hills and pursued her.

“Rhona,” I cried behind. “Have you forgotten your husband? Answer me.”

She vanished up ahead into the swamp, its croaking ills deceiving enough to have me believe those were her calls, that, as I then entered, it was alive. I found her footprints next to a pond. Her pungent lavender fumes lingered, overwhelming even sulfur's decay, setting my senses alight and my awareness keen. When I stood again, I was startled, and then that surprise became ecstasy, for she was right before me, my Irish gem. Her lips were full and inked in a subtle red. Pale white skin like soapy bath water, hair a bounce of fiery curls. An outcast against earth's disease.

“Talk to me,” I said, the mud tugging at my feet, seizing me. She looked away, began to leave. Desperately, I bridged an arm to her shoulder where her garb was loose. Memories of my lip's nurture seemed to glow there. An old connection. My hand went right through, wringing trails of ectoplasm that quickly disseminated, sailed off. I announced my presence again, reached out several times more. Contact was useless. I dropped to my knees.

Rhona was met with company, greeted by a well-dressed man.

“Thought you'd be here,” he said, marking Rhona's hips. “We have to go before father and the guests scold.”

“Dinner can wait,” she replied, and he cupped her hand but she resisted. “I swear I saw him wandering these parts, Jacob. Yesterday. Maybe the inspector didn't search right. We should really look again.”

“Darling, won't you put this behind you? I fear you're gambling with madness.”

She looked down. “You don't understand. I think I can...sense him.”

“Please, Rhona,” he urged. “Stop being a fool. For the sake of our future, move on. I beg you. You know I love you.”

Their eyes met. It was a lovers' carnal exchange, and one spring day past, such an embrace was familiar to me. Thus, I couldn't bear the sight, thrashing from my strange, new soil entrapment, before I fell to my hands. Then I was locked in by the elbows, forced to watch the marriage of their lips.

“The horses grow weary. Go clean yourself up.” Jacob daubed the wetness from her cheeks, warmed her to his red coat, and she left first.

Rhona faded away into the sun. As I tried to have one last gander at the gem of my existence, light rays shot forth into my vision; it was as if I was forbidden from seeing the rest of her departure, as if there was hate in that light.

“Rhona,” went my final effort, my mouth tasting the salt of my misery.

“Erroll,” I heard in response, and it had come from elsewhere. The swamp. It was having its way with me. Madly, I chuckled and hacked, inspired by the increasing distortion of this reality, the wind feeding an appetizer of granules down my throat. And I laughed at Jacob, too, who was sifting through a patch of leaves, who thereafter gave some hard, fallow object a punt into the pond. Then he went, leaving me alone.

Outside the swamp, the sun turned blue. I heard a tune mimicking my inner hopelessness. I knew the soil was hungering, wanting me inside, for then it had me in its filth-spattering grip. I felt the dirt creep into my sockets, hugging me tighter, pulling me inward, into the nightmarish mire lurking beneath, below where no man had ever ventured. My lungs brimmed with its sourness, and no longer did I drown; the baptizing evil began to sustain me. Hands, as beautiful and silky as Rhona's, came over mine, and they came to mill at my limbs, to rip me asunder, to mould my body into some perfect shape to make way for tree roots. When the harvest was done, I understood the necessity of this union, for it would see the swamp flourish again.

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Having spent years trying to evade the Equestrian mafia, David Edward Nell now writes from a nameless hideout in Cape Town, South Africa. By night, disguised as numerous pop culture figures, he can usually be found scouring the African plains for loving. Stalk him at http://davidedwardnell.blogspot.com, but keep this a secret.

2/8/13

2013-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Unfortunate Circumstances
By David Edward Nell

The harbour was close. Marco was sure of it. Soon he'd be away from war, on a nighttime boat to Brazil with his briefcase, bidding ciao to stepmother Italy, to the past. That was the plan, anyway. First he had to find his way out of the Libyan desert. Somehow. Marco took off his camouflage shirt and whipped it to the sand, where it created an anthropomorphism of il Duce, Dear Leader, and he threw a final salute before rubbing it into chaos with his large toe. What little wind there was brushed his emaciation, as though nature was hugging him in understanding. When he winked back at nature, it rebelled with no gusts. There was a mirror shard nearby as tall as he, cut perfectly upright into a desert vein. Marco stood in front of it and remarked, “Handsome tan,” ogling himself.

An array of mahogany furniture pieces was scattered all the way up and over a hill. On the other side, the remains of a downed German plane was sending smoke into the fair skies. That was Marco's first and only hit, a non-combat friendly, a casualty of a single round from his rifle. If only the boys could have seen him at work. Now he was king of the Libyan desert, master gunner. An upside-down couch appeared a suitable throne, so he rolled it onto its hind and slumped into its crevasse and massaged his feet of scabs. Mama and Papa were watching from another couch, expecting him to smile to express his victory, puncture his lip sores. If he had the energy, he would have done jumping jacks and twirly dances, too, just to impress them and have them do their entertained claps that he missed so much. There was a knock at the mirror. It was Marco's reflection no more. Drill Sergeant Fabrizzio was staring at him with those scrutinizing devil goggles, pointing at him as if to accuse.

“What do you want?” Marco said.

“Bastard. Pig dog. Son of a whore. I've never seen such a disgrace to the uniform.”

“What uniform?”

“Open your briefcase and put it back on right now.”

“Fuck off.”

“Do you want me to come there and tear out your balls? Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you, you little pickle tickler?”

Marco sighed. “I lost it.”

“You certainly have, you incredibly worthless turd--”

To the east, a rumble of tanks sounded. Fighting over the dunes came a regiment, with them a beating of drums and a flag of Australia wavering about. When there seemed an end to their numbers, more materialized. Then they weren't ants anymore. They were surrounding him. Marco, nibbling on a nail for calcium, saw the guns aimed at his cranius, and sneezed out daisies and vaseline.

“G'day. Davis,” a child introduced himself, a boy general with a long, gray beard.

“I don't English,” Marco replied, flicking a nail at the soldiers.

“Bloody grommets. Deutsch?”

“No, no.”

“Italiano?”

“No Italiano.”

“What do you speak, then?”

“I speak the shit, Mickey Mouse.”

“Do we have any shit-speakers here?” Davis asked of his men.
“Yes, sir. I'm fluent in shit-speak,” answered a helpful private.

“Ask him what he's doing here, what's his affiliation,” Davis commanded, and a translation was communicated.

Marco listened and said, “I'm no Nazi, no fascist, just a tourist on a trip.”

“What's in the briefcase? Bomb?”

“Dream.” Marco opened it up for them. Inside was a pink ballet skirt, neatly folded and shimmering. And he noticed Sergeant Fabrizzio wearing a proud beam in the mirror, fading away, and Mama and Papa clapping their hands off. This is what they wanted, the unveiling. “I'm going to South America to become a dancer. Are you going to stop me, right when I'm nearly there?” Already he could see the golden shores of São Paulo on the horizon, smell the brine of the seas and sweetness of the markets, his senses set alight with expectation. It was a postcard come to life, and it was within a few walks, so close.

Davis cleared his throat, announced, “Give this proper man a lift.”

So they did, applauding together, journeying the Libyan desert, until, seconds later, the fringe of Brazil was in sight. Marco went thrashing about in the waves, playfully chugging more salt water than his lungs could take in, flaunting his seamless Vaganova. His plie sequences incited cyclones and rainbows to capture the sky.

“I'm so happy for you,” Davis shouted from the beach when Marco reared his head.

“Thank you,” Marco said in English.

“I have a secret.”

“What's that?”

“I'm a ballet dancer as well. Well, not anymore. Don't you remember me?”

“I--” Marco lost his smile. The world darkened. “I used to teach classes, yes. Cisternino, 1936. But I can't remember you, sir.”

“It'll come back, I'm sure, mate. Won't you teach me how to fly?”

“Maybe.”

“There's others like me.”

“I don't...”

“Look underneath.”

Marco shook his head, refusing.

“It's alright.” Davis peeled back his skin.

“Why did you do that to your wonderful face?”

“I had to,” Davis replied, and opened a jar of feathers and poured it into the water, which then turned black. Everything was becoming black. Now, his thoughts.

“What are you doing?” Marco screamed, hands pulling him down into the void.

“The universe doesn't care, teacher.”

“...doesn't care,” Marco muttered with a mouth full of granules, lying on his side, where his briefcase was splayed open. They were loose, his pets. Free, like his photographs. And he couldn't move his legs. Marco looked down, saw the pair of baby vultures picking at what was left of him.

“Fuck me,” he said, sighing.

- - -
Having spent years trying to evade the Equestrian mafia, David Edward Nell now writes from a nameless hideout in Cape Town, South Africa. By night, disguised as numerous pop culture figures, he can usually be found scouring the African plains for loving. Stalk him at http://davidedwardnell.blogspot.com, but keep this a secret.

2/1/13

2013-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Zombie Prosthetics
By Linda Courtland

“Get lost, you one-armed loser,” the zombie girl said, flipping what was left of her hair.

Jim shook his bloody stump at the decomposing bitch, spraying green goo and plasma into her Piña Colada. Then he trudged toward the door.

Jim was tired of trying to pick up girls in zombie bars. They all wanted someone with sculpted muscles and a full set of limbs, like in the movies. Sure, they said they wanted brains, but when it came to finding love, looks were all that really mattered. Still, zombies have needs. On the way home, Jim stopped at a Redbox and rented a girlie flick – Zombies Gone Wild: Barely Undead.

On the back of the DVD case, Jim noticed an ad for fake limbs. He dialed the toll-free number.

“Zombie Prosthetics,” a cheerful voice said.

“How much for an arm?”

Jim made an appointment for a fitting, and two weeks later, he felt complete again. The new arm looked great in his ragged plaid Western shirt. Jim brushed his three remaining teeth and set out to find true love.

At the zombie bar, girls swarmed around his big bilateral arms. But Jim’s attention was fixed on a sad-looking blonde sitting by herself. He bought her a drink and took her home. During their lovemaking, her leg fell off.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said.

Jim stroked her hair and told her he loved her.

“I’m falling apart,” she said. “With all your limbs, you could have any girl you wanted.”

“I want you,” he said, and measured her stump.

On their next date, Jim handed her a present. She opened the box and a polyurethane leg rustled in pastel paper.

“It’s just my size,” she said, hugging him.

Jim helped her attach the new leg. That night, their lovemaking was sweet and gentle, and uninterrupted by loose limbs. She moved in with him that weekend, and one at a time, Jim replaced the parts of her that she had lost – a toe or finger every Friday, a new breast for her birthday, an eye or ear as needed.

She was packing a suitcase when Jim came home with another present.

“I need some time alone,” she said, touching all the plastic parts of her. “I don’t know who I am anymore,”

“I gave you everything,” Jim said.

She stared at him through flawless glass eyeballs, unable to really see. “I have to find myself.”

Jim opened the new box as she shuffled toward the door. “Wait,” he said. “At least, take this.”

But she limped away, without looking back.

Jim held the fake body part, clutching their one last symbol of connection. And he watched his true love leave, while holding her prosthetic hand.

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Linda Courtland is the author of Somewhere to Turn: stories, a collection of flash fiction that features telecommuting dolphins, an amorous GPS system, and treadmill-running doppelgangers. She lives and writes in Los Angeles. Contact her at Lcourtland@gmail.com

1/25/13

2013-01-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

A Late Dinner
By Eric Suhem

An industrious whirr was heard from the kitchen crew as they busily prepared the meal’s next course. Everybody had enjoyed the stuffed pheasant, feathers drifting out of our mouths as we ordered dessert, an orange marmalade tart. We all ordered the standard coffee, except for Ted, who demanded an espresso in a yellow plastic mug reminiscent of his childhood. He then decided that he no longer wanted coffee in the yellow plastic mug, but instead would prefer a berry-flavored Hi-C fruit drink. “Yes sir!” said the waiter.

We were at an economic policy conference, and a number of informative presentations had been made throughout the day. My colleague on the economic panel, Ted, gave a particularly impressive speech on the implications of tax policy on global financial trade. But now the presentations were over, and we were well into dinner, later in the evening.

Ted voiced his discomfort with his chair, it was too low. He wanted something higher, much higher. The waiters looked around in back, and returned with a baby’s high chair. Ted eyed the chair favorably as the waiters lifted him up onto the seat, his black wingtips gouging one of them in the neck. As Ted was settled into the chair, a little security strap was fastened across his chest, overlapping his suit, shirt, vest and tie. He sat in the baby’s high chair, black shoes and socks dangling above the floor. Dessert was served. Ted stuffed some of the orange marmalade tart into his mouth, and the waiter quickly wiped the pastry goo from his face with a napkin.

Ted was embroiled in a serious discussion about world trade with a Minister of Finance from the Far East, Ted's pant legs swinging wildly in the high chair while he emphasized his conversational arguments regarding the economical merits of free trade. Ted pulled the little yellow plastic mug of Hi-C to his lips for another delicious sip. “Ted, are you attempting to channel your inner child? Perhaps you're participating in a session of hypnotic regression to childhood," said one of his dinner companions, a weathered dowager in a blue dress. Ted promptly bopped her on the head with a purple rattle that was set on the plastic tray of the high chair by one of the waiters.

After finishing his orange marmalade tart, and throwing pieces of it at the other guests, Ted noticed the black ‘X’ imprinted on his cup saucer. “What does this ‘X’ mean, Ted?” asked the weathered dowager, holding the cup saucer in front of his eyeballs, assaulting his pupils. Ted had been seeing the black ‘X’ for the last few weeks, on billboards, on his economic reports, and up in the sky. He climbed down from the high chair, and looked out the window. There was a beautiful beach outside. Ted excused himself discreetly and walked outside, down to the beach. Nearby was an old amusement park, where Ted had played when he was a child. He set his feet on the sand and walked along the waves the rest of the night.

The next day, Ted sat in a little 6.5 foot plastic pool in his front yard, playing with his boats and inflatable animals, belying his 20-year reputation as a stable, reasonable voice in the world economic discussion. The Minister of Finance from the Far West was at the side of the inflatable pool, holding important documents for Ted to sign. As Ted moved toward the contracts, he saw the little plastic duck with the black 'X' on its side bobbing along the cheery plastic water, approaching purposefully.

Ted knew the black ‘X’ was the cancer that had been moving quickly through his body. When he had learned of it weeks ago, he started reviewing his life, trying to relive early joys, as his time ran down. When the plastic duck reached him, Ted knew his life was at an end, and he succumbed, sinking to the bottom of the plastic inflatable pool, but it was nice to be back in his childhood one more time.

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Eric Suhem lives in California and enjoys the qualities of his vegetable juicer.

1/18/13

2013-01-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

Fame
By Mike Putnam

It started with facial hair. Whenever he was bored or worried or stationary too long he would pull and tug at the oily strands, tearing them from the follicles one at a time. Without looking, he absent-mindedly stuck them between his lips to verify that he had in fact pulled hair out then dropped them by the wayside. Sometimes, when conscious of the action, he wondered how many places he had left them. He knew there were hotel rooms in Ontario and the Dominican Republic that probably still hid tiny black hairs behind beds or under desks. Cheek hair, chin hair, throat hair, sideburn hair, spread out across classrooms and retail centers and public restrooms throughout a mostly tri-state area. Sometimes even nose hair but those hurt a great deal to remove and would always make his eyes water. The coverage on his lip was already sparse, so harvesting from either side meant seeing a Chaplin moustache reflected back when he looked in the mirror.

This pulling and tugging would make what was usually a full beard patchy and unattractive, but the thought of stopping was an impossibility once he had gotten in the habit of including these tiny hairs when he packed orders for the museum where he worked as a shipping clerk. Soon it led to clipping locks from his scalp, tearing finger nails at random, even spitting into the boxes to allow as much of himself as possible to go across the US (and parts of Canada). Within a few weeks there was a part of him in all fifty states and every province. As his boredom with work and the desire to ship as much of his body as he could heightened, he started to use his box-cutter to bleed into the shipments. Once he ripped out an entire nail with a pair of pliers (after consuming half a flask of single-barrel whiskey at lunch) and shipped it to Clearwater, Florida. It was intoxicating, being everywhere at once. But the habit stopped when he fainted pulling a molar from his mouth and received a concussion when his head split open on the concrete floor. He viewed it as a successful career though, noteworthy even, despite the fact that his celebrity was known to no one but himself.

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Mike Putnam is an American author currently living in Cleveland, Ohio. He has previously been published in Linguistic Erosion and Daily Love.

1/11/13

2013-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Franz Joseph Gall, Phrenologist
By Jacob Thiessen

Two Fashionable Men

The wife of a friend of a friend, a class removed but no more, volunteered and paid for by her husband.

In a room beyond a room, a demigod and his patient silhouetted against leather-bound books. They circle, he slashes, she parries, he thrusts, and a memory drops from behind her ear. She collapses as he strums an elongated moustache and begins to sketch out his next case study.

In an alley of beer-halls, the tallest one recently vacated by the death of its owner is converted into a theater. Chaplanesque tramps hired for the night wearing pasteboard signs over ether soaked cravats wrangle a single man downstairs and a better dressed couple towards the ticket counter, “be sure to get the balcony seating! Don’t subject your wife to the riffraff!”

On Thursday evenings surgery is performed, on Friday, automatons juggle before a futurescape projected by a magic lantern. On Saturday, the hypnotist brings back dead relatives and reveals the contents of the favoured siblings inheritance.

The Genius

Surrounded by skulls filled with sand, plaster casts of the inside of skulls, scales and calipers one could find Franz Joseph Gall, Physician, Moralist and the fount of Crainioscopy.

For his attempt to combine the mind and the body, he was rejected by Germany and the Catholic Church and denounced by the French Empire and scientific community. He first found support in the revolutionary French public that enabled him to earn a comfortable living. Later his ideas found a home in England and the United States where they reconciled the disparity between the apparent physical sameness of the upper and lower classes, and reality.

Heyday

Gall made morality approachable and definitive by labeling 21 regions of the human brain which would swell or deflate according to their prominence until adulthood when the cranial bone fused into indelible proof of ones abilities and shortcomings. In a single consultation, the trained professional could measure the bumps on a patients skull with a calliper and know what his future held.

With his position secure he was free to apply his genius to further pursuits.

In 1792 he published, On the Natural Phenomena of Phrenology, wherein he demonstrated the instinctual application of Phrenology by sea tortoises. The work, now nearly forgotten, was an early example of evolutionary theory. He writes:

“The male tortoise feels its mate's back before copulating in order to determine if the mate is a suitable match. This fascinating behavior is at least one proof of animal phrenology and proves its grounding in natural science.” The popular opinion of the time was that tortoises must contain a great deal of brain matter beneath their shell to enable them to travel great distances and mate in the same location.

The book was officially sanctioned by King George III and the Church of England.

The Magician Ellington

As Gall turned his mind to his new ground-breaking research, the field of Phrenology became dominated by John Ellington. Ellington was also a trained Physician and a Mesmerist.

While Gall was measuring and studying tortoises in a great bank of tanks in France, Ellington took Phrenology on the road in England. His shows were immensely popular and he soon eclipsed Gall as the leading figure of phrenology. He shocked and entertained the English public with his demonstrations, but they soon grew bored of watching him mince about with his brass caliper and he turned to mesmerism.

In an interview with The Lancet shortly before his death, Gall said in regards to Phrenology, “For a while things were wonderful, until John Ellington came along with his Mesmeric Hospital. He turned a science into a magic trick, and then he passed it off as a more efficacious science! Those fools! They have literally traded medicine for magic!”

The article helped turned the tide against Phrenology and Ellington disappeared into obscurity.

Battles

Deeming his work on tortoises complete, Gall planned a follow up book based on his research on elephants. He examined the heads of two hundred living elephants, four hundred skulls during a single trip to an elephant bone yard, and the brains of seven.

He noticed that amongst the skulls of the living elephants, certain regions were more developed on elephants born in captivity. They were trained from infancy and received better food.

In his elephant journal he wrote, “Elephants have been cited as large brained mammals of limited intelligence but phrenology exceeds mere size. The elephant’s brain is devoted to no more than 19 regions but the size of the brain allows these regions to become highly developed.”

He purchased several breeding pairs of elephants and brought them to his estate on the French countryside. As the elephants gave birth, he trepanned them and exposed the regions of the brain related to speech to the stimulant cocaine.

A rare elephant of particular intelligence survived these procedures and was sold at great cost to an English magician after Gall’s death. The elephant was able to sing and stomp Morse code. It was purchased by an American magician several years later and performed until it was captured and electrocuted by Thomas Edison who believed it had been enchanted by Nikola Tesla.

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I have been writing ambitiously for the past several years. I take my writing seriously. My intention is to entertain.

1/4/13

2013-01-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

Lazy Ghosts
By Tyler Gates

You're not sure when it started. In fact you didn’t even hear about it until after it became world wide news; the result of you avoiding any major news outlet with a fiery passion. It was first noticed by a lone astronomer locked away in a cold outpost deep in the middle of Russia. What appeared to him and has now been confirmed by every scientist, institution, and major government is that someone or something appears to be turning the universe off.

The world watches in horror as every night a few less stars make their appearance. Familiar constellations begin to fall apart. Entire star clusters disappear bit by bit. It takes months and eventually even years but slowly everything begins to get a little darker, a little quieter and you unlike everyone else can't seem to find a single reason to care. This is the most passive aggressive Armageddon anyone could ever imagine and the problem is no one did. No giant meteors, nuclear wars, or even cryptic horsemen; everything is just over. Your time is up. You along with millions of others spend nights staring up at a moon drowning alone in a sea of nothing. The very few teardrops of light left sparsely dot the all consuming black canvas that is the sky above.

So it continues; without explanation or cause. Night after night the sky empties just that much more until finally we are the only ones left. Floating alone in this giant sea of nothing. Crime, rioting, and religious zealotry rise as astronomers spy on dead stars through giant lenses; searching desperately for an answer. And what about you? You sit alone in your dark house waiting for your heart to dry up and wither away with the rest of them. You notice rain water beginning to creep in through the cracks around your living room window. Fighting the initial urge to grab a bucket you decide to leave it alone then turn your attention back to the TV; which luckily for you is still on.

- - -
Tyler Gates exists barely in small town rural Midwest. His life is dotted with violent encounters with hillbillies, night jobs, alcohol binges, gas station explosions, and the occasional cult abduction. Besides playing writer he occupies his time with illegal underground home made hot air balloon races.

12/28/12

2012-12-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Will Hug For Food
By Crowerd Robinson

Kevin was ashamed. It was his interest in all things odd and grotesque that had made him live with the swamp people. He had taken this same walk for the past three years, muddying his sneakers and counting the cars that went by on one hand. He should be relishing such a macabre interaction, not shying away from it.
The alligator stood on the opposite side of the street, some fifty yards ahead. Fluffs of cotton were being vomited from its snout, swirling into the mushy ground. Black opal eyes and a lime green underbelly would have given the reptile a very traditional appearance if not for the many rips and tears in its fabric. Instead it looked naked and vulnerable. Kevin wondered if the human flesh inside was naked too, if there was a sweaty man beast staring out at him.
He kept walking and saw the alligator hold up a cardboard sign.
WILL HUG FOR FOOD
The words had been scrawled sideways in black crayon. Kevin choked on his own laughter. This was part of someone’s undergraduate thesis on social interaction. Some kid was hiding in the grass right now, camera in hand and snot dribbling from his nostrils. His eyes peered into the forest but all he could see was trees and shitty swamp water.
. The mascot walked into the middle of the road, a paw on each side of its yellow scribble. Kevin’s feet had become entranced and refused to stop until the creature was in front of him. He inhaled the reptile’s breath; the odor made endorphins bloody his brain, creating visions of being anal raped by a giant alligator.
“Will you let me pass?” Kevin asked. He traced his tongue over his lips. His mouth was as dry as the animal’s scales were (not scales, he reminded himself – just fabric only fabric!) and he wanted to reach down and fill his palms with shit water but he was too timid to avert his eyes.
WILL HUG FOR FOOD
“You want something to eat?”
The gator nodded. Kevin tried peering down into its snout but he couldn’t see anything. There were no soft gray eyes or a tuft of curly orange hair, just an empty void.
Kevin fished around in his pockets. He pulled out the mess of gummy worms he kept with him in case his sugar was low and held the peace offering out in front of him.
The gator reached out a webbed paw and tossed the worms into his mouth, along with the lint and moth balls they were infested with. Then the creature opened its arms as wide as it could, inviting Kevin to wrap himself around its midsection.
Might as well, Kevin thought. I don’t have my phone and my Internet friends will just think I’m making something else up but this has been kind of fun. At least it’s been better than listening to the crickets chirpfuck one another.
He hugged the reptile, resting the side of his face on its belly. It was soft and reminded him of bedtime stories and the stuffed animals he would sometimes hump when he was a kid. He tightened his arms around the animal, relishing the embrace and forgetting that they were in a sickly suburban swamp.
That was when the gator snapped his jaws around him and fell on all fours, cracking his bones into calcium dust and taking him back to his fort made of blankets and dolls and aluminum cans.

- - -
Crowerd Robinson sleeps in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. His tales of horror and the fantastique have appeared in several online and print magazines, including Dark Fire, Mirror Dance, and Visionary Tongue. He has also been featured in the anthologies CorpseGrinder (bizzarEbooks) and Evil Dragons (Static Movement Press).

12/21/12

2012-12-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Never Tease the Devil
By Brent Rankin

It was such a tiny demon, itty-bitty, about the size of a man’s thumb. The goblin was captured inside an amber colored bottle, with a Grecian cork solidly crammed into the top and sealed with red wax. It was said it wasn’t wax, but dried blood. It frightened the demon and kept him potted in the bottle. Some Holy thing. Still, the inside of the bottle was misty, damp, and you had to squint to see something red floating around inside.
My uncle brought it back from Greece, when he was discharged from the Merchant Marines. Brought back the spirit, a few social diseases, and a drinking problem. One night, during one of his binges, he bragged that he had heard about the duende and how the ones who had it, some monks, protected it with their lives. Must be valuable, he thought. So, in a drunken stupor, he stole it. Just walked in the monastery, tucked it under his shirt, and walked out.
Now it sat on a bookshelf in my den. Eveytime my uncle came over, drunk, he’d retell the story. Again. And again.
I’m not sure how it happened, but one evening my uncle came about, drunker than usual. He had a grip on a liter of Dewar’s and had thrown away the cap.
“Time to let the demon out,” he slurred.
I thought he was speaking metaphorically, about the scotch he was drinking. I was wrong.
He put down the Dewar’s and grabbed the amber bottle. He held it up to his nose, trying to focus on its contents. He shook it. Looked at it again. Then shook it again.
“Damn thing must be dead.” He burped.
It got very quiet in the house, then. The lights flickered like in an old horror movie and the wind blew open the curtains on a window. That’s when the lights went out and the room was dark as cigar ash.
Then I heard a munching sound. That’s it: a munching sound. Like rats eating stale cheese. I couldn’t figure where the sound was coming from. My uncle hissed (at least I thought it was my uncle).
I heard a scream cut short. I turned and ran, but not very far. Tripping over something, I landed face first and knocked myself out cold.
Don’t know how long I was out, but when I opened my eyes, the lights were back on, the amber bottle was back on the shelf, and my uncle was on the sofa, dead. Pale ugly blue face and hands, the blood had been drained completely out of his body. I went to his carcass and felt for a pulse. Nope, he was dead and cold.
I was going for the phone when I passed the amber bottle on the bookcase shelf. Something about it was different. Something I couldn’t…no, there it was. Yeah, I suppose if I was shook up in a bottle, plugged with a Grecian cork, I’d get angry, too.
There was fresh wax around the cork in the bottle.

- - -
Drinking dirty water behind abandoned buildings will give a man incredible nightmares.

12/14/12

2012-12-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

Cycle of the Gods
By David Edward Nell

Wednesday. Just another dreary work day. It was lunch hour, and I was glad to be off my hind for a change. I left the office and took the bridge to the mall. My eyes were still seeing lines of computer code. At Subway, I frisked my pockets for lunch money then realized I'd forgotten my wallet in the car underground. I mounted the elevator alone.

My new cellphone bickered.

“Hello?” A jangly scraping noise sounded off on the other end, which caused me to wince and hold the device a short distance away from my ear. Above, the artificial light shortly darkened.

“K-Karl, are you there?” a voice frantically muttered. It was Ebrahim, my younger brother, burbling uncharacteristic sobs. It sounded as if he was attempting to suppress his cries against the mouthpiece. I grew chills. I hadn't heard from him in a week, and now this.

“Christ, Ebrahim. Where have you been?” I asked, willing away a throat lump. “Mommy's been looking for you. The police, everyone. Please tell me you're okay, at least.”

There was an incoherent whelp that hinted at distraction. It seemed his focus was elsewhere.

I pressed, “Say something! Where are you?” I paced to and fro in the metallic strictures of the descending carriage. The dank enamel of sweat on my palm slinked over onto the sides of the device. I clutched my clothing.

Ebrahim's voice returned. But I was sure he was on something again; all of a sudden, he was calmer. “Sorry, Karl. I don't know what came over me. I just had to phone you. Look, man--”

“I thought you quit, dude.”

“--I need you.”

“What do you mean?”

Then his wails started again, more gaudily. “Don't listen to me, Karl. Whatever you do, don't go to your car--”

The call ended.

My heart was bursting. I didn't understand what he meant, but I drew caution as the shaft doors pinged open.

I was presented with concrete barrenness. There was not a soul in the garage. For a moment, I merely stared at the unusually still grey expanse which was accompanied only by columns and smatterings of tenantless parking spots. Every draft and presumed movement had me jumpy, mindful. I analyzed my surroundings fastidiously, contemplating a bolt towards my ride that was stored half block up.

I converged on a rusty white van to the west with marginally tinted windows. It was out of place, near enough to touch.

I left the elevator, partially quelling my suspicions, hopeful that my brother was just having another one of his trips. I secretly cursed him.

Then there was movement through the dark hue.

Ten lagging paces onward, I strained my eyes behind. Something wasn't right.

Headlights.

My eyes were torched to a rumple. I reeled backwards and blocked against its subjugating glare. There was no sign of apology from the driver.

Instead, an engine's roar.

I ran. It followed. Just as I feared, the vehicle was on my trail. Undoubtedly, in my mind, it was out to kill. My legs were labouring hard; the back of my throat was hit with gusts of air. I regretted not heeding Ebrahim's warning, not being fitter, as the van was now bordering on my stride faster than could be avoided and I sensed death. My car, that hoary clunker, was in sight, I on the cusp of refuge. I thanked my maker.

But it was too late.

I was rammed forward. I fell to the unyielding surface, where stars wavered about, and what I saw next was the butt of a gun between my irises.

***

Whiteness was everywhere, endless in breadth. My flesh squirmed. It dawned that my limb movements were being throttled.

I was trapped.

I almost retched into my mouthpiece from the sensory discombobulation. There were no measurable dimensions, entrances or imperfections in this colorless void where everything seemed to be impossibly balanced. What was before me was impossible, but here it was and this was all too real.

A man was standing in nothingness.

From the vertically raised, machinelike perch to which I was ensnared, I accosted the coldly examining stare of a lank elder. His complexion was as pasty as that of a fresh mortuary corpse, his obsidian eyeballs an immersing complement to the full bodied tenebrosity of his lavish coat.

The man was silent. He hovered a finger clockwise atop a remote he was holding and drifted to his right, where an oblong mantle glided upwards into the immense pallidity and unveiled what appeared to be a window into a room.

My trapping steadily rotated to face it. I gasped even though it hurt widening my jaw. I was processing so many thoughts, I drove myself into a circle of questions. I wanted to faint.

Through the pane sat my brother, in a similar silvery cathedra, dazed and crimson.

The elder spoke, “We must all return to the soil eventually.”

Then behind Ebrahim materialized the preposterous figure of a praying mantis creature, Herculean in stature, appearing in a millisecond of unfeasibility from the shelters of a dark corner. It was here, on Earth, in this dimension, and it was scraping together its spike-festooned talons.

It was looking down over the comparably miniature head of my flesh and blood.

I batted my lids shut, expecting to wake up any minute.

***

The cycle must continue.

Today, I'm phoning my mother. It's her birthday and I have a surprise for her.

They're waiting, too.

They can't come out to the exterior world, so they use people like me. I understand now.

They're gods.

I care about them deeply. You could call it love, but it's beyond that. They're my sustenance. My beginning. My end.

- - -
A software developer by day, David Edward Nell writes speculative fiction in his limited spare time from Cape Town, South Africa. Some of his works will soon be published in The Dark Side of the Womb, Dark Edifice, Twisted Dreams, and Cynic Online.

12/7/12

2012-12-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Remembering
By Susan Dale

David walked with his shadows stretched across the earth: hollow within, soul yearning, heart heavy. Yesterdays, his only companions. With padded steps, he moved onwards: silent, quick.

Of-a-sudden, he heard unfamiliar sounds coming his way. Grass rustling, canteens rattling. He slowed his pace to standstill. Quickly, he ducked behind a stand of tall undergrowth. He focused to hear voices vague and slurred words. Peering through blades of tall grasses, he saw the meager remains of what remained of an NVA platoon (north Vietnam army). Unsteady on their feet, they weaved from left to right. Their words came slow and far between long pauses.

A band of ragged soldiers stood directly in front of him when he was hidden in the grasses. While weaving, their heads circled in confusion. He saw the thousand-yard stare in their eyes and hesitance in their movements. Because they were passing around a red-hot butt and pulling in its fumes, he concluded that they were drugged. And to add credence to his conclusion, the biting smell of weed hung heavy in the humid air. The soldiers’ battle-weary regrets and bone-empty stomachs were soothed by pot’s drugged comfort. They appeared helpless in their stoned state. Consequently, David did not fear them. He walked out boldly from behind the grasses: a tall, thin man, wild as the world of his journey. Long past soldiering, he was miles beyond maps … far from directions, enemies, and/or allies. And while he was traveling his long journey, he was being metamorphosed. Following stars, he traveled in intuitions. Stepping over dreams, he entered other
dimensions. His was an uncharted odyssey. He arrived here in this place and at this moment by instincts: a lost creature existing somewhere between human reasoning and creature survival.

To the NVA, he seemed but a part of their pot dreams: here without provocation in an inexplicable instant. And in the next moment, he was smoking weed with them. Throughout a long afternoon, he slipped in and out of reality. The pot plumes rose to the clouds. The clouds drifted off as did the tokers, to become wisps in the skies.

Pot took David around the bend of the moment: back to the purgatory of remembering. Upon him, an outpouring of time past: yesterdays vivid and immediate. Sliced to the exact moments, these hot fervors of life: the depictions of other times, other places. They were here without provocation, without will: the pulsing flow of yesteryears. Life in all of its contrasting colors. He was bonding in a mystical communion of the past.

He pulled them up one by one, the secrets he thought he long-ago buried: never to be looked at again. Back before White Horse, his Cherokee father, he traveled. Back beyond the Cherokee reservation. Back to Melissa, his mother; blonde, blue-eyed, proper from toes to teeth, and oozing with southern charm. He was her spoiled darling. His every gesture and motion remarked upon with proud affection by not only Melissa, but by her many friends and extended family.

Back he went to his grandfather’s plantation house on the Cooper, decaying in a genteel way of moss and faded bricks, of patina and old south: back behind rows of old oaks. He was sliding, stocking feet, across the oak planks of the plantation home. His mother said he was polishing them. He was racing up and down the winding stairway.

Back he drifted to his mahogany pony: clip-clop shiny, gleaming as he pranced down the worn path behind Melissa’s gardens of bright-colored poppies waving on long stems. Upon him next, his aunt’s atelier in the old house on the Battery, the walls covered with her dreamy pastels.

Further along now, to the sometimes visits of his father: a Cherokee spokesman on his way to Washington to conduct meetings for tribal land and Indian welfare. On one such trip he met Melissa, and they fell in love to marry, much to the disapproval of her family. Afterwards, the tall Cherokee drifted in and out of his son’s life.

But as he was floating in and out of time, David was seeing the past, as would a witness and not a participant: viewing his yesterdays with a serenity of spirit. Back and forth his memories went: memories traveling in drifts of pot smoke. Back to the old plantation home on the Cooper, then to his father’s reservation. To the dark-haired Cherokee girls in abandoned cars. To his step-mother‘s trailer in Ohio. To Rita in her white convertible. Her hair over her shoulders, down her back. To Lea in the sunset cottage: her eyes so blue as forever. To the twisted paths of the twisted mazes of Forces’ missions in Saigon.

Time was coming upon him without hours or places. Weed transported the Cherokee son to the train crash that killed his mother and grandfather: a tragedy that was eased by his drugged recalls. The yesterdays floating by him were out of reach. He was too drugged to stop them, too drugged to feel emotion. Floating by him too the funeral of his mother and grandfather. Afterwards, his aunt pleaded with his father for the upbringing of her beloved nephew. He remembered hearing them behind closed French doors. He heard too the silence of White Horse. His Cherokee father didn’t move to words; he moved to the drumbeats of lesser gods: gods that told White Horse that David was the son of he and Melissa, and no one else’s. Quietly leaving and taking his son with him: not explaining, not arguing, not speaking: just moving onwards: by train, by bus, by footsteps to the reservation in North Carolina. It sat high on a mountain ringing with wild winds: this reservation of windowless shacks and Cherokee chants. Wild winds were calling him home.

And time recalled was not crushing him, as it had in the past. Time drifted by him like prophesy being fulfilled: prophesy laid out before him on an altar of what has been and, therefore, has to be accepted.

His thoughts traveled back to the road. Continually on the road, he and White Horse, laying up steel beams for construction. Across the states: one worksite after another until they reached Ohio. Ohio, where White Horse and his son moved into a trailer with Karen and her son. Then White Horse moved into Karen’s bedroom where the twins, David’s half brothers, were conceived.

Back to the road, but this time on a fatal trip to lay up an auction house in Toledo, Ohio. Toledo, where in a seedy bar, White Horse was stabbed to death by an irate husband who caught White Horse with his Caucasian wife.

And when he, David, White Horse’s son, became indignant over his father‘s dangerous womanizing, he was struck with the truth of his own connection with Rita: a mirror image of his father’s connections to
his mother, to Karen, and to the woman in the bar.

He went on to remember he and Rita; together, even after they had supposedly broken the bond of their tumultuous affair. She was, by then, Josh’s steady. And he, David, was in love with Josh’s sister, Lea.

But that was only the surface of the way things were. The underlying truths came to light when Rita turned up pregnant with David’s baby. Rita’s condition was also David’s, but Josh took it upon himself to include his own wrath into what was already a murky mix. All together, wraths and shames, regrets and rages, led to the bloody battle between he and Josh: a battle so ferocious that it sent David packing and on the road out of town in escape. Escape: that was what his life was about. Over and again, escape.

Through drugged eyes, he was observing the whole of those life-changing days. His first life started off in an old manor house crumbling by the Cooper River. That life crashed with a train wreck that took him to an Indian village in the Carolina mountains. Down the mountain to another life on the roads across the states: the roads that he and his father continually traveled. The life that began in the trailer in Norwalk, ended with his father’s stabbing. Then came the life in Norwalk without his father: alone with his stepmother, Karen, and his half-brothers.

Floating into his drug-induced dreams, Rita and her golden sensuality. Drifting in next, willowy Lea with husky voice and Simian features. Then Vietnam, Forces, and sticky Saigon thick with heat and humidity:
thicker yet with plots and counterplots. He, twisting like the Mekong, through so many of them. The final battle of scout patrol: the dead and the dying. He was the only one who escaped with his life: the life that took him on his present quest.

And all of it coming and going in a sad, but gentle way, as if the rugged boulders of his past were melting into time. In his drugged state, yesterdays were not stabbing him, as they did when he was stone sober. Instead, he felt himself weaving back and forth between today and tomorrow while trying to try and find his footing in the now.

The now: a jungle night ringing with screeches, mating calls, and cries of the captured. Within the void of a dark cave, he took refuge. His head spinning: he was stomach-sick. He moved to the back of the cave, as far back as he could get: his back rubbing against the cave wall. This was the stone habitat known as the cave of lost souls. And all that slept in the cave tonight were lost: lost in drugged states, lost in battle regrets. They lost their youth and their faith, and all were wearing the thousand yard stare in their eyes.

With eyes heavy, David crashed into a wall of nothingness.

Tossing and turning in the front of the cave, the NVA too were wandering through drugged stupors. They shouted out their nightmares of hunger and battles, only to have them echo back and forth between the cave’s flagstone walls.

On one of the walls leaned a carved notched ladder. On the ladder David climbed out of the cave, up into the night skies. Climbed then to the rings of Jupiter that took him around to yesterday. When he rounded the ring, and came back to tomorrow, he realized that time in the skies was time on earth. Around and onwards, to around and back. He stepped back on the ladder to descend down the rungs that took him into the cave of lost souls.

But before morning filled the cave with sun-lit clarity, bright enough for the hung-over NVA to pinpoint the alien who lie in back of the cave, David stepped over their prostrate bodies to leave before they awoke.

And after he walked out of the cave, he bent to lay a stone at its entrance. He left his stone as a mark of his being: a token of his presence in the here and now.

Then he stepped into a mountain fog that hung thick and deep. Step by slow step, he pieced his way through the brume of a misty dawn. Winds were picking up speed to part the fog and show him the way of his quest: this time in the direction of a new-born sun.

- - -
Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.e

11/30/12

2012-11-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

Frog Fog
By Joshua Dobson

A torrential downpour of small yellow frogs and fat black pollywogs pisses all over my plan to walk to church. The amphibians are coming down so hard that most of them explode into puddles of steaming slimy splatter when they collide with the concrete and/or the heads of pedestrians. With a nearly dead bumbershoot, half (and counting) of whose bones are broken and whose skin has several rotten holes through which streams of pollywogs wiggle, I shield the hair I just paid ten credits to have styled.

The mist of bufotoxin lacing the air has me the slightest itsy bitsy bit buzzed, so the semi-translucent tentacles crawling down from the amoeba-clouds and the enormous horned toad mounting/humping a rusty Volkswagen could just be a frog fog hallucination, but I quicken my pace towards the bus shelter nonetheless.

The plastic bunker isn't empty. Spidered in the corner is a skinny bruja wrapped in flowing black robes elaborately embroidered with squiggling red silk symbols. Her long black hair seems to be moving of its own accord, undulating like undersea grass, but that could just be the fog of frog hallucinogens pickling my brain. Her frankincense pheromones mingle with the olfactory aura of amphibian on the air. She regards me with eyes like black smoking mirrors as I stumble into the enclosure, brushing frogs from my (supposedly frog-proof) rubber coat. I nod slightly and she returns her black eyes to the Esperanto tabloid clutched in her heavily tattooed hands.

The translucent plastic walls of the shelter, swarming with croaking, clinging, climbing frogs, are riddled with holes left by either bullets or worms. I can't help but snake my fingers into them even though the sharp plastic lips of the wounds slice into my delicate finger flesh.

I'm sucking blood from my fingertip when a naked fat woman runs screaming from the frog fog. Her enormous double G tits jiggle wildly while she runs towards the shelter. Only when she's a few feet from the frog-encrusted plastic walls of the bunker do I espy the cause of her shrieking distress, a legless lazar on a skateboard hangs from her ample ass, his mouth clamped leech-like to one of her immense cellulite-caked buttocks.

The naked fatty slams full speed into the translucent plastic wall of the bus shelter. The whole bunker shudders when the fat woman's flesh slams against it. The climbing frogs caught between her flesh and the plastic smash into pulpy goo. The naked fat woman collapses to the sidewalk. The sound of her fat flesh slapping against the concrete seems to linger in the air for far longer than it should.

I don't see the skateboard bum. For a moment or two, I think he's been crushed beneath the unconscious chubbette, then I see him rolling into the translucent plastic bunker on wheels that creak as he pulls himself along the frog-splattered pavement with his fingerless hands.

He smells like a mass grave. His perfectly white eyes have neither irises nor pupils. The tattered scraps of a tuxedo jacket and a filthy pair of yellow tighty whitey underwear have fused to his greenish flesh though rot. He's been sitting on his skateboard so long the rotten wood has fused to the flesh of his leg-stumps and ass.

I stare at the fornicating frogs crawling through the jungle of his ashy grey afro. He lifts his monkey-like nose up in the air and sniffs deeply.

He opens his bloodstain-haloed mouth like a tiger will do while scenting its prey, the inside of his maw is a forest of irregular fangs, scavenged from road kill I suspect, affixed to his diseased gums with gobs of glue.

"I smell two a y'all in here. You each gotta put either a cigarette or a dollar in my hand or I gonna bite yo butts," the skateboard centaur says in the high pitched voice of a helium huffer.

I instinctively go for the can of mace in my right pocket, but then I freeze when I suddenly wonder if mace even works on blind people. As my fingers close around the cattle prod in my left pocket, the bruja is raising a bamboo tube to her lips and blowing a cloud of red powder into the blind butt biting bum's face.

He screams in rage and pain. The bruja raises an ornate lachrymatory of red glass and sterling silver to his milky eyes to harvest the tears gushing forth.

"Tears from the eyes of the blind lucky for medicine," she says in a heavily accented voice as she shoves the screaming skateboard centaur out of the bus shelter and secretes the bottle of tears inside the folds of her billowing black robes. The blind butt biting bum’s form and screams are swallowed by the frog fog as he rolls down the hill. The bruja returns to her corner and her tabloid.

The crystal of my supposedly frog-proof ("up to 80 ft deep" it says on the back) watch has been shattered by a bulbous bullfrog.

"Do you know what time the bus comes?" I ask the bruja.

"When the moon is eaten by a black jellyfish," she says without raising her eyes from her tabloid.

I finger the wormholes in the frog-swarmed plastic while I scan the sky for sign of the black jellyfish.

- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.

11/23/12

2012-11-23T00:00:00.006-08:00

Benny
By Tony Rauch

I got a new job. I really wanted to settle in and apply myself, show them what a good worker I was, so I purposely hung back and didn’t really interact with anyone at first. Also, I wanted to get the vibe of the place, see which way the wind blows, learn what to do and what not, and when. So I pretty much just put my head down, worked and observed, keeping to myself for a while – not hiding myself away or being unfriendly, but not making myself overly obvious either.

So I didn’t really talk to anyone for quite a while. One chap would stop by my desk and hang out every now and then and chat. And that was nice, made me feel welcomed and appreciated. He was always so smiley and carefree, like he didn’t have a concern in the world. I was really impressed with that attitude, and I must admit it did rub off on me a little. But the odd thing about that guy was I never saw him working. Every time I’d see him, he would be standing there, chatting it up with someone. I never once saw him at his desk or carrying any papers. I’d have to get up every now and then to look something up or get something, and sometimes I’d have to go past his desk, but it was always empty. He’d always be way over there, chatting it up with someone else, grinning away as if the rest of us were saddled with invisible heavy weights (which we were unaware of) and he was somehow without such burdens. His name was Benny.

(There were other people at the office of course – some of the standard fare and tropes – the flirt, the ass kisser, the gossip, the lying/scheming weasel, the impressionable one the liar needed to hang out with, the insecure person who had to define and hang a label on everyone, the grump, the complainer, the miserable bastard, the sweaty guy, corporal nervous, the grizzly adams mountain man, the grinner, uncle blinky, the sad-sack, the bragger, the stealer, captain stare, ms. ‘show-you-what’s-wrong-with-your-life’, the blank page, the misplacer, pig-pen, polly paranoia, the hippy, the blamer, the zombie, Mr. Indecisive, the mumbler, disco manquake, fibber magee, garbage dump desk, doctor disorganized, the saboteur, mr. bossy pants, grandpa, king Julius III, the panther, the “I still won” guy, the crier, nosey nate, the repeater, the excuse-maker 3000, the worrier, captain midnight, mr. cheapie, the problem starter, panicy pete, the fog, the hypochondriac, the black hole, and many more that were indefinable in that they were a vast matrix of personality traits.)

But everyone seemed to be a pretty good worker. I mean, why let your talents go to waste? Why not work to build a solid foundation? There’s nothing worse than wasted potential. Most seemed to keep to themselves. I guess they were busy. I was very impressed with the ones who just sat there all day with their heads down, cranking away. I was really inspired by that. That’s who I want to be, I’d say to myself from time to time, to psyche myself up – that’s who I want to be.

The place was pretty corporate and stiff. When I interviewed they even told me as much, not really coming right out and admitting it, but did convey that attribute in so many words. I told them I was pretty enthusiastic and may not fit in. I wouldn’t want to rub people the wrong way, or at least not the decent people. Some people are so insecure they can’t see beyond that and don’t like other people anyway no matter what. There wasn’t anything I could do to win those people over, and I didn’t want to waste my time with them anyway. I just didn’t want to bother the rank and file, didn’t want to upset the apple cart or rock the boat. But the two sad-looking, forlorn, funereal seeming gentlemen in dark, tight, constraining, possibly soul-crushing suits who interviewed me mentioned they could use a little color and enthusiasm in their midst, so I shouldn’t worry about my enthusiasm. But after working there a while, I found their assessment to be inaccurate – the place was not the city of the dead which I had assumed it to be based upon their description. Yeah, it was a little quiet, grey, and cold, but I also found a great deal of treasure there – that of friendship, inspiration, and knowledge. I learned a great deal about my chosen profession from these people, and in just hanging back and observing I was able to absorb a lot and also radiate some form of credibility. Also, in just listening, I heard about all sorts of great treasure – one person needed to get rid of an old dresser, another an old end table and lamp. Why I really made out like a bandit, scoring all manner of treasure over time. And this accumulation of free junk really saved me money and time in not having to waste my life out foraging for that stuff myself.

I wondered who many of these people were and what brought them here. I guess they were all just trying to cobble together a life for themselves, or trying to keep the life they built purring along. As I worked I’d listen to their conversations – all the things they did. Why these people were incredible, unbelievable – one person was out flying small airplanes, another jumping out of perfectly good airplanes at high altitudes, another running marathons, another playing in a little jazz combo, another fixing old radios, another raising a family, another cooking and gardening, another competing in ballroom dances, another fixing up old motorbikes, another involved with a church group, another volunteering for charities, another out flying giant kites, another operating model boats, another making up their own words – creating a new vocabulary, another renovating houses. Why they were out doing all manner of things, fixing up everything, getting involved, meeting people, having all manner of adventures. Their actions really inspired me to want to do something too. I haven’t figured out what exactly just yet, but you can be assured I will be out doing something eventually, that I can promise you. And then maybe I’ll too have something interesting to talk about, something worthy to share. Maybe I’ll write a children’s book about a naughty little giraffe named Melanie who likes to start fires, maybe I’ll develop some annoying little mannerisms, maybe I’ll go minimal and not own anything, maybe I’ll create a new religion, maybe I’ll take to wearing a strange wig.

They had a room off to the side called the smashing room. I think it was an old storage or conference room. Anyway, in it were placed some old computers and telephones and such that people could smash with baseball bats and crow bars which the company had provided. There was a clear plastic riot-type face shield which you had to wear if you went in there. But they’d let you smash the crap out of whatever was left in there if you felt the urge. I sat near that room, so it was interesting to see someone stomp in there every few weeks and wreak havoc. Every once in a while someone would really let fly, I mean really let loose. You’d hear muffled crashes and distant, vague swearing and muffled profanity, and carrying on for a few moments. Sometimes, if you were lucky, if it was a really good day, you’d hear a sweet, muffled bellow of rage and frustration, or anguished wailing, raging against the impending night, and sweet sweet release. Then the person would emerge, looking exhausted but free. There seemed to be a burden lifted, a sense of profound relief, as if they had found a new religion or something. Perhaps by smashing things they had released some tension or frustration, perhaps they had excised the demons of the past that had been haunting them, fouling their way, bogging them down.

And old Benny, he was always smiling and chuckling, always glad to see you. What a great attitude. What an inspiration. Everything about him looked inexpensive though – cheap clothes, cheap haircut – like he didn’t want to spend any money, as if he knew his time here was going to be limited and of little consequence, so why even bother. That was always very curious to me – that material possessions didn’t seem to matter to him. And try as I might, I never did see him do any work, never once saw him at a desk, as if he didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk all day long, chained to a desk all life. Where as to me, my desk was a refuge, the work was exciting, I was just glad to have something to do, to contribute, to be out of the house. But maybe that was why Benny was hired – to just hang around and be nice, to spread some joy and sunshine throughout the perceived dreary work-a-day slog. Maybe that was his role – a minister of good cheer. Maybe he was a robot they kept in a closet over night, like you would a vacuum cleaner or something. Maybe they ordered him out of a catalog. I don’t rightly know.

The other thing about Benny was that I would see him around outside of work from time to time, out and about while I was running errands or out riding my bike. I never got to talk to him outside of work as he was always zipping past in a blur or way up ahead and thus out of ear range. One time I saw him riding an old bike. And then a few days later, I saw him riding a totally different bike. Who has two different bikes? And why was he riding them? Where was he going? Then another time I saw him driving an old beat up baby blue pickup truck. And then a few days later I saw him driving a little old car. Then like a week later he was driving an old red station wagon. I mean, what’s up with that? Not that it’s really any of my business or anything, but man, where did he get all those cars? Why the three vehicles? And where was he going? I would see him from time to time, but always in the oddest of places, always caught in the blur of the day or lingering in the vague background – getting his hair cut as I passed by a storefront window, up on a roof helping repair something, on a passing bus grinning and chatting it up with someone, always out and about – as if checking up on me or something. Maybe my parents hired him to just sort of “be around”.

I thought more and more about this – why was I seeing him around like this, as if apparitions of my own aspirations, as if projections of my own best self, my highest being, my idealized goals and visions of myself. I couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps he had always been around and I just hadn’t noticed it yet, I mean, not until I was introduced to him, then he stood out. Perhaps he had a twin brother. Maybe he was part of a set of triplets. I don’t know. The best I could come up with is this – that Benny was a clone, as if some company were manufacturing them for order, or as if someone somewhere was creating these clones, unbeknownst to anyone else, nice clones, polite clones, and sprinkling them about the city in secret, placing them all over to radiate positivity and good vibes, rendering all doubts to the reliquary, invalidating all doubts, rendering all doubts null and void, setting good examples, helping people out, asking about your day, making you feel at home, at ease, . . . wanting to know you.

- - -
Tony Rauch has been interviewed by The Prague Post, Oxford University, and Rain Taxi. His books have been reviewed by MIT, Savanna Collage of Art and Design, and Rain Taxi, among many others. His stories have appeared in numerous literary journals. Rauch has four books of short stories out –

- “I'm right here,” from Spout Press (funky/jazzy/arty experimental short stories)
- “Laredo,” from Eraserhead Press (funky/jazzy/arty fairytale short stories)
- “Eyeballs growing all over me . . again” from Eraserhead Press (fairy tale surreal fantasy action adventure sci-fi short stories and story starters)
- “As I floated in the jar” from Eraserhead Press (fairy tale surreal fantasy action adventure sci-fi short stories and story starters) [to be published in the next few weeks]

For more info and story samples, refer to his website: http://trauch.wordpress.com/

11/16/12

2012-11-16T00:00:00.001-08:00

THE PHONE CALL
By Mark Slade

Linda was cooking in the kitchen when the phone rang. She was preparing Nick's supper and knew he would be home soon. The phone on the wall next to the microwave rang several times, then stopped. Her hands were full with cans of diced tomatoes, pouring them to mix with the corn in the bowl. Goulash. Not really Nick's favorite, but he'd eat it.

The phone rang again.

“For heavens sake,” Linda slammed the empty cans down on the counter. She went to the phone, noticed the caller I.D. was not registering the call. “That's weird.” The numbers were speeding along on the caller I.D.

But it kept ringing.

And Linda already had a headache. The stupid phone was not helping any. She growled at it, cursed it. Finally, Linda answered.

“Yes! Yes, what is it?” She said.

The line was static, eerie loneliness. Silence. Then the crackle of a distant voice.

“The sky is gray,” A man was on the other end. “I'm feeling blue.”

Linda sighed. “Look, I don't know who you are, and I want you to know this is not funny. I'm going to hang up. If you call again, I will report you for harassment!”

“You...really shouldn't....you don't understand. Pale blue eyes....make you mad. Life is the same in stereo....”

“This is some dumb college prank. I know it is.” Linda told the man.

“Have you ever considered that we aren't the only lifeforms here on earth?” The man said. Still sounding like an old Victrola record.

“No....I...haven't. At all,” Linda's voice faltered. There was panic in her, and the man must have recognized it. He sounded less nervous and more excited now.

“Two thousand years ago my people came here. We built civilizations and cities far superior to yours. But humankind would not tolerate a more efficient being than them. So they destroyed us. Tore down our cities. Turned this world into a wasteland.

“But they didn't destroy us all. I'm still here. Fighting the good fight. I will destroy all humans from the inside out. I will infiltrate them all!”

Linda slammed the receiver down. She fell to the floor of her kitchen and wept.

She heard the front door open and close, footsteps across the living room. She stood, controlling her sobs.

“Honey?” It was Nick.

Linda wiped the tears from her eyes with a hand.

“Hey? It looks like you didn't take your medication like the doctor told you too.”

Linda didn't answer. She waited patiently for him in silence.

“Where are you?” he called out. “Linda?”

Linda took the butcher knife from the counter where she'd been slicing onions. She held it behind her back. “I'm in the kitchen, Nick.” She said. “Come in here for a minute, will ya? I have something to show you.”

- - -
My name is Mark Slade. I live in Williamsburg, Va with my wife and daughter. I have a story published on Burial Day. http://www.burialday.com/short-fiction/

11/9/12

2012-11-09T00:00:00.002-08:00

A Visit From Mr. Spike
By Jesse Lee

The young officer picked up a note written in green crayon off the kitchen table. He handed it to the detective.“Sir, looks like a page from the daughter’s diary, or something.”

The detective moved into a better light and read the words scrawled on the crumpled page…

Mr. Spike visits Daddy everyday to bring him candy, sometimes even two times a day. It’s my job to get him all full up with the candy before Daddy meets him. Mr. Spike sure is a funny lookin’ fella: he’s all thin and clear and made of plastic with a long silver nose which he uses to kiss Daddy with. He looks like that pin-pricker thing what the Doctor gives you when you a young’n so you don’t get sick. Sometimes when I push on him real hard he squirts his guts out his nose! But Daddy get awful angry if I do that before he meets him.

“Don’t you go short changin’ Daddy, little one.”

I didn’t hear Daddy’s voice no more after he told me that. He done took his candy what I gave him then went to sleep in his big ole’ chair like he always does. I think short changin’ means not skimpin’ on how much candy I give Mr. Spike. Last time I didn’t give him as much as he liked and he gave me a terrible bad beatin’! I couldn’t sit down for a week! My friends at school thought that was helluh funny! So tonight I made positive to give Mr. Spike more than what’s normal.

I use the spoon Daddy gives me to cook up his candy mostly, but tonight I though it was a right good idea to use that big spoon in the 2nd drawer – the one what Mamma used to use to mix up cakes before she went away. Daddy’s candy filled it up real nice like. He sure ain’t gonna hit me around tonight!

Slap! Slap! Slap! The mosquitoes were on Daddy’s arm again. Them little blood suckers are always on Daddy’s arm after I take Mr. Spike over to meet him. But he makes it better soon, they fly away and don’t bite his arm no more after he takes the candy out of Mr. Spike.

Anyways, tonight after Mr. Spike’s visit Daddy didn’t wake up. I had me a bad dream about monsters and tried to wake Daddy up to read me a happy story but he still sleepin’. Even a cup of cold water didn’t wake him up. I slapped him like Mamma used to but he didn’t move nothin’. No smelly air comin’ out his nose no more neither, and his belly don’t go in-out in-out none. Yep, I think Daddy done went to Jesus’ house now. That ain’t good coz Mamma gonna come home soon and see Daddy here sleepin’ again. I gotta hide Daddy and I gotta take Mr. Spike away too coz he still got his long pointy nose stuck in Daddy’s arm.

I tried pullin’ Daddy off the chair and rollin’ him up somewhere like under the table, but he love eatin’ them hamburgers too much and he too heavy to move! I had to make him small so I could carry him off somewhere. This one time we had a big ole’ tree in our backyard that Mamma wanted to use for firewood, she don’t like payin’ money for firewood, so to get it inside the house we had to cut it up into teensy little pieces. Sure was hard, all that cuttin’ and sawin’, but we had a terrible easy time movin’ it. I thought maybe I could pretend Daddy is like the tree and make him into small bits then hide him. Hot Damn!

Just like cuttin’ up a Christmas ham or that big Turkey bird we had at the church last Thanksgivin’. The knife goes in alright, just hard to take it out. Some of Daddy’s soft parts cut up real nice, and lots of strawberry jam come out and makes my hands real sticky! Daddy’s neck looked like a soda can that been shook up when I poked at it with the cutter. There was strawberry jam flyin’ all over the place and makin’ the walls all red’n black. Mamma ain’t gonna like that one bit!

Daddy spittin’ strawberry jam and makin’ my eyes sting so hard to keep writin’. Plus it tastes awful bad!

I took the big bits to the pig shack out back and put the small bits in the trash muncher in the kitchen sink. Them porkers eat any ole’ thing so they started to eat Daddy up real good, some even fightin’ over over the tasty pieces of Daddy’s belly. Theys always been greedy.

I best hide Mr. Spike in the pig shack too. If someone is readin’ this and you find Mr. Spike, tell him this from me: sorry Mr. Spike. Don’t feel bad. Daddy really likes you. Sometimes you make him mad but I know he ain’t really mad at you. It’s OK. He don’t get angry no more, coz now he’s dead.

The detective folded the page in half and made his way out to the pig pen.

- - -
Jesse Lee lives in Southern Osaka, Japan, where he teaches English to the bemused locals. His work has previously appeared on The Flash Fiction Offensive and Powder Burn Flash.

11/2/12

2012-11-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

A CALL TO DISORDER
By Dixon Chance

            The meeting was gaveled in at midnight, but the Mayor hadn't arrived, and the city council, who only responded to threats of violence, refused to sit still. Councilwoman Lady Camilla Redgrave, who was second in command and should have been stepping in, was over by the fireplace, in the good light, splayed dramatically across a Louis the Fourteenth chaise-longue in her black velvet gown, brooding over a cut-glass decanter of absinthe, completely ignoring Hank's gavel. Councilman Dagon the Dark was arguing with Councilman Vlad Thrillkill , and they'd both thrown back the hoods of their capes, hissing at each other, their yellow eyes crazed with hunger. The Thanatos triplets were all by the window, peering down, probably at the few brave humans who'd ventured out this evening, picking which one to eat later.
            None of them were wearing their nametags. It was a little thing, but it was just one more sign of disorder that drove Hank nuts. He had his. It took five seconds to put it on. A simple courtesy.
            The clock clanged twelve thirty. Hank banged the gavel again. "Come on, people! Councilwoman Redgrave? I'm sure you feel very bleak this winter evening, but can you call this meeting to order? We have a quorum here, and our bylaws state that we don't need the mayor unless--"
            Laughter boomed from down the hall and everyone sat up, including Hank. That was him, probably with his entourage. The massive double doors flew open with a single kick and there he was, in a floor-length leather jacket, blingy sunglasses, a woman on each arm, and six burly biker types in tow. He called over his shoulder, finishing his anecdote. "I tell you, Hans, she tasted like cherries, I swear to god! It was amazing." He hugged the women, as if he couldn't believe his luck, and said, "She'll rise again in three days and then you'll see what I was saying about her tits." He smiled at the room so broadly you could see both of his gold-tipped fangs. "Hello, everybody."
            "Let the record show," said Hank wearily, "that Mayor Acula arrived at twelve-thirty." Then he noticed that Secretary Ravencloak wasn't here. What else was new? Grimly, Hank pulled out his notebook and pen. It was getting to be a habit.
            "I call this meeting to order," said the Mayor, lazily slumping into his high-backed chair. He put his feet up on the table--nice boots, with silver spurs. "Somebody get me some laudanum. Use the big glass." Hans jumped up to serve.
            Even though he was here, no one actually sat down at the big long table. It was just Hank and the Mayor at opposite ends. Even his entourage was just milling nearby, looking at the clock or the exit. "So!" said the Mayor jovially. "Any old business?"
            "Move to adjourn," said Lady Camilla Redgrave, her eyes fixed on the chandelier.
            "You can't move to adjourn, councilwoman!" said Hank. "We just started."
            "Be nice, Camilla," said the Mayor. "Does anyone have any old business? Anyone?" The fire crackled. The clock ticked. Snow padded against the panes. "Fine. I have some new business right here!" He pulled out a crumpled newspaper and smacked it down on the table. It was an independent human paper, The Daysider. "The editor has been criticizing this office and our policies. And he refuses to call me by my real name!
            "Er, Mister Acula, sir..." said Hank.
            "It's Doctor Acula."
            "Mister Mayor, they have a point. I mean, you don't even have a degree. Your birth certificate says Irving Himmelfarb, and..."
            "Silence!" The Mayor pounded the table. "They must be punished. Here's my motion. Resolved. That the editors, writers, and distributors of the Daysider be hunted down and killed."
            "Mister Mayor," said Hank, "that's a terrible idea, and it won't..."
            "Do I hear a second?"
            "Second," said Dagon the Dark.
            "All in favor?" All hands rose. "All opposed?" Hank bit his tongue. He knew it was futile. "Great," said the Mayor. "That was easy." The laudanum came, and the Mayor sipped it thoughtfully. "Nice work, Hans," he said. "But go back and throw in a little mint and some universal donor." He looked at the Hank and spread his hands. "Are we done here?"
            Nervously, Hank rose. "I have a motion."
            "This again," muttered Dagon the Dark.
            "Every goddamn week," agreed Vlad Thrillkill.
            The Mayor nodded indulgently. "The chair recognizes Councilman Hank O'Bannon."
            Camilla was supposed to say that, but whatever. "I would like to move that we give it back."
            "Give what back, Hank?" said the Mayor, leaning forward with just a hint of menace. "Humor me."
            "The earth. All of this. We should give it back to the humans."
            Everyone laughed. The mayor thumped the table. He wasn't even angry. It was almost insulting.
            Hank regrouped. "I just think we're not...designed to be in charge of anything. We're too inclined to the dramatic. We're good at being despots and tyrants in small countries where no one is paying attention. We can run a castle or two. But by and large, we really don't have a talent for policy. It takes...details and thinking. We need more nerds."
            The Thanatos triplets snorted. "Nerds," said one. "Thank god they can't run for office."
            "That was a good law," said the Mayor.
            Hank pulled out a sheaf of notes. "I was looking over the minutes from our last meetings, and you know what I found? Over five hundred motions that people be killed. That's all we do! Meanwhile the trash goes uncollected, the streets are crumbling, and even though we're putting tons of humans in prison for easier feeding, we'll need to build bigger prisons if we're going to get them all."
            "We'll get them all," said the Mayor. "They're running out of garlic already."
            "That's the other thing," said Hank. "Three years ago, our city's population was two hundred thousand. Only a hundred of us were vampires. Today there are over two thousand vampires, and less than forty thousand humans. We're eating ourselves to death! This is unsustainable!"
            "You know," said the Mayor, "I was going to say that I never get tired of hearing you complain about this, but that's a lie. Tonight I'm officially tired of it. Hank, seriously. You need to give it a rest."
            "But...look around at this room! Are any of us happy here? Don't you all wish you could be out hunting and killing? We need the humans. We're parasites. The fleas shouldn't be running the dog. We were fools to think we could."
            "Hank, Hank, Hank," said the Mayor. "No one ever gives up power willingly. That's crazy talk. We're just doing to the humans what the humans did to the animals and the animals did to the plants. There's no balance in nature. There's just hunger. You, my friend, need to put down those books and get in touch with that hunger. Oh, wait I just remembered." He snapped his fingers. "New Motion. Resolved. That Councilman Hank be forced to relax and taste the blood of this young fellow we caught on our way here." The motion was seconded, and passed, Hans was dispatched, and a young naked man of about twenty, tied up in ropes, was brought in and dragged to the table.
            The Mayor grabbed Hank's head and shoved it toward the boy's throat. "Smell that sweetness? Feel that pumping? You've had a long day, Hank. You've been hard on all of us and especially on yourself. Wouldn't it be nice to just give in?" Everyone was watching. And Hank really was hungry. He hadn't eaten in days. He felt his eyes turning yellow.
            Ah well, Hank thought. I guess it could be worse. Even bad government is better than no government at all. Even as he thought this, he doubted it was actually true. Then the blood flowed warm across his tongue and he stopped thinking entirely.

- - -
"Dixon Chance" is the pen name of David Ellis Dickerson, who currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, but tomorrow, who knows. Dickerson's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Story Quarterly, and Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and he is a regular contributor to National Public Radio.

10/26/12

2012-10-26T00:00:00.002-07:00

Skull Collection
By Rob Bliss

The boy found a sun-bleached sheep’s skull in a farmer’s field. He turned it over in his hands and gazed at it in awe. A revelation. He had seen skulls on television, but never really understood where they came from.
He began seeing the skulls beneath the skin when he looked at his parents and friends, everyone. It was all he could see. Saw it too in the mirror. He loved skulls, wanted to collect them.
He wandered the country roads on his bicycle, eyes on the ditches for anything that gleamed white. Took excursions through fields and forest, was often late for dinner.
By the time he finished high school, he had collected the skulls of racoons, skunks, cats, dogs, mice and rats. His parents dismissed the strange collection, called it curiosity. Maybe he would become a paleontologist, reassembling dinosaur bones.
He studied taxidermy. Loved the animals he had reassembled for his clients. Life-like, but not alive. He preferred the dead to the living.
He once picked up a hitchhiker along one of his country drives. An old man, grey beard, smelled of body odour and whiskey. The man had a heart attack before he had reached his destination.
The boy, now a man, dragged the old man into a copse of trees at the side of the road. Some taxidermy tools in the trunk of the car severed the man’s head from his shoulders. The head came home with the boy, its flesh scraped off, hairs burned, acid used to clean the skull to shining white.
The boy stared at the skull, a rarity, his first human. Sat it on the shelf next to the sheep. Admired the perfect contours that only nature could form with bone. Made the boy feel ancient, tribal, a man lost in primeval jungles.
He worked and waited, and no reports in the paper detailed a rotting corpse missing a head. It gave him ideas. He still had so much shelf space left. His collection comprised of so many species. And now he had the greatest species of all. It empowered him.
Every weekend he went for a country drive. His car slowed when he saw a rarity of rarities. A young girl by the side of the road, her thumb out. Early 20s, cute. He never thought he would ever see the day when one of them would need a ride.
He slowed beside her, a heavy pack bending her body forward. She got in, slumped the pack to the floor between her sunburned knees, her muscular legs. They barely started off down the road when she asked him to go back, she had forgotten something in the ditch.
As he looked over his shoulder to reverse, a Bowie knife plunged into his neck. The girl grabbed the wheel with her free hand and stomped a hiking boot onto the brake. She waited for the driver to bleed out.
Her feet were padded with burst blisters and old callouses, legs sore from so much walking. She saw the tools in the trunk, didn’t understand them, so she threw them into the ditch on top of the body.
The police eventually connected one thing to another, and stood in horrified awe at the collection arranged along the shelves.
Many skulls, five of them human. Serial killer status.

- - -
I have a degree in English and Writing. I have been, or will be, published in Schlock Webzine, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, microhorror, and SNM Magazine.

10/19/12

2012-10-19T00:00:00.003-07:00

The Pangs
By JEFF BRANDT

Melvin woke up buried in a pile of fingernail clippings. The dust of filings hung thick in the air. He was nearly choking. It wasn’t so bad. He waved his arms and watched the particles dance in curtain-filtered sunlight. He coughed a dry cough. Then he grabbed a handful of clippings and stuffed them in his mouth.

Not bad. Could use some cinnamon, but still.

He didn’t swallow them right away. For a little he just sucked on them as a whole block of clippings. Sucked hard like they would melt. Finally, when he couldn’t resist the temptation any longer, he separated them with his tongue and savored their shapes.

Each nail is different, like snowflakes, he thought. This cliché made him feel ill. Melvin sat upright, picked out one particularly jagged nail from a big toe, and made a small cut in his eyeball. The incision made a rusty sound. He had atoned and went back to feeling content.

He savored the itch of the nails’ sharp edges bending against his esophagus as he took them down. This was Melvin’s daily bread. He had his neighbor, a lanky Austrian, to thank for it.

Thanks, Uwe, he thought aloud. It’s my wish that in your home, you can hear this joyous little prayer of mine. Thanks for the breakfast in bed and for your fingernails and toenails that regenerate quickly. Thanks for having an unusual name. Thanks for being lanky. It makes up for my being a fat naileating pig. If we lie together in bed and divide our union in half then each of us is height-weight proportionate. Amen.

Melvin’s appetite rattled in its cage. The raccoon had awoken. It looked happy. It was time to eat anything. Melvin grabbed another handful of nail clippings and tossed it to his appetite.

- - -
JEFF BRANDT does not eat fingernails. He is a writer of short stories from Illinois currently living in Queens, New York. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. His writing appeared in the undergraduate publication Montage Arts Journal, and he has also published journalistic work.

10/12/12

2012-10-12T00:00:00.002-07:00

The (Snow) White Pages
By Matthew Nadelhaft

Angie’s Sewing Supplies, 21 Abercorn St…………………………………….1471 879 2030

Perfect for sewing by the window. Not liable for pricks.

Beattie, Brenda, 56 Grindle Ave………………………………………………1481 954 4593

Qualified midwife. No fatalities.

Employment Centre for Failed Midwives, 1 Houston Sq……………………...1471 867 2312

Retraining and relocation in conjunction with the Midwife Protection Agency.

Fit-For-a-Queen Mortuary Services, 10 Tower Rd…………………………….1471 678 5904

Send them away in style. Mourners and buffet provided.

Freud’s Bereavement Counselling, 65 Mildew Rd…………………………….1481 545 9243

Get back on that horse and ride it. House and palace calls.

Future Queen Matchmaking, 10 Grantham Pl………………………………….1471 633 0776

Don’t tarry: remarry!

Gracious Glassworks, 88 Madison Ave………………………………………...1471 202 3441

Magic mirrors, polishing and tuning; bathroom cabinets, ceiling installations.

Happy Family Relationship Counselling, 2 Brook St…………………………..1481 656 2705

When the elephant in the room is part of the family.

It’s a Party!, 101 Terrance Ter……………………………………………….....1471 239 0666

Sweet-sixteen, balls, fetes, coming-of-age, bar/bat mitzvahs.

Jahnson, Jan, 404 Yonder Pl………………………………………………….1491 555 0101

Huntsman for hire. No task too grizzly. Discretion guaranteed.

Little People, Inc. 1018 Forest Grove…………………………………………1491 822 0011

Rooms to let, positions available. Housekeepers, miners wanted.

Marlowe, P., Private Investigator, 101 Striar View Suite 402…………………1481 677 1307

Missing persons, subpoenas served, divorces, background checks.

Mendelheim’s Cleaning Supplies, 220 Little Forest Way……………………...1491 744 0320

Everything you need for a life of domestic drudgery. Because you can’t always be a princess.

New and Used Costumes, 45 Dayton Sq……………………………………….1471 455 6902

Zombies, werewolves, political satire. Make-up for actors, fugitives, and door-to-door salespeople.

Nightshade Novelties, 45a Dayton Sq………………………………………….1471 455 6901

Combs that cut, strangling corsets and more. Lethal larks and practical jokes with a punch.

Perfect Poison Fruits and Vegetables, 14 Market Pl……………………………1471 799 2338

Ideal for rat and squirrel infestations, cruel teachers, spoiling Halloween.

Preservative Cryogenic Display.…...…………………………………………...1481 611 0911

Why get rid of the dead when they make excellent décor? Glass coffins for pretty corpses!

Quests and Deeds, Inc., 25 Royal Mile W……………………….……….….....1471 202 6545

Bored Prince? Would-be Hero? Choose from our range of good deeds and tours. Minimal

danger, high probability of fame and/or marriage.

Royal Weddings, 100 Royal Mile S……………………………………………1471 233 7651

Tie the noble knot in style. DJ, sound-system, souvenir mugs and plates included.

Testy, Brenda, 58 Grindle Ave…………………………………………………1481 954 4593

Qualified midwife. No questions.

Virginal Antiquities, 61 Hillside Pl……………………………………………..1481 211 5854

Restoration and refitting. Glassworks a specialty.

- - -
I received an MA in Creative Writing from Edinburgh Napier University. I’ve been a long-time reviewer for Tangent and TangentOnline and have published critical essays about Damon Knight, Thomas Disch, and Samuel Delany in Nova Express. I have published stories in “Blood and Lullabies,” the Reader’s Digest 100-word story competition, “An Electric Tragedy,” “DailyLove.com,” the “Zombies Ain’t Funny” anthology, and on ForbiddenFiction.com. More of my fiction is forthcoming at ForbiddenFiction and in “Drabblecast.” I have performed several times with the Edinburgh-based spoken-word group Illicit Ink and also act as their editor. In August I will be performing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

10/5/12

2012-10-05T00:00:00.013-07:00

With A Whimper
By Tina Anton

Reed-thin fingers grasped at the dry, crumbling earth with a white knuckle grip.

“Is somebody there?” his breath lay thick in the chilled air.

Clumps of grass clung to his face, their stalks entwined in his hair. The man was shoulder deep in the ground, unable to pull himself up.

“Somebody – anybody?” his hoarse voice cracked.

Storm clouds rumbled overhead. Failing joints refused to pull him free from the grave. He felt around until spindly fingers found the marker where his name was inscribed. He latched on tighter than should have been possible and a crack appeared in the chiseled granite beneath his touch.

“H-help me!” he cried.

* * *

Alice stepped carefully, making sure to stay within the protective halo of her flashlight’s beam. The girl’s feet lifted high, her chin pointed squarely forward. She was a big girl now and Momma had promised Alice her favorite macaroni dinner if she came straight home from school. Alice licked her lips in anticipation. The storm didn't frighten the seven-year-old, but she hurried a little faster.

“H-help me,” the thready plea came from within the cemetery.

Alice hesitated, her pink sneakers poised to shoot her small body forward, and stared through the dark cemetery gates.

“Anybody?”

It was a man’s voice and he sounded strange.

Alice gulped, her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth. She was a big girl and the man sounded hurt. A big girl would help, she thought.

Alice started inside and walked under the black archway, the bobbing flashlight illuminating her path.

* * *

He heard faint footsteps muffled by grass.

“Hello, mister?” A young child’s voice.

Air rasped past mangled jaws and expanded a pair of damaged lungs. “Hello?” he asked, voice layered with a new hope, “help.”

The soft footfalls drew closer and then stopped abruptly. The man tried to peer out into the impenetrable darkness.

“Are you lost?”

* * *

Alice stretched as tall as her small frame would allow and schooled her expression into the grown up one her sister used sometimes. Although feeling bold, Alice refused to raise the flashlight and lose her precious halo of safety. She saw that the man had fallen into a hole and he was struggling.

“Can I help you get up?” she asked with a sympathetic grimace.

The man's shadow veiled form nodded with a disjointed movement.

“Please,” he said.

The girl walked to the edge of the hole and peeked inside. Most of her earlier anxiety had melted into childish curiosity.

“Why are you in a hole?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” he answered.

He reached out and Alice took hold of his frigid hand, like she was about to shake it. She held her flashlight against her side, its beam shuddering.

“I’m going to pull on the count of three and you try to jump up,” she instructed, “one, two, three!”

A flurry of movement punctuated by grunts of effort resulted in the man lying prone on the grass beside his partially uncovered grave. He wheezed, chest rising and falling quickly. Alice looked down at the man where a tiny portion of her light spilled over his supine form.

“Are you hurt?”

“I think I'll be fine,” he said.

With a groan he pushed his body off the ground and Alice suddenly felt dwarfed by his towering height. She refused to run away. She was a big girl. She offered him her hand and his thin fingers wrapped around hers with a firm grip.

“Thank you.”

Alice started to feel better when she lead him out of the cemetery. She stopped in sudden confusion.

“Where do you live, mister?” she asked.

“I can’t remember.”

The little girl gave him a dubious look, but decided it was rude to say, ‘everyone knows where they live, stupid’, so she stayed quiet.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take you home with me and Momma will know what to do. Maybe you can have some macaroni too.”

“That sounds nice.”

* * *

He allowed her to lead him forward, his forehead crinkling as he tried to squint through the inky black. Not so much as a pin prick of light became visible.

“How are you able to see where you are going?” he asked in soft curiosity.

“I have a light, silly. It gets dark early during the winter. Beverly gave it to me.”

“Who is Beverly?”

“She’s my sister. She’s sick today.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. He swallowed hard, his tongue sliding down his throat for a disconcerting moment. He gave a startled gasp and coughed it back into his mouth.

Something was wrong with his body - his eyes.

“Can you tell me, are my eyes covered by something?” he asked.

“You really are silly,” amusement colored her voice and she replied lightly, as if she thought he was joking, “you don’t have any eyes.”

The ground seemed to drop out from beneath his feet with a lurch. Alice tugged on his hand insistently.

“I can see the house. I want to go inside,” she said.

“Wait. My eyes....”

With trembling hands, the man reached up and touched his face to discover the truth for himself. His stomach churned with abject horror when his finger tips slipped past the lids of his eyes and found nothing but a damp hollow.

He screamed.

* * *

Alice’s eyebrows crept up under her bangs. The man looked like he was trying to sneeze.

“God bless you?” she asked uncertainly.

His jaw snapped shut with an unhealthy sound and his lungs rattled as he drew in a deep breath. The little girl tried pulling him forward as another round of lightening brightened the street for brief moments at a time. The following thunder rumbled, the vibrations moving through her tiny body. For the first time a real thrill of fear shot through Alice’s body. The storm was getting closer.

“We need to go inside now, mister,” she said.

He needed to go to the hospital and Momma would know what to do, Alice tugged insistently on the man's hand. He let the girl lead him towards her home.

- - -
I live in Ohio state and am a student taking Creative Writing and Linguistics at my local college. I love art, music and movies.

9/28/12

2012-09-28T00:00:00.001-07:00

We Might Be Kings
By Christopher James

I heard that in certain hospitals, if you can’t afford to pay for the birth, they’ll hold on to the children until you can. And if you can never settle the bill then they sell the child on, to a nurse, maybe. If you have twins, then they might take one and let you keep the other. I don’t know if they let you choose which to keep and which to sell, or if it’s more of a buyers market. I wonder if the price of a baby only covers the costs of the birth, or if you get a little cash left over. Sometimes this policy of certain hospitals doesn’t seem too bad. If you can’t even afford to pay the hospital bills then can you really afford to look after the child? My wife and I saved up to pay the hospital. We had nine months to prepare – it wasn’t like a big surprise. We had to give up certain things, but we prioritised.

And then the baby died, maybe ten minutes after he was born, and we still had to pay for the delivery, and that didn’t seem fair.

It’s okay, though, because I’m going to ask the doctors if we can have one of the babies that parents can’t afford to pay for. I already know which doctor I’m going to ask – the doctor who drives the nicest car. I’m going to ask for a baby with the softest skin, like my wife. She doesn’t know yet that our son is dead, and I’ve asked them not to tell her, and if I can get a replacement soon enough she’ll never have to know. It must be a boy. I’ve seen the one I want, in the room where they keep the living babies.

Our new son will be strong and intelligent and handsome and popular. I’ll look after him extra-well, and I’ll make sure he has everything growing up. He will be a great man, one day. Maybe president. Or maybe a doctor, saving lives and fighting cancer and driving around in a nice sports car. Perhaps the doctor who is going to sell me the replacement baby was a replacement himself. He has an expensive watch, which is an item I think one would appreciate if one were a replacement child. He shows it to everybody and says ‘Do you like it? It’s from Singapore. My wife made me buy it. Terribly expensive.’ He’s handsome, and everybody seems to like him here. Our son will be just like him.

Except when I ask him about buying a new child he says no. NO? No. He says they don’t do that in this hospital. He says this is a good hospital.

If it’s such a good hospital, I want to know, then why is my son dead?

My dead son makes the doctor uncomfortable, which I think gives me an advantage. I can tell, he’s more at home having conversations where he shows off his watch and talks about Singapore and his wife and says things are terribly expensive. Dead babies are not his cup of tea. Maybe he shouldn’t have become a doctor then, if he can’t discuss such things. I bring up my son’s death again. Soon the doctor will see it from my point of view, that the only appropriate way to compensate us for our loss is to provide a suitable alternative.

If you don’t give me a new son, I say, I’ll take your car. And your watch, too.

And I’ll kill your wife, I add, as an afterthought.

You have to play hardball with these people sometimes; it’s the only language they respond to.

My son might grow up to be a lawyer, or he might be in the army. If he is in the army, then one day he will be a general, and one day he will be in charge of all the army. If you are in charge of all the army then it’s as good as being the president. Better, even, because you don’t have to answer to as many bullshit people.

‘Mister –‘ says the doctor, and then he looks scared, and I can tell he’s forgotten my name, and he’s wondering if that’s a bad thing, if that’s going to make me mad, if that’s going to push me over the edge.

It’s not a big deal, I’ve forgotten his name too.

He’s saying he needs to go now. There are security guards around, from somewhere. They are edging closer. I hear someone whispering to them, ‘lost his...’ They each have one hand on their hips, on their hip-pockets, as if they’re going for a gun. I don’t think they have guns, I think they only have batons, painted black to look like guns.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I put my hands in the air. “I was out of line. It’s been a stressful day. I hope you understand. I didn’t mean to cause any disturbance.”

They will believe me, I know, and make me a cup of tea and hold my hand and say sympathetic things. They will empathise with me because I lost my child and everybody who works in a maternity ward has one day thought about losing a child, how terrible that must be. They’ll recommend someone I can talk to. They’ll ask if I want somebody to talk to my wife for me, and I’ll take a deep breath and nod and shake my head and say no, it’s best if she hears it from me. They’ll agree. And later I can go to the room with the living babies and help myself to that boy with the light skin, the one who will one day be king.

- - -
Christopher James lives in Jakarta, Indonesia and is currently working on a novel.

9/21/12

2012-09-21T00:00:00.001-07:00

Taxidermy
By Alina Yudkevich

“Katie’s drawing, um, concerns me.”
Sigh. Taxidermy isn’t what most 10 year-old girls want to do when they grow up, sure. But a parent-teacher conference?
“Look, she’s lost pet after pet this year,” I reply. “The poodle ran away, the parrot cage got left open somehow, and the cat, well, you’ve heard what kids do on Halloween… Anyway, it’s been rough. Katie’s a big animal lover. Could this be her coping?”
Ms. Upton considers my theory. “Like she wishes she could make pets stick around forever,” she says, and I’m dismissed.
I decide to talk to Katie after dinner anyway.
“I can buy a lesson book if you’re serious about this, sweetie.”
She doesn’t look up from her coloring book. “I don’t need any lessons, Daddy,” she says, slowly pushing her closet door shut with her foot.
“Well, how about… a new puppy?”
Her eyes widen.
“Can it be a big dog this time?”

- - -
Alina Yudkevich is a 17th grader at the University of Georgia, studying English and Film Studies and working part-time at a particle accelerator lab. She enjoys pugs, video editing, running, b-horror, and exploring the unknown via Google street view.

9/14/12

2012-09-14T00:00:00.001-07:00

Graveyard Shift
By J. M. Vogel

“Based on aforementioned findings during examination, the deceased is confirmed -- male, sixty-five years old, pulmonary embolism.” I clicked off the voice recorder and arched my back in a very satisfying stretch. Two bodies down, three to go. A quick glance at the clock made me sigh. Two o’clock a.m. A long, endless night lay before me.

Endless night indeed. Who was I kidding? I worked third shift. My entire life was one long night. Mr. Solar Orb in the sky and I were no longer on a first name basis. Our relationship ended six months prior when I took this job and refused to see him anymore. I missed him dearly.

“Negativity will get you nowhere,” I chastised myself. The graveyard shift was starting to take its toll, but a promotion would happen eventually – or at least that’s what I kept telling myself. Proud of my attempted optimism I sauntered over to the sink to wash my hands. Snack time. My fresh berry salad chilling in the refrigerator called to me. I felt my spirits picking up at thought – until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

“Ho-ly crap!” I exclaimed, leaning in for a closer look. I knew that the fluorescent lights and snot-yellow walls weren’t helping, but neither factor was completely responsible for my haggard state. Long, scraggly black hair framed a sallow, gaunt face, pale from little sleep and lack of direct sunlight. Bruise-colored circles beneath heavy, bloodshot eyes completed the horrifying picture. If not for the fact I was upright, I could have been mistaken for one of the corpses! I stepped back and turned off the sink. Screw the shift differential – I needed to talk to someone about first shift tomorrow. The extra money wasn’t worth all this. I made a mental note to call my supervisor.

Thoroughly depressed, I made a bee-line to my secret chocolate stash. I needed some serious cocoa-laden therapy. The berries would have to wait.

After devouring my dark and decadent chocolate bar, I leaned back in my chair and propped my feet up on the desk. The chocolate helped me posit that maybe the situation wasn’t quite so dire. I opted for a vacation in the sun instead of a career ending ultimatum to my boss. Becoming reacquainted with the sun paired with a few days away from death could have nothing but a positive impact on my sullen behavior and neglected appearance. Problem solved, I grabbed my MP3 player and relaxed, rock and roll happily blaring in my ears...until it wasn’t.

A startling clang, so loud it echoed over my headphones, woke me from my reverie. “What the heck?” I asked, swiveling my chair toward exam room two. Yanking out the headphones, I froze, trying to hear the noise again. If someone was here, I’d know it, I assumed. There was only one door in and it required a keycard. I listened hard, but heard nothing else alarming.

A few moments of silence helped my heart return to its normal rhythm. Cursing my caffeine intake, I turned toward the desk, determined to spend the last five minutes of my break catching up on my soap opera. I had to know who the baby belonged to!

Two minutes into my search, another loud clang drew my attention away from the computer. “Hello?” I called, praying nobody answered. While no voice responded, a rustling of fabric and squeaking of what I assumed was gurney wheels let me know without a doubt that I wasn’t alone.

No one had come in or out and, at the beginning of my shift, I always completed a cursory exam of each of the corpses. Each one was definitely dead. Working in the Medical Examiners office, you always hear stories of people who come back to life, but most often it’s just a psychotic colleague with a sick sense of humor who turns up under the sheet. I rooted through the desk for anything lethal. The only remotely weapon-like object was a pair of wooden chopsticks that I used to secure my hair. I rolled my eyes at the discovery. That was really going to help.

The smack of bare soles hitting the floor let me know that my time was up to search for weapons. Whoever was in exam room two was on the move. The pointy chopsticks just had to do. I stalked toward the intruder, utensils raised. The shuffling of feet and constant tumult from the room led me to believe that the unknown occupant was disoriented. Maybe the chopsticks wouldn’t be necessary? Hey, a girl could dream.

As I rounded the corner, I gasped in surprise. An honest to goodness vampire stood before me, fangs and all.

While I worked on picking my jaw up from the floor, the she-vamp gave me a long, appraising look. “Where can I get some clothes?” she asked, motioning to my attire. I couldn’t speak. I just stood there, staring at the only supernatural being I’d ever come across. Was she seriously asking me for clothing?

Nonplussed by my lack of response, the vampire continued on. “Careful with those wooden sticks,” she said as she brushed her long stringy hair from her face. “Those things can be dangerous to those like us.” She gestured between the two of us. Did she really think that I was a vampire too?

That did it. I raised the chopsticks high and jammed them into the monster’s chest. I fell back against the gurney as I watched her crumple to the ground and disappear into ash. After the display, when I was able to regain my wits, I charged to my desk, grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled two words with my red marker – “I quit!” I then signed my name, grabbed my personal affects and ran to the nearest exit.

You know it’s time to leave the graveyard shift when a vampire confuses you for one of their own.

- - -
J. M. Vogel is from Columbus, Ohio. Her works of fiction can be found online through "Every Day Fiction," "LQQK Magazine," "Fiction365," "Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers" and "The Fringe." Other stories can be found in print through "The Creative Minds Collection" anthologies, Volumes II and III.

9/7/12

2012-09-07T00:00:00.002-07:00

Black Widow
By Rob Bliss

You have seen her already, and possibly forgotten her within the hour. She has the signs of beauty from head to toe: long hair, oval eyes, plump lips, small nose, and the slightest shadow showing the cleft in her chin. Her breasts are large enough but not too large. Slender waist, curved hips, long legs, and feet that could only be sculpted, they couldn’t be real.
She hides her eyes when she can, knowing they’re dangerous to both sexes. Her beauty is a weapon if she wants it to be. Her words only exist in a whisper because more is said with a tilt of her chin, the flicker of an eyebrow, a momentary crease in her brow.
The source of her power found her – or she found it – when she was eight years old. When her hair was a different colour, before she realized her appearance could be moulded into a variety of personas.
She knelt before Christ crucified in her family church, his painted wooden eyes staring down at her, blood waxed to his hands and feet, a dripping gash down his ribs. She vowed to always be pure for him, to fear him, to be his bride. No man could compete with her god.
Her first husband died in a tree. Thrown there when his car slammed into a concrete barrier. She imagined him soaring through glass, trailing a vapour of blood, until the limbs of the tree held him aloft, displaying him as a glorious death.
She loved the black she wore, the dress of fine thread, the veil of lace hiding her eyes, mouth and cheekbones better than any costume she had ever donned. The mirror showed her a persona she had never seen before, but one which fit her skin perfectly.
The insurance of her first husband made her wealthy enough to retire from the world. She shunned whatever friends she had accumulated, mere accessories to whichever persona she had worn during her married life.
She bought a small farm house away from every neighbour, surrounded by forest, her long driveway closed in by snowdrifts and an electronic fence. People forgot about her, which was her desire. She never shopped in the nearest town, but in towns distant, driving for miles there and then home.
Of course, she felt the loneliness from time to time. A short-lived, but intense, craving that possessed her, had to be satiated before it would wane and vanish, allow her to resume her life. She would venture into the city, dressed as one of her old selves. Her eyes left unshaded.
Her expertise at sex kept each man, convinced him to stay, to forego his old life, his friends, wife and children. His property became hers. So too his life.
Once she was finished with him, she knew she could go at least another year without the craving directing her purpose. But when it returned, she knew what to do. Prepare herself for its satiation. Driving to the city once again.
Now, years later, the urge has waned after having slowed down, years between cravings passing until desire no longer walked the long driveway to rap on her door.
Tucked into the forest surrounding her quiet home, on tree after tree, there hangs every one of her husbands, affairs, conquests. Some with only threads of sinew still clung to their bones, others crucified skeletons.
She wanders occasionally, around the lonelier holidays, into the forest to look at the men she once loved. Or, at least, those whom asked for, and received, the words, “I love you”.
A parting blessing – she only said them on the day before each of them died.

- - -
I'm a Canadian writer with a degree in English and Writing. My stories have been, or will be, published in Black Petals, Horror Sleaze Trash, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, Blood Moon Rising, and Microhorror.