“Time. Sweat. I shiver.
Continuous fever at the Hell Hole.
Twisted angels climax and touch each other.
An overhead shot.
Black wet fur to touch and smell.
Tactile dreams.
The lights have blown. Come back to smell the earth.
Climax of blue pleasures as it’s piled on top of me.”

“I have the camera, I’ll use it to jolt my memory.”

The purple moon was nailed to the black sky – a sky accentuated by the night tide oozing dull red droplets – slight tears for those in action down below. The Halloween festival murmured in the alleys of Coney Island’s Lunar Park. Children and adults could be heard laughing and screaming on the Cyclone Rollercoaster and within the cages of the Wonder Wheel. The freak show was crowded while Dante’s Inferno funhouse rocked with laughter and childish screams.

Criselda let her legs dangle over the edge of the pier as she stared at the stains on her patched hands. She could still see the thread marks from the skin grafts of the past – it still hurt every so often to bend her fingers. She could still hear the whirr of the generators and the flash of the light. She could still sense the eyes that watched her every move as she shivered in the backroom amidst the drug smoke and laughing shadows, a grimace in the moonlight. The specters that took her morals and sliced them with shiny new scalpels – her dead memories.

Other types of pain would come and go; they were dull pain in twilight: red, black and orange. The codeine pills barely helped anymore, yet she continued to pop the white doves frequently since the withdrawal pain was growing worse and worse each night. Her dolls, her silence.

She could hear the Cyclone screams – the rollercoaster slammed the air; the Wonder Wheel creaked slowly as some of the Ferris wheel’s cars swayed back and forth. Criselda crossed her legs and bent over at the waist, forcing her black leather person into the space between crotch and stomach. Fever dreams beyond all limits underscored the desires within a fractured woman on a journey into and out of submission. A victim no longer.

She gazed down the length of the pier. It was moist air, chilly air for October, for Halloween. October 31st and what did she have? Some ripped from the womb recently idle evil thoughts and chatter. One more codeine pill. She popped one in her mouth and chewed it, enjoying the bitter taste crushing all the granules so the hit would be fast – bang bang to the cerebellum. She leaned back onto her palms, neck bent backwards, gazing at the sky, her ratty black hair moist with sweat, her torso getting warmer as the analgesic sucked on her vagina and ate it’s way up deep inside.

Her stomach was warm – a warm blood bath safe in the amniotic sac. She smiled even though the front of her mind was descending into a falling player piano discordant ride as the drug climbed up and backed out. Criselda could hear the ocean in the darkness: red /water /music /salt /mist tingled her lips.

“Sally go round the roses,” she murmured to herself as she reached under her ripped leather skirt and fingered herself; an attempt to frig herself into oblivion as her legs tingled, as her fingers grew codeine – numb.

She sang gently only for herself.

Lyrics recited without tone or beat.

Lyrics recited with lack of desire and fluctuation.

Just wet – no climax.

Transistors from the radio gleamed while short and calculated circuited digital notes flew behind her eyes. The sky met the ocean out there as she thought and thought and seethed. Her forehead was becoming moist as she wiped her brow and tongued her fingers. Salty and fluid digits tinged with red.
She licked her black fingernails. She reached behind her and tightened her black leather corset tight – tight enough so she became lightheaded and fortified the junk high.

2.

Knives were touching her hands and between her eyes. Murmurs – sweat cold heat – cold light under her tongue.

They put it there.

They put it there.

Criselda’s head snapped back out of her masturbatory reveries.

“They did it. Hooked me up. Pushed it in.”

She licked each of her hands completely, tonguing the scars, pausing to fight back the slight chemical nausea; she gulped down saliva and acid and then she felt better.

“Oh to be a pinup.”

“Cold light.”

A black lean creature clothed in wetness, fresh from a red night sat down beside her and whispered into her left ear.

“Touch the hand of God. Hold my hand and come,” it whispered in a melodious low chant repeating and repeating until her brain buzzed.

She giggled from the warm fetid breath on her neck.

“Touch…”

“My ticklish spot.” She reached around and held the being close. She kissed its lips delicately and produced the straight razor from her black leather purse. As she slowly dragged the straight razor across its throat, the warm fluid spurted and accentuated the sounds of her quickly lapping tongue and ignited the evening. It was 2 am.

“Mmmmm,” they both moaned. Then it collapsed.

The purple moon turned crimson, subsequently phasing out to ebony latex.

3.

Criselda got up and walked down the length of the pier. She started off somewhat shakily then more confidently as her worn leather stiletto boots click-clack-clicked on the semi-rotting wood. Her lean legs shook every once in awhile. She was in a junk-sex overdrive; her nose tingled. Tiny small black creatures followed quickly behind her. The nighttime held them close as she made her way off the pier into the street. Past the Cyclone, past the Wonder Wheel, past Dante’s Inferno into slick silence they made their way down. She glanced over her shoulder and she was suddenly alone – sound had evaporated and the street was damp and void. As she walked down Surf Avenue she heard a sound that caused her stomach to slightly heave and she vomited black liquid into the gutter. The Calliope, the sounds from childhood – before the generators, before the incident, before the life force so erotic entered into her.

4.

Criselda stopped in front of the carousel. The merry–go-round was spinning, slowly morphing as it spun. She grew dizzy and had to turn away and sit down on the curb. Gently, Criselda touched the puddle in the gutter and smelled her fingers. No odor whatsoever. Her reflection shimmered – a scarred scared image.

Feeling more steady she stood up and walked over to the carousel. There were no riders the only being present was the operator. Criselda gave him the once over – greasy black hair in a pony tail, the trail of scabs up and down his arms’ veins. A knife hung from his belt. He didn’t see her, he was dining on a meatball hero, enjoying it immensely. Some sauce was on his chin. Criselda turned off to the side and puked a little onto the sidewalk. He noticed her. He was paying attention.

5.

“Hello babe. Feeling queasy?” he asked.

Criselda said nothing at first, but his voice awakened memories and desires. She could feel herself getting wet and there was a marked metallic taste in her mouth.

“Yeah. A little.”

She walked over slowly and stood right in front of him. She ran her fingers slowly up the knife scabbard and gently touched his lips. Criselda noticed a bulge in his black jeans and smiled slightly. At the sight of his arousal, her eyes glowed yellow and spun wildly.

She tried to remember lines from her past as he broadly grinned at her.

“Let me see what’s under your skirt,” he drooled.

Saliva dripped down his lip.

As a response, she stuck her hand down the front of his jeans gently caressing his genitals.

He smiled.

“So hot…”

His face contorted and he wailed as she twisted his cock and balls in a clockwise direction. She pulled him close. Gentle whispers. Talons dug in deeply into his scrotal sac. Flesh ripped.

Soft tearing sound. His love-muscle screamed.

“Do you like it? Do you like it? Will you be my boyfriend?” she delivered the line in a monotone voice.

Criselda felt his flesh give way as she pulled everything up and out over his belt and brought the mess up to her lips. Her fangs sunk into the hunk of meat and her tongue licked the remains of his balls. He was in shock as she tongued his cock and balls and enjoyed the crimson goo congealing on her lips.

He collapsed at her feet. She spit his flesh onto his body. Her lips twitched as she remembered. They brought her to life and they used her mercilessly. The carousel was always in the background. The queasy calliope music underlined her pain and splattered her memory with relentless abuse.

She stuck her right heel into his left eye enjoying the squishy sound.

“I won’t do both eyes. I want you to see me. Tell me you love me.”
He gazed up at her. She flashed her cunt at him.

“Why were you born?” she thought.

She pushed her heel deeper into the orb as the other eye stared at her. He was still breathing. The rainbows had collapsed around her. Her aura ate him up. He could smell vaginal fluid and semen in the air. The wooden horses glowed bright colors.

“Please be my friend.”

Words spoken to a shocked body.

Removing her heel, she slowly lowered herself onto his face and sat down hard. She thought. Her razor in hand, she slowly sliced off his shirt. He was starting to regain consciousness.

“Good. Now you will see.”

He could feel himself being dragged along the ground, up and unto the merry-go-round platform towards the calliope in the center.

He was bare-chested now, his crotch was splattered with dark brown crimson. Starting at his sternum, she slowly brought the silver blade down, down, down, leaving a bright red trail behind it. His eye twitched, he looked frightened and his tongue was wagging – a soundless marionette. His body was starting to get cold. Criselda got wetter as the blade came down to his waist. She repeated the procedure , this time going much deeper. She made some lateral cuts constructing flaps. Then again and again each time, cutting deeper through muscle and fiber until she reached the tasty innards. She reached in and relished the smell of warm blood bile and semen. All those delicious fluids. Criselda reached in and caressed each organ before removing it with a kiss and a slice. The air glowed and her mouth was going dry. Kidneys, liver, gall bladder, stomach, some intestine, some lungs – *plop* *plop* onto the floor in a pile. She carefully removed the heart and studied it closely. She reached into her boot and pulled out a small silver dagger. The dagger easily went into the heart and there it would stay forever.

“You’re mine now and you can’t escape.” This trophy was placed into her purse and was carefully, quickly zipped shut.

She removed his belt and fitted it snuggly around his neck and around the pole of a nearby white horse. She pulled it snuggly and climaxed 3 times. She had to pause until the afterglow had subsided. Time. Time.

Criselda left him tied to the pole, open, wide and wet. She remained on the carousel and pulled the stick to get it started. It slowly started rotating and she puked once more on her lover.

She remembered when she was a child how she used to make snow angels in her backyard. She liked the sound of the snow as it gently fell, the sound of the snow would block out her thoughts, it was a slow gentle sound that dusted her face as she lay down, looked up at the grey sky and moved her legs and arms. Then she would carefully get up and look at what she had created. She would do this many times during the day. If it was a snow day and she was home from school it was an even more special time. She smiled.

Then they came and dug her up. Then they came and sewed her together. Then they came and made her please them. Her scars were testimony to the hurt caused by him.

The first time she masturbated, she was shocked. She was looking at a calendar from Penthouse Magazine. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Vacation. One photo entranced her, a brunette in thigh high black stiletto boots; she started rubbing and the electric frisson overtook her.

Every Saturday morning many years ago she would watch Hercules Theatre which showed old Italian Hercules movies. Channel 9 . The movie showing one particular Saturday contained a memorably violent scene where a woman was being whipped, as the whip marks showed through the flimsy see-through dress, Criselda immediately soaked her panties.

Another scene: a gladiator was stabbed to death by a fellow soldier; although the sword wasn’t shown penetrating, the assassin watched the blood drip off the sword with obvious glee. She smiled.

Criselda jumped off the carousel. It continued to rotate. Children were laughing.
She took pictures. The flash from her camera hurt her eyes. She took several photos, all black and white, some portrait, some landscape. Several people in costume, male and female, drunk and high from masquerade parties passed by and complimented Criselda on her outfit. Swelling with pride, she stood in front of the ride and hung up a sign etched in a childish scrawl: Free Rides, Trick Or Treats.

People started lining up.

“Hi sweetie. Here’s a treat for you.” A kidney plopped into a young girl’s bag.
“Hello stud. You’ll like this.” A piece of lung for a cute hipster. She hugged each person after they received her gift.

“Trick or Treat.”

Stomach, gall bladder, another kidney. These were all dispensed into the patrons’ trick or treat bags. They stared at her; some were in shock, some were puking.

Bats were in the distance, mating in mid-air, the cinemas were burning.

The Shore Hotel across the street moaned and she could see people fucking in the windows.

It was 3:45 am. She walked slowly down Surf Avenue.

Crisleda headed to the beach, she sat down in the sand and slowly opened her purse. She removed the heart with the silver dagger in it. A juju for the holidays.

Criselda looked at the still beating heart longingly as the sun slowly rose. A slim naked woman was posed in the sand. The woman played a discordant violin concerto as the rays started to warm the autumn air. Her bright red hair blew behind her in the breeze. She turned to face the camera – eyes white and void of pupils.

It was now November 1st.

His heart. Crisleda carried it to the ocean, she flung it into the sea, then she rolled in the surf washing off the gore and pieces of flesh and the stink of the night.

Flesh for revenge soothed the desires within the fractured female.

The gulls would be flying towards the ocean soon as the sun rose.

“Please be my friend.”

She shed her clothing and lay spread-eagled in the sand as chilly saltwater caressed her thighs.

“One more pill please. I can make you beautiful.”

By Peter Marra

http://www.angelferox.com

A day’s never been enough to celebrate Halloween. Not in my family. We spend the whole month getting ready, decorating our yard with the typical gruesome sights of gravestones and skeletons. But we do things better than the neighbors. Those skeletons are real, and the gravestones mark actual corpses buried by our own hands.

We’re a family of murderers, although we’ve never been fond of the word and all its negative associations. My wife, my daughter, myself, and even the damn dog. Every night during the month of October we go out and slaughter something.  We’re not the premeditated type people. We don’t plan murders. We just go out with a truck bed full of assorted mutilation tools, and we take what comes our way.

We each have our own style. My wife, Janice, is the rip out the insides type of gal. The dog likes to chew the bodies slowly until they’re dead. My daughter, Eunice, delivers the quick and fatal blow. And me, I like torture. The good old fashioned kind. I’d love to have iron maidens and gibbets and all that kind of stuff around the house, but Janice thinks it would be too suspicious. As if the smell of rotting flesh in the front yard isn’t.

“Why does your yard smell like rotting flesh?” a neighbor asked me one day in mid-October.

“Part of our Halloween decorations,” I said, a twisted smile splattered on my face.

I didn’t usually plan deaths, but I couldn’t help myself in this case.

“It’s too dangerous to kill a neighbor,” Janice said when I told her.

“It’ll be fine,” I told her. “He’s been wanting to borrow my chainsaw for a while anyway.  Everyone in the neighborhood knows that.  I’ll just set it up like a little chainsaw accident.”

“You’ll never pull it off. You always get carried away. Remember two years ago in Utica.”

Ah, yes, Utica. Two years ago. That was impossible to forget.

Our affinity for death made it essential to move nearly every year. Sometimes Janice wanted to move twice a year, but that was just because she hated routine. Once she’d done everything there was to do in a city, she wanted to get out. Besides, some cities just weren’t good for murders.

Anyway, two years ago in Utica, a grocery store clerk rubbed me the wrong way. Had he rubbed me the wrong way during any month but October, things would’ve been fine. Like some magical clockwork, the bloodlust only exists for those thirty-one days in October. It’s like we become possessed by some demon spirits that demand our spilling of blood.

This bastard grocery store clerk told me I could only buy one box of pseudoephedrine. It was some kind of municipal law there. I told him I’d bought ten boxes before, which made him think I was some sort of meth-head.

The guy called his manager, and the manager told me he was going to have to report it to the police. I told him I didn’t want any of the damn medicine anymore, that I just wanted to take my milk and cookies and go home. They let me off with a warning, and the clerk told me I could never buy drugs from their store again.

I waited in the parking lot, drinking my milk and eating my cookies, until the bastard’s shift ended. When the automatic doors parted and he finally stepped out, I sunk down in my seat, like I was on some sort of watch mission. I kept my eyes on him, and as soon as he started his car, I started mine and followed him out of the lot.

During the drive, Janice called. “When are you coming home?” she asked. “You left five hours ago. I thought you were just buying a couple things.”

“I was. But now I’ve got a little cleaning up to do,” I said before hanging up. I couldn’t afford to lose my target.

The phone rang twice more while I followed the bastard around, but I didn’t bother looking at it. I knew it was Janice, and I knew whatever she wanted could wait. She was perfectly capable of killing people without me.

About ten minutes later, the bastard parked his beat-up blue car in front of some crappy ranch house with a weedy lawn. The sight of his property made me want to kill him even more. I would never let my lawn look so dead and unkempt. Luckily, all the decomposing bodies we buried helped to fertilize and leave the lawn a luscious green year-round.

Wherever we lived, we left the tombstones up all year.

“Why do you always have tombstones up?” our neighbors would ask.

If it was a few months before Halloween, I told them I was excited about Halloween. If it was a few months after, I told them I hadn’t gotten around to taking down the decorations yet. If it was one of those months like March or April that are nowhere near Halloween, I would joke that I was a serial killer who liked having a mass grave in my front yard. They always laughed, although the laughter was always uncomfortable. But they never believed me. Funny thing is that you can tell people the honest truth and they won’t believe you unless it’s something they want to believe.

I parked right behind the bastard clerk, blocking a fire hydrant. I didn’t care. I knew I wasn’t going to be starting any fires. When the bastard got out of his car, I got out of mine. He was too dumb to notice I was following him up to the porch.

“Remember me,” I said when he reached for the doorknob.

“You’re the druggie from the store, right?” he said, no clue what was about to happen.

“I’m not a druggie,” I said. “I have a damn sinus infection.” I pressed a finger against my right nostril and blew hard, a string of green snot shooting onto the gray concrete beneath our feet. “See. Look at that nasty shit.”

“Sorry, man,” he said. “Just following the law. Now what the hell’re you doing here?”

“I’m here to disembowel you,” I told him.

And the bastard laughed. I waited for five hours in the parking lot, followed him to his house, and he didn’t bother believing my honest intentions.

“So a druggie and a killer? That’s rich.” He opened the door. He was even dumb enough to give me the chance to move the murder into the privacy of his own home.

The moment we stepped inside, I pulled out a potato peeler.

“What the hell is that?” he asked before I could jab it into his eye sockets.

“It’s a potato peeler,” I told him, raising it so he could have a better look.

“Are you planning to peel some potatoes?”

“If by potatoes, you mean your face,” I said.

Again the bastard laughed! What was it with people? I guess everyone’s just so tough and doesn’t believe they’re vulnerable enough to die.

I didn’t bother saying anything else or waiting for him to make any more idiotic comments. I plunged the peeler into his right eye and with a quick twist and tug pulled the eyeball right out, the veins and connective tissue dangling out of the socket for a moment before a flick of my wrist disconnected them. The eyeball plopped to the floor, bouncing ever so slightly off the carpet before sticking there for good.

The stupid bastard didn’t even scream. I had his second eyeball out before he even tried to make a noise.

When it finally occurred to him what was going on, it was far too late for him to cry for help. I’d already peeled off his lips, cut out his tongue, and scooped out his trachea. With his body convulsing on the floor, reaching desperately trying to figure out how to survive in its sudden blind and mute state, I went to his kitchen and pulled out a box of resealable storage bags.  The bastard didn’t even spring for the extra thick freezer ones. All his food was probably freezer burned, if he even bothered freezing anything.

I put each body part in a separate bag, and continued to peel different pieces of his body apart until I had filled all the bags. I stood and admired my handiwork. Twenty-seven sealed bags surrounded the bloody corpse. Only then did I realize my own dilemma. How the hell was I going to get him to our graveyard? Since I hadn’t brought our truck with me to the grocery store, I didn’t have my usual cleanup tools. I called Janice.

“You need to get over here now,” I told her.

“You’re crazy,” she said when she arrived at the house and saw the bloody mess. “Why must you torture these poor people?”

“The tortured ones make for better fertilizer,” I laughed.

We bagged up the corpse, cleaned up the mess, and got the hell out of there. When I got to my car, I was relieved to see no ticket for my parking violation.

On the way home, I got pulled over for going six miles an hour over the speed limit. Luckily, Janice had taken the body in the truck. I had kept one of the eyeballs in a baggie in my pocket, but the cop didn’t search me or anything. I was polite and didn’t give him any proper cause. Still, he gave me a ticket, and that pissed me off. So of course you know what happened next.

I ended up killing seven people that night. It was one of those times when one thing leads to another. We’ve all experienced it before. We moved from our Utica home the next day, the worms enjoying all the freshly planted corpses in the soil. Those must’ve been some very fat worms by the end of that feast.

Janice almost gave up the murdering life after that incident. But bloodlust runs too heavy in our veins, and we returned to usual tricks just a few days later. And now, here I was a couple years later, pissed off beyond belief.

“Please don’t kill the neighbor,” Janice told me.

“I’m going to kill the neighbor. I could tell you I’m not going to, but that would be a lie. And you know how I am about the truth.”

She knew indeed. I’d never told that woman a lie.

Later that day, the same stupid neighbor came over to the house. “Can I borrow your chainsaw?” he asked. “I have a couple big limbs that just fell the other day. I really need to get them cut up.”

“Absolutely,” I said, a grin spreading across my face. “If you’d like, I can help you cut up some limbs.” I eyed his arms and legs while he said it.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.” The idiot thought I was just being neighborly. “Hey, I noticed a couple new gravestones in your yard. Do you put up new ones every day?”

“We try to,” I said. “It makes it seem spookier, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. It doesn’t seem all that spooky though. Those gravestones look kind of cheesy, if you ask me.”

It was one thing to be stupid, and another thing to be nosy, but insulting our Halloween decorations was a line that couldn’t be crossed.

“I’m going to chop every piece of your body off,” I told him as he followed me into the garage.

Even if he’d known how to respond, he wouldn’t have been able to do it quickly enough. I had the garage door closing and the chainsaw roaring before he could even move. Three of his fingers and one arm from elbow down were on the ground before the garage door pressed itself against the concrete floor. He may have screamed, but with the chainsaw raging in my hands, his open mouth spewed out nothing but horror.

I’ve always admired how clean a chainsaw cuts small branches. It does an even better job on human limbs. The blade sliced through the flesh and bone without kicking or halting, and the cuts were so quick that the limbs would often be on the ground before the blood would begin geysering out of the wound that clung to the body.

Janice came into the garage while I was still hacking up the body. Five blood fountains sprayed up out of the gashed corpse. It was a thing of beauty. Janice didn’t think so. I turned off the chainsaw as soon as I noticed her standing there. Actually, I made three more slices in the nosy neighbor’s body before turning it off, but that only took a few seconds.

“Why do you insist on making such a mess?”

“Look how beautiful it is.”

“It’s not beautiful. It’s just overkill.”

“Nice pun,” I said.

“It wasn’t meant as a pun. I mean you overdid it. Sometimes I wish you would just kill in a civilized fashion. Eunice does a nice job. Maybe we should all kill like Eunice.”

“Eunice’s way is boring.”

Of course Eunice heard and ran to her room crying.

“Now look what you did.”

“Eunice!” I shouted after her. “I didn’t mean that. I’m proud of you.” I followed her to her room, leaving the corpse drowning in blood on the garage floor for Janice to clean up. She almost always cleaned up after my mess. But I always thanked her.

Eunice was bawling into her pillow when I entered her room.

“Go away!” she shouted.

Typical kid. She didn’t really want me to go away. I knew the routine.

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I don’t really think your killing is boring. I just meant it isn’t right for me. Look, I think you do a great job.” I rubbed her back while I spoke. She sniffled a few times and then rolled over.

“You really think so?”

“Of course. I couldn’t ask for a better kid.”

“Really?”

“How many other kids out there do you think have killed hundreds of times and gotten away with it?”

“I dunno. There has to be a few.”

“Not a chance,” I said, and her crying face dried up and turned happy.

“Thanks, Daddy. I love you.” She wrapped her arms so tightly around my neck I almost thought she was trying to kill me.

“Wanna go kill something?” I asked.

“You bet I do!”

“Great. Let’s go help your mom clean up my mess first.”

By the time we got to the garage, everything was spotless. She’d even buried the body and put up a new tombstone already. We marked it with “The Neighbor Who Said Too Much”, but we didn’t put a death date or anything like that. We didn’t want to give it all away. It was one thing to tell someone the truth, but advertising it in permanent ink was another thing all together.

Eunice killed a homeless man that night. She snuck up behind him and hit him over the head with a cinder block. It only took one blow. For a little girl, she was surprisingly strong. A month of murders kept you in shape.

The back of the bum’s head blew through his face. It was a strange sight, seeing the back of his skull sticking out of his nostrils. I gave my daughter a high-five and we bagged up the body. Another new tombstone went up in the yard.

We all went to bed happy that night, our yard overrun with corpses.

“We’re almost out of room,” Janice told me as I slipped into bed.

“But we still have ten more days,” I insisted. I knew where she was going with this.

“What do you propose we do?”

“We could use the backyard.”

“And what’s the point of that?”

“Do we do this for display, or do we do it for ourselves?”

“Honestly, I don’t remember why we do it anymore.”

And I didn’t either. We had been doing it since before Eunice was born. Since before we had gotten the dog. This was actually the third dog we’d had who’d been a part of it. But this one was the best. We called him Ripper, even though it was obvious. I guess we were never ones for subtlety.

“Would you ever consider giving it up?” she asked as I wrapped my arm around her.

“I don’t see why I would. Then again, I can’t imagine I’ll be yielding chainsaws and popping out eyeballs when I’m ninety years old.”

“Do you really think you’ll live to be that old?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’re immortal. I mean, look at all we’ve done. Look at all we’ve gotten away with. And we’ve never even gotten a scratch.”

“Never thought of it that way.” She slid her leg between mine. I knew where this was going. Talking about our murders in the bed always got her revved up.

The next day, the neighbor’s wife came knocking on the door.

“Have you seen Steve?” she asked.

“Last time I saw him, he was in my yard,” I said, barely containing my laughter. “Did you check to see if he’s still there?”

Her worried face helped keep mine straight.

“I haven’t seen him since yesterday. He told me he was coming here to get your chainsaw. Did you let him borrow it?”

“Yeah, I did,” I told her. Out of the kindness of my heart, I had even cut the fallen limbs and bundled them the previous night.

“Did he give it back?”

“Yeah, he did. He never really used it though. We used it together,” I told her. Full disclosure was always my policy. Well, not necessarily full. But give enough of the truth so that no one could ever say you were lying.

“Are you sure you haven’t seen him since then?”

“I promise.”

She looked at me with penetrating eyes, eyes that could read into my soul.

“You’re hiding something,” she said.

“No I’m not,” I replied.

“I think Steve’s right about you. I think you really are a crazy serial killer.”

“Yup, that’s me,” I confessed with a smile. As usual, I expected her not to believe me.

“This isn’t a joking matter. My husband is missing.”

“He’ll turn up,” I said. “They always do.”

She turned and stepped off the porch.

“Let me know if you want anything else,” I said before she was out of earshot.

Later that night, Eunice and my wife were missing, but the truck was still in the driveway.

“Where are the girls?” I asked Ripper. He snarled twice and laid down, tired from his slaughter. He’d managed to kill four rabbits and two raccoons. Pulled out and tied their throats together, then strangled the lot of them. It was more than impressive.

When they still hadn’t appeared by nine, I knew something was wrong. They hadn’t told me where they were going, and they knew I hadn’t committed my murder for the day. While I killed without them all the time, they never did it without me.

I called Janice, but her phone must’ve been off because it went straight to voicemail. When I called Eunice, I could hear her phone ringing upstairs. She would never leave the house without the phone. Something was wrong.

I scanned the whole house, Ripper leading the way on his leash. He loved acting like a bloodhound. There was no sight of Eunice or Janice anywhere.

“Where could they be, boy?” I asked.

I flipped on the outside lights and stepped on the porch. Something looked different about the yard. It looked fuller than it had earlier that day.

I walked through the graveyard, reminiscing about each murder we’d committed. A few made me smile, none more than the ugly bouncer who’d hit on Janice. Using a makeshift guillotine, I hacked up his body in two inch increments, starting with his toes and working all the way to his head. The man passed out somewhere around the knees and ceased living completely before I got to his waist. But it was too much fun to stop there. And piling all those pieces into the earth was just a blast. I told Janice we should sew him back together before planting him, otherwise he might rise from the ground as thousands of ignorant bouncers.

When I got to the neighbor’s gravestone, I noticed the soil had been disturbed. We always left everything smooth and perfect, a fresh layer of sod covering up all signs of fresh plots. But this one was a mess. I fell to my knees and scooped up the dirt like a dog while Ripper watched in silence. After a foot of nothing, I knew the body had either risen or been removed. I knew Janice wouldn’t bother digging the hole that deep. She never did. She was a lightweight with the shovel.

Confused and frustrated, I looked at the rest of the line of tombstones. There should’ve only been four beside the neighbor, but there were six. Had Janice and Eunice already buried their dead for the day? Were they thinking of leaving me?

I crawled over to the extraneous tombstones. One said “Killer’s Wife” and the other said “Killer’s Daughter”. I began digging and digging, begging Ripper to help. Two feet, three feet, four feet before I finally found some human remains. A bow that belonged to my daughter. My wife’s wedding ring. My daughter’s hair. My wife’s nose. I kept digging until I’d uncovered every bit of them. Sobbing, I tried to piece them back together, right there on the front lawn where anyone could see me.

“Missing something?” a voice behind me asked.

I turned around, still on my knees, to see Steve’s wife, something in her hand, a smile on her face.

“As soon as I started I figured out why you do it,” she said. “The thrill is almost overwhelming, isn’t it?” She tossed up something. It was the size of a golf ball. Maybe bigger. Maybe smaller. Even with all the light beaming on our graveyard, it was still pretty dark.

“What the hell’s in your hand?” I asked, knowing that my wife and daughter were fully there, and fully apart.

“It’s something your wife wanted to tell you about on a special occasion.”

I didn’t move. Steve’s wife tossed the object to me. It bounced off my hands and slid to the ground, somehow finding its way to Janice’s stomach.

“You bitch,” I managed to say.

“When I get even, I get even,” she said. She was about to turn away when she said, “You better watch that dog, too.”

She was almost to the house when I yelled for her to come back.

“What do you want?”

“I know this may be a bit forward, but can I kill you now?”

“I don’t think you have the energy,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll help you clean this mess up. And then maybe we can go kill something together. It’s a lonely life out there for a serial killer.”

I didn’t say a word, but I shook my head to let her know I was on board. She was right. I didn’t want that lonely life.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I know a place where we can buy a house with a huge yard.”

And we did. We left everything behind and started over, except we took Steve, Janice, and Eunice with us. We needed something to get the yard started.

By Nathaniel Tower

Nathaniel Tower is the founder and editor of Bartleby Snopes. His story “The Oaten Hands” was named one of 190 Notable Stories from 2009 by story South’s Million Writers Award. He has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Below is a list of his recent publications. Due to the nature of online journals, some of the links below may no longer be active. His first novel A Reason To Kill was released in 2011, and his debut novella Hallways and Handguns is out now.

http://www.bartlebysnopes.com

By Lars Kramhoeft

http://raresightings.blogspot.dk/?zx=fb458803d6b6737e

Molly Tanzer
A Pretty Mouth
Lazy Fascist Press, 2012

Molly Tanzer’s A Pretty Mouth is the clenched jaw—teeth grind in sleep.
But you are not asleep, dear reader.
You are entrenched in a family history much stranger and more gruesome than your own: Calipash, octopus, blood-soul, Roman.
You need a drink.
And pearls of the Weird are deliciously stirred, threaded under skin-pendants and sex rituals to titillate and terrify in the same gasping breath.
Fathom, mouth, what lurks under the visage or how they keep her locked in the basement with all those novels.
Begin—Jeeves is here, delivered in such Wodehousian clarity that we stop, ask ourselves if this is not somehow a lost Wooster yarn, but Tanzer laughs, writes on, conjuring like mad, ever placing us somehow outside of the present, yet in a realm of her own creation. In a Tanzerian history, there will be shadows to bite lips.
She has been there, will show you secrets and how to change shape, keep bending and moan. She grins her own Calipash whisper from the chamber window.
But it’s night now.
Until the end.
It’s October and you stay with her, the spectator of a perverse stage show, poem-licked earlobe and he’s stroking your hand, cloaked drawing blood and don’t worry about the bandages or the cricket bats or the pistol smoke. Just don’t tell your parents.
And you’ve been cared for: Tanzer has already taken you to where she wanted to go without you knowing this is how it all ends: mystery, humor, dread, suspense, romance, and obelisk injections in gums so the threads run laps around your tongue, until you’re in the midst of a dagger or an octopus and something is pulsing, something gooey has shifted down there.
Shut the book and glow.
Step back out to the street and walk.
Nights like this are darker.

By Jaime Grefe

http://shreddedmaps.tumblr.com/

http://www.amazon.com/A-Pretty-Mouth-Molly-Tanzer/dp/1621050505

TODAY, LAURA KEPT BITCHING AT ME ABOUT THE DAMN SHED. EVEN though I fixed the damn thing yesterday, I told her there was no way it had to be done again. She says the walls are rattling and the roof’s in bad shape. I’ve been married to my beautiful Laura for ten wonderful years and although I love her to death she can push all the right buttons. She stepped in front of the television, her fat fine ass eclipsing the screen and blocked my view of the big game.

I can’t stand that fucking shed; I hear noises coming out of there day and night and no matter how hard I try I can’t ignore them. They’ve roused me out of a deep sleep a few times and its hard to go back to sleep. For all I know it’s the damn cats getting in the trash cans again. I’m not a chickenshit or a couch potato like Laura and her family like to peg me as but I know when I’ve done something and when I haven’t. Some people think that just because they have a bad day, they think they can ruin the rest of your good day.

“Move your ass.”

“Fix the shed or I’m not moving.”

I knew she wouldn’t budge. I sighed, threw my hands in the air, bolted off the couch into the garage and strapped on my brown leather tool pouch. Hammer, screwdriver, wrenches and ratchets; a box of shingles and roofing nails and I was out the door. When I got out there, she was right. Two slats in the middle of the right side wall were waving like a flag above City Hall and a few shingles came off, too.

As I was repairing the shingles, I heard a humming sound coming from inside the shed. I ignored it and went back to work, which took ten minutes. After I nailed the two metal slats back into place, I heard the humming sound again. When I opened the door, a musty coppery odor hit me instantly. I stepped over the long yellow extension cord we’d run from the house and hooked up to the baseboard heater sitting along the far left corner.

“Well, well.” My mother-in-law said, “About time your lazy ass came out here and did something.”

“Afternoon to you, too Evelyn.”

There are times when I can’t even look at her. Her long straight black hair fell across her massive pale shoulders like an opera curtain during intermission; her penetrating blue eyes froze me in place as they’d done before. She started to gain weight about last week after she ate the old couple next door so we put her in the shed for safekeeping; she’d gone from a hundred and ninety pound bag of bones to a thousand pound slab of pale fat stacked upon itself. The bodies of the three missing hikers hung upside down, pouring rivers of blood onto the hay-strewn floor. She plucked the left leg off the skinny redhead like she were snapping the drumstick off from a whole chicken and bit into the meat.

“Unless you’re gonna watch, you might as well shut the fuckin’ door.” She said, holding the thick hemorrhaging leg in her hand.

They’re right, you know. When you marry the daughter, you marry her mother, too.

“Sorry.” I said and did as she asked.

By Brian J. Smith

Monty has not been able to sleep tonight.  For the last four hours he has been sitting on top of the covers, and the pillows too, all crunched up with his knees pressed tightly to his chin. Not bad for an over fifty fat guy who has had two hernias and four knee operations.

Monty has not been able to doze off. He has the lights on and is holding a copy of ‘Unabridged Something’ firmly in his right hand as if he is waiting for something to squash.

It isn’t bugs. It’s not a snake or a rat or even a little field mouse.

There is something under his bed. He knows it. He hears it. He has even touched it, or to be more correct, it has touched him. But each time Monty has attempted to get out of the bed, a hand reaches out to grab him at the ankle.

He is holding it like a camel, or least this is what he wants to believe. In reality, he has done something he hasn’t done since age six.

The touch from the hand was icy and slimy. So icy cold, it left a mark that throbs with pain. So slimy it left a thick and oily residue on his flesh. Monty can even see where a chunk of its skin, on his, was left behind. But even without this potential souvenir, in the last half hour, it has begun to groan low and breathe hard. He is afraid to reach for it, to see if it is what he thinks it is.

In the last ten minutes, Monty has begun to smell it; the putrid concentration of flesh rotting.

It won’t respond to Monty’s begging, and as long as the light stays on, Monty believes it won’t come to the surface and get him.

But as the night wears on and the standoff continues, Monty’s worry thickens. He hears a voice coming from the closet. It is a woman whispering his name, seeking a response. Thinking he knows the voice, he leans over to cock his ear. In his peripheral vision he again spies the hand, grasping out from under the bed, anticipating his feet hitting the floor.

The flaking, decomposing, greenish grey hand of grizzled flesh and bone begins clawing at the bed spread. It is now that Monty knows. It’s the ring, the cheap cubic zirconia ring. Monty knows who is under the bed. Monty now knows who is in the closet.

And it does not take too much imagination to deduce who is now knocking at his back door.

Monty always felt guilty picking them up. Monty always felt guilty after having his way with them, after strangling them and dismembering them. But Monty always felt confident and secure that if he scattered their remains all around the state, they would never find their way back.

Until tonight.

By Joseph J. Patchen

josephjpatchen.weebly.com

WELCOME EVERYONE TO THE CARNAGE CONSERVATORY’S ANNUAL HALLOWEEN SHORT STORY CONTEST

This Halloween the Carnage Conservatory is going to make your holiday extra bloody with the

CRIMSON SKULL SHORT STORY CONTEST

Carnage is asking for all horror writers to submit a piece of short horror fiction based around some element of any ghoul’s favorite holiday, HALLOWEEN

THE RULES

1. Must be 1,000-4,000 words
2. Submitted between October 1st to October 30th to Emily Smith-Miller: emilysm737@gmail.com 
3. Involves some aspect of Halloween
4. The bloodier the better, Carnage guidelines apply

THE PRIZES

THE WINNER OF THE CRIMSON SKULL CONTEST WILL RECEIVE A $30 AMAZON GIFT CARD AND A GENEROUSLY DONATED $10 GIFT CERTIFICATE TO CARNAGE’S FAVORITE T-SHIRT SHOP

FRIGHT-RAGS

www.fright-rags.com

THE RUNNERS UP

WILL HAVE THEIR FICTION FEATURED ON THE CARNAGE CONSERVATORY WITH FULL PROMOTION OF YOUR BLOG OR PERSONAL WEBSITE

THE WINNER

WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON OCTOBER 31st

HAPPY HAUNTING MY FLESH EATING FIENDS

TIME TO GET BLOODY!

Kat laughed. “You want to do what?!”

Derek had met Katrina, Kat to her friends, just two weeks earlier and had been amazed that such a young girl had not only found a man his age attractive enough to sleep with, but had never objected to joining in with his increasingly unusual games. Nothing seemed too bizarre for her.

He ran a hand over her smooth stomach, letting a finger circle her navel. “I said I’ve bought some body paint, and I want to cover you with it.”

“Then I’m all yours, get the paints!”

Derek started with a deep blue, his delicate brush tracing a line from the centre of her forehead down over her nose and mouth to the top of her sternum. Here he switched to a broader brush loaded with yellow paint, which ran over her left breast, producing a giggle from Kat, down to the small triangle of hair between her legs. He then went back to the top of her sternum and painted an identical line down her right side.

“Ooh, this tickles,” cooed Kat.

“I’ve not finished yet,” said Derek reaching for his smallest brush which he dipped into shocking pink.

The game continued as Kat’s naked body was daubed with a mass of lines, wide and narrow, in every hue imaginable. She sighed occasionally when the wet brush stroked a particularly sensitive part of her body, while Derek remained quiet, concentrating on the task at hand.

Finally he announced he was finished, and after taking a few trophy Polaroids, handed her a large glass of wine loaded with Rohypnol.

Once she was asleep, Derek went to his kitchen and fitted the new blade he had bought to his Stanley knife. The keen blade glinted as he returned to the bedroom to survey his artwork. Some of the lines he’d painted he now regretted, but didn’t concern himself unduly because he knew full well that there was always more than one way to skin a Kat.

By Nick Allen

http://dorsetscribblers.blogspot.co.uk/

Every year he invites only his closest friends, less than a handful of individuals, to his home for Christmas dinner. They enjoy fellowship, stiff drinks and a delicious meal as they regale each other with tales of their accomplishments from the year before.

In making preparations, he takes extra time, care and attention to each and every detail of decoration and music, in addition to the meal. Be assured, his is the supreme execution of the holiday celebration, one that will permeate the memories of his guests not only on this joyous day, but though to the next winter season and seasons to come.

While his work is year round and involves extensive travel, he makes it his business to see that his humble yet tasteful abode never appears amiss, or deleteriously on the road to becoming a run-down hovel. His is truly a demanding and stressful occupation, yet he finds time, particularly around the weekends, to paint, landscape and appoint his milieu. Idleness does not become him, and anyone who truly knows him, covets his endless industry.

He finds that one of the greatest joys of living in the Midwest is snow. It is the necessary ingredient for his seasonal tableau. Smothering and silent, yet cold and wet, it brings forth the comfort and warmth of primeval memories, of familial bonds shared in the safety of a sheltering fire. This is why all hearts react with the same emotions when gazing upon its lingering touch, artfully adorning streetlamps and rooftops and trees in crystalline whiteness.

But he also sees snow as his calling card, as nature’s tap on the shoulder, demanding his attention to go forth, no mattering his age, in youthful adventure and the spread of good tidings. Snow allows him the stealth to observe and frolic in a world swathed. Sound and touch are one now, softly muffled as he makes his way for miles and miles around in anonymity.

Shopping for his Christmas menu would almost be impossible without the snow. To be in the moonlight, in this suffocating quiet, in these rural confines, gives him the advantage. Take this year’s meal: with his gloves snugly fitting over his ever fattening fingers and dry palms, he leaves no mark and as the snow falls, no trail to follow. He is truly, as such, invisible.

“Mr. Trout you’ve outdone yourself,” one of his guests gushes.

“Thank you so much darling. It has been a good year and I thought we would splurge with more tender fair. This was a family of five you know.” He cannot help but glow in the social triumph.

The decorations this year have an Old World theme. He was sure to have placed a tree in every room to guarantee flow and harmony. The majority of his ornaments and decorations are handmade from earlier victories. Again, the sin of idleness will not cast its shadow on his door.

“Oh Garrison, they look so dainty and so tasty,” another guest purrs.

“Yes, the children are. They are quite moist and tender. Oh yes, I do admit to sampling some. How could anyone resist those cherubic cheeks?”

He had driven them in from Terre Haute last night so they are still reasonably fresh, without any hint of dry ice burn. He cleaned them there, in their own home, so that they could marinate on the trip here, only ninety minutes.

“Everyone! Everyone, please eat up and enjoy. And please, don’t forget to take a red or green bucket home with snacks before you leave. There is so much here and I simply don’t have room in my freezer.”

The father was a fitness buff: quite muscular and that only means chewy. He decided not to serve him as such. His innards went into the plum pudding, while his flesh hangs, drying down in the cellar for jerky.

He has never been a big fan of tinsel as it tends to makes its presence known year round. One can never truly clean it up and he is a stickler for hygiene. At his holiday soirees, one can eat, and some have eaten, off his floor. ‘Waste not, want not’ is the motto for any tumblings off the table.

My, my, the mother and children do display well on his buffet. There is a separate table for each, and each is garnished to meet the age, look and station in life. For instance, the youngest child goes well with a variety of sweet as opposed to hot sauces and the bed of baby marshmallows makes for the perfect touch.

This culinary triumph is truly a masterpiece of presentation. He was so moved by this moment he was compelled preserve these delights in a variety of color photographs for years to come.

“What is that my dear? Oh yes, there were six in the house, but the grandmother was way past date. How could I, in all good conscience, serve her? She was bony and spotty and had that aroma. You know the kind, when they get to a certain age and their blood gets tired and their organs begin to turn. She was asleep anyway, so I just took a hatchet to her throat. What is that? No, only light chloroform on the rest. I use just enough so I can finish my kitchen prep and not so much to make for an after taste.”

Yes, on the holidays there is nothing better than family.

By Joseph J. Patchen

http://josephjpatchen.weebly.com