Geez the cheese.
The cheese is rancid. A thick and bloated puddle of liquid, like clear puss, brownish and yellow, surrounds the slick brick of dairy like a moat.
The plate underneath is cold and sweaty to the touch. The stench from this decaying island and the hemisphere it comes from hits my nose like a stiff left jab.
It’s as though everything died in here.
All of the food in my refrigerator is rotted. The fruits are shriveled, the vegetables are slimy and brown while the meat is green and fuzzy white. The cartons of milk and juice are twisted,bloated and deformed, looking as if they are about to explode.
There are finger prints scattered all about along with three palm prints. All are distinct and vivid; all are on the walls and the racks yet none of the packages, jars or plates are so marked.
At first I thought it might be mud or grime. At first I thought it might be the product of my lazy hygiene. But on closer examination, the examination of rubbed eyes and leaning into the chilling crate itself, I can clearly see it is blood. To that there is no mistake. It is clearly blood; bright and crimson colored and well defined, without drips or runs.
It is blotted blood, stamped blood, and the blood is not mine.
I live alone with few friends, most of them online. While I may have only fallen asleep in front of the television for just a few minutes, the last time I was in my fridge was about twenty minutes ago to grab a beer. At that time everything was fresh and clean swathed only in the aroma of fresh box of baking soda.
Having lost my appetite I back away and begin to dart my gaze about the room. The paint on the walls, as well as the hue of my cabinets and chairs and table are spotless. The stench of rot does not follow me. The fragrance of decomposition is only in front of me, only when I lean into the refrigerator and the blood and decay.
I am more puzzled than scared.
Everything in the refrigerator is dead and I don’t know why.
Shuffling out of the room and back to my chair bathed in the light of television, I see onscreen the face and form of a delectable young and slender brunette who seems somewhat familiar. While she is so pleasing to my eyes, my mind still wanders and I cannot get over the amount of blood placed in my refrigerator seemingly as a sign or a warning.
And there it is. Do you hear it? Scratching and rustling sounds now surround the room. I always watch television muted because I can’t stand the human voice; it being so shrill and inane.
I can hear the scratches and rustling, clear and unmistakable.
Being a farm boy from way back I know it is too large for a rat or even a raccoon. The scratching and rustling seems to be everywhere and nowhere, but loud enough to be there and I theorize if it is all connected to the rot and blood.
The light switch clicks but the power won’t show. The switch is sticky to the touch and the residue transferred to my fingertips tastes sweet on the end of my tongue.
I know the taste.
The girl on the television is gone. She is replaced first by a phone number to call and then by a snowy picture whose light makes the blood on the switch and the walls glow.
Finger prints and hand prints much like those in the refrigerator cover all four walls in an erratic almost frenetic pattern.
“Everything is dead.” The whisper is harsh and curt.
I know that voice.
“Everything is dead including me.”
Yes I know that voice just as I do the girl on television.
“It took me some time to find my way out.” It is the voice of the girl on the television. It is the voice of the girl from my freezer.
I know it’s her voice once you strip away the volume of her screams and sobs.
“Everything is dead including me.”
I know she’s right, as I can feel her breath on the back of my neck.

By Joseph J. Patchen
josephjpatchen.weebly.com

her gasp of “ohhh fuuuck!”,
we screamed.
a finale. describe me.
because we were so caught up in going away.
we discussed almost hallucinations…did she kill flesh?,
she allows the guests to appear in sexy illustrations
lives in luxury, days slowing fading
silent in her home

it hit her mind with the first thing she filmed
(virtually uninhabitable)
situations where the tests have proven.
a fragmentation woman rising
she is ready
pushes him away
the real psychosexual researcher was murdered
(over there behind the tree in the backyard)

it’s a haven for the beautiful,
the sexy, horny young couples
that never see us
great pain, to a memory
a hell to break loose
you might not appreciate the killer
and the sexually weird
like the torso of previous books unread

she spoke of documented temperatures
just a short walk into the kitchen
to prepare some poisonous bombs,
a point of reference
it was just a matter of being always on
in a room, she watched and tasted lips
and began to massage a smoking clit whilst the mouth spoke
as it burned the sound became louder and louder.

it was just a matter of being always on
your knees facing me, chemical energy.
detonation is a tongue that licks with fragmentation.
each looking to corrupt god’s children
as they lay splayed amidst the atoms
she was no longer a fan of the “thunder-crash bombs”
the one bomb which sucked in energy rapidly, a certain blasting cap
fragmentation is her mouth, just as this rule has been

jammed wondering what it would be like outside,
on the lunchtime-crowded streets
she worked it brilliantly
this would be doing exactly the same thing
licked atomic bombs
a release energy in the maid’s outfit that would be suitable
she licked appeared to contradict her moral righteousness
hydrogen stroke. she then continued

she slept she posed she modeled
she re-built the torture machine. loved watching.

a drummer lay down 4/4 time

ready to meet the other wives,
reached your fusion of the light
black fishnet, hold up stockings.
your eyes. your eyes which rely on the mollusk shells
for warmth and depth

a vehicle driven to massage
the inside turn placed her hands on a sound
being royally pounded by the blast source.
very limited ferocious accuracy and speed

a drummer lay down 4/4 time

moving harder and kissing you passionately, sipping atom splits
bikini beaches typically occur to play
with the naked cheeks in her hands

beaches typically occur based on the theory of
a surge of warm warm moisture over her confusion
lips scoured heels, her dress was raised up
to suck for pain and pleasure.
getting admired how your face just looked just a second ago
before stooping slightly
before your beck gently bent toward the moonlight
your eyes searching, but before she could make sensual liquids

she had rubbed them off, allowing horse-drawn detonations
the students went to church yesterday
and she found that today she was going to be naked,
watching who will be expected to serve
it burned to keep a standard explosive in the playroom
it was undeclared, undeveloped,
to be considered a grave that
employs a process to fuck her

she hated wholesome clean america
as she went about trying to be watched

she filmed his own wife, and screamed louder…

my fingers
she filmed his own wife, and screamed louder…

your hands
she filmed his own wife, and screamed louder…

we ran down everyone

By Peter Marra
http://www.angelferox.com

Fifty years in the future…

…a rat comes out of a hole in the corner and runs across the cold concrete floor. It stops. Alan Peterson is glad to see it. He hasn’t seen the rat for a while. To him the rat means companionship. It means it’s still alive.

It means that he’s still alive.

“Where ya been?” he asks the rat, but the rat doesn’t answer. Not this time. No, instead it stands up on its hind feet and studies the man with the gray, scraggly beard.

“What’s the matter?” Alan asks. “Cat got your tongue?”

At first he doesn’t realize the little joke he’s made, but when he does he can’t help not to laugh. At least he can still laugh. Laughter is good. Especially in this dungeon or whatever it is that he’s been locked in for…how many weeks has it been? Months? He isn’t sure. All he knows is that it’s been a long time, and with no windows to see the light of day or the dark of night, there’s no way to tell anymore.

Except for the small grate in the middle of the floor that serves as his toilet, there is nothing else in this cell. No sink, no cot, no blanket. Nothing at all. He doesn’t need a blanket, anyway. The room stays the same temperature all the time.

Alan thinks about why he is here, wherever ‘here’ is. He honestly doesn’t know. Every two or three days when one of those men bring him some scraps of food and a small bottle of water and push them through the small hole at the bottom of the door, Alan asks, “Why am I here? What have I done?” But there is never an answer. Just silence.

Silence was alright. For a while, anyway. It was peaceful at first. But after a while it was maddening. After the first week? month? he found himself talking to himself more and more, and sometimes the rat talks back. Sometimes the rat tells him that he belongs here. Maybe the rat is right.

Alan doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he wants to know.

Lately he’s started making animals to pass the time. Usually they’re just rabbits, but every so often he makes a dog or a snake, and if the mood strikes him right he makes an elephant, some even with tusks. Elephants are cool. The elephants talk, but not the rabbits or dogs or snakes. Just the elephants.

And the rat.

Before he learned to make animals, Alan would walk around the small chamber, counting each step and calling it out loud. The most he ever counted in one day? night? was twenty-four thousand, six hundred and fourteen. Thirteen miles, he figured. Not bad for an old man.

Fourteen hundred and twelve gray bricks make up this small room, except for the one in the corner that’s broken. That one is the rat’s own little ‘home’.

And there were six hundred and seventy three hairs on his left arm.

Before he pulled them all out.

He did a lot of counting. Sometimes he counted backwards. Sometimes he counted odds and evens, and once he tried to count just prime numbers, but that didn’t last very long.

One day? night? about a week? ago, the little light bulb in the ten foot high ceiling went out. It never went out. It was on twenty four/seven. Two men immediately rushed into the room, one with a flashlight, the other carrying a stepladder. One of them changed the bulb while the other one told him to stand in the corner and not look at them. The man said he had a gun, and if he tried to look, he would shoot him in the the head. Alan didn’t look, and after a couple of minutes they left.

Sometimes Alan wishes he would have looked.

God, he wished he would have looked.

Last night? day? he had a dream. He was a hundred-no-a thousand feet up in the sky, looking down at this place, wherever it is, whatever it is, and he was soaring along on the currents of a light breeze, floating in and out of the clouds, free as a bird, free to go where he wanted, whenever he wanted.

Free.

Free as a bird.

~

“Hey, Randy.”

“What?”

“Come check this out.”

Randy walks over to Paul’s station and looks at the monitor. “Is Peterson making his shadows again?”

“Yeah. I think he’s trying to make a bird this time. See how he’s using both of his hands? See there? See the wings and how he’s making it fly?”

Randy shakes his head. “The guy’s nuts. I wonder if he thinks he’s flying out of there,” he says with a chuckle.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Paul answers. “Hey. Wanna have some fun? Let’s turn the light out for a few days and see how he does.”

“You’re cruel, man. Cruel.” Randy reaches in his shirt pocket, fishes out a pack of cigarettes, and lights one up. “Yeah, go ahead,” he says. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

Paul pushes a button on his console and swivels around in his chair to face his partner. “You gotta give the guy credit, though,” he says. “He’s lasted longer than anyone else has.”

Two days later the screams stop.

By Angus

Whiskers singed from a mouse encounter; up from the bowls; returned to flout her.

Tiny morsel refused his debt from a feline end on a streamed claw set.

Into the cupboard and followed the pipe; green eyes hunt with a phantom’s sight.

Twist and turns from the skirting neck, beneath the boards and along the deck.

Tails low, they crawl at leave, in a tightened space where they hardly breathe.

Scurrying on, darkened sprite, that copper springs sang through the night.

Cornered, twitcher turns to glance with a devil’s burn for a Hell’s romance,

And faces, sharpened, pointed teeth of a pincer’s tear as incisor grief.

Nose sniffs between the cracks, paws push through crevice; aloof the rats.

Senses find all’s not as first seen: A purr-gatory of a life in-between.

Deadly game, a fleeting of the fur, that instincts dance yet won’t deter.

A place now switched, the roles reversed, shows demon mouse, its coat to burst.

Larger grew the prey once sought, a vengeance asked that darkness brought.

Killer flew with upward bound, the beast behind now of scuttled sound,

Tried to take lives eight and nine, to recompense cut short spent time.

But no matter what the plan exposed, with added weight was juxtaposed.

Sleekest shape did bound back the led of a lined long loop with a streamlined head.

Such kitten maneuver; rules disallowed; such human endeavor for survival, proud.

Rocket pipes drain; she ignites once more; tail between engine for a feline roar.

Large detractor follows up to flank with a price of vendetta below swollen plank.

Bursting forth from ash and soot, that curiosity beckoned and burned underfoot;

A struggling monster, disadvantaged by size, now falls to the feet of a cat unsurprised.

Returned to non-supernatural of form, that her mistress’s bed foot corpse would adorn;

A loyal companion gasps its last breath, whilst mouse that did haunt had found death.

By Nathan J.D.L Rowark

http://www.lulu.com/shop/nathan-jdl-rowark-and-rita-dinis-and-jesi-bender-and-james-tierney/tales-of-the-undead-hell-whore-anthology/ebook/product-20948870.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/nathan-jdl-rowark-and-rita-dinis-and-aj-huffman-and-nels-hanson/tales-of-the-undead-suffer-eternal-anthology/ebook/product-20949554.html