Separate her jowls,
leave her grinning—
ear to ear.
Suit her up
beautifully,
in an Italian neck-tie.
Spread her bloody bare legs,
then carve a crooked sign—
All You Can Eat
Gonorrhea Buffet,
below the diamond stud,
glowing—
inside her bellybutton.
Take a match,
ignite its flame—
charbroil this diabolic
tramp—
roast marshmallows
giggling rage.
By William Andre Sanders
He wore a long brown trench coat that fluttered open in the wind. Alex didn’t see where he came from, the man just there, reaching behind his back. He had on a white, button up shirt and a pair of nice, black pants. Even though the temperature easily topped eighty on that windy day, he didn’t seem to sweat as he pulled the shotgun out from within his coat.
Light stubble lined his jaw, a cigarette in his mouth, black hair slicked back. The double-barreled shotgun swung out. Alex stood in the middle of a busy campus filled with people frozen along with Alex when the gun rose into the air aimed at two people sitting on a bench.
The guy had his arm around the girl’s shoulder, and just a few seconds beforehand they had been kissing. Now they only stared down those twin metal cylinders. Fire erupted from both barrels in quick succession. Suddenly neither of them had a face. They flew from the bench, two corpses strewn on the grass, one with his arm around the other.
As soon as the shots fired the man was already turning to run, but for just the briefest second Alex saw the man glance over in his direction, and wink. Within seconds the man was around the corner of a building. Some people followed him, while others screamed and ran. Alex didn’t move, stared at the two corpses, and the grisly remains of their faces.
He left behind the carnage and the dead. He saw the face of a killer as he winked and offered Alex the smallest of salutes while running. But most of all, Alex saw a figment of his imagination burst suddenly into violent reality.
The news hadn’t reached his dorm when he walked into the lobby. Alex glanced at the people as they talked, but didn’t bother to join in. He walked up the stairs to his floor, down the long hall filled with open doors, blaring music, and loud laughter.
He didn’t have a roommate. His roommate had dropped out just three weeks into the semester. Alex hadn’t particularly cared for the guy anyway, and in the end enjoyed the solitude, even though he had had just a little too much of it recently.
Alex stopped in front of his desk and stared down at the half finished drawing from the night before. He stared at a character he’d created over five years ago. Rick Stellowin wore his standard brown trench coat in this recent drawing, his button up white shirt on underneath, along with his black slacks. Rick held a handgun with both hands, and fired at nothing in particular. Rick even had his five o’clock shadow and cigarette in his mouth.
The man he’d seen was a flesh and blood person. A character in his head hadn’t taken a shotgun and killed those people. Others had seen it. Still, Alex turned on the TV and waited for the news. They covered the incident, described in detail by the many eyewitnesses, and then they showed a sketch of the killer. Alex stared at the picture they had drawn, and then at the one on his desk. They hadn’t drawn the eyes close enough together.
Alex turned off the TV, aware of what he was already beginning to think, and scolded himself for even considering it. Rick wasn’t real.
Outside his room Alex heard some of his fellow residents talking and laughing and it made him cringe. They started up their stereo so loud Alex felt the vibrations. He didn’t even consider going out there to tell them to turn it down. Complaining would only get him pegged as their enemy. Still, he scowled at his closed door and the pounding music, and then got to work on finishing his drawing.
Headphones helped block out the blare of the stereo. Drawing had become Alex’s escape from the world, and he enjoyed it. There was homework to be done, he knew, but the day had troubled him, and understandably. Alex shared no love for his fellow students, but he could’ve done without the sight of their passing.
Over an hour passed before the scream found its way to Alex’s ear through his music. He pulled off the headphones, noting first the lack of stereo in the room next to him, and next the screams and shouts from outside. Halfway to his door to find out what was happening, Alex heard the gunshots in rapid succession, and immediately stopped.
Careful to avoid the door in case someone decided to fire into it, Alex knelt down next to his desk. When the gunfire ended, he heard footsteps pound down the hall, but didn’t they pause first? Alex thought they did, right outside his door, before they continued on and he heard a door open and close. For a while he didn’t hear anything but the faint sound of his music still pouring out of his discarded headphones.
Finally someone cried for help. He heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Hesitantly, Alex rose from his crouch and walked up to his closed door. He cracked it open to stare at the blood splattered on the wall across from him.
Few people dared venture out of their rooms as Alex did. Most watched him through slits in their doors, still fearful that the killer might come back, but Alex didn’t think so. He knew, in fact, that the killer wasn’t going to come back, because he knew the killer hadn’t been killing at random.
The room next to his had been hit along with the room across the hall from it. One body was in the hall, his chest torn apart with bullet holes.
He didn’t want to see anymore.
The day had been eventful. Something about that struck Alex as funny, and once out of sight with his door closed, he put his hand over his mouth and began to laugh. Looks like he wouldn’t have to put up with loud stereos from them anymore.
Over two weeks of calm passed while classes were suspended. Everyone in Alex’s dorm was temporarily moved into another building as the questioning and searching failed to turn up any leads as to who the killer was or where he had gone.
Eventually the students were allowed to trickle back onto the campus, and then back into the classrooms.
Alex sat back in one of his classrooms roughly two and a half weeks after the slaughter and stared at the teacher. Nearly two hundred other students accompanied him in the massive auditorium. Alex glanced over at a few of them as they talked and giggled to each other. He listened to them tell each other what they’d done the night before; how drunk they got, what girl they had screwed, what house party was good.
Alex sat in the back corner right next to the door. A few other people joined him in the back of the classroom, but none of them sat very close. He felt the same sense of hate for all of them that he always felt.
The door next to Alex opened and in he walked. Alex stared as the man took up a seat next to him, his attire the same as it had been weeks before. He kicked his feet up on the chair in front of him and leaned back in his seat. A few people glanced over, but apparently none of them recognized him.
At first Alex stared straight ahead, as if ignoring the man might make him go away, but after a few minutes passed in silence, the man leaned his head closer, and said, “It’s a lot, but I can handle it. Won’t get them all. I’ll get enough.”
Alex met the man’s gaze. He stared at a face he’d seen so many times before, just never in the flesh. He stared at Rick. Then the words sank in.
“What?” Alex asked.
“The people,” Rick said, and kept his voice low, a voice Alex had heard in his head over and over again. “I don’t think I could get them all, not at once anyway. I’d get them eventually; you could count on that, but not at once. There’s just too many.”
“What are you talking about?” But in truth, Alex did know what he was talking about. And before Rick could answer Alex’s eyes swept over the crowd of people. “I don’t want you to kill them,” Alex said.
Rick smiled and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He lit one up with a familiar lighter Alex had drawn for him. “I’m afraid it’s a little late to get cold feet.”
“How are you here?”
“You remember being born? The exact moment you were born? Hell, remember the first few years of your life? Well, I don’t remember mine. You made me. You tell me how I got here.” Rick took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out smoke into the classroom. Alex saw a guy near the end of the row look over and scowl at the sight of the smoke.
“I don’t want you to kill anyone.”
Rick sat up in his seat and turned to face Alex. He jabbed his finger into Alex’s chest as he spoke, and said, “That’s the biggest load of bullshit. I don’t know how I got here, but I sure as shit know why I’m here. You want those assholes to pay, you don’t have the guts to do it, but I do.” The guy at the end of the row stood up and started to walk closer to them. Alex watched him approach, while Rick continued. “Every time you start to get pissed off at someone, I hear it, and I take care of it.”
Alex leaned his face closer and whispered, “If you’re killing these people for me, well, I’m telling you to stop.”
“Sorry, but the thing of it is, I’m not restricted to what you think.”
“Excuse me.” The guy had reached them, tapped Rick on the shoulder. “You’re not allowed to smoke in here.”
“Like this guy,” Rick said, and as he spoke he pulled the gun out from his coat. The guy saw the gun only a few seconds before it fired and sent a bullet through his chin and up into his head. The back of his skull exploded outward in a spray of wet, chunky red. “I kill him, not because he pissed you off,” Rick continued, his eyes still focused on Alex, “but because I wanted to. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have your enemies to take care of.”
By that point people had already begun to scream and run out of the room. The teacher yelled something, but Alex couldn’t hear what it was over the boom of gunfire. Another handgun appeared from Rick’s coat, a gun in both hands as he fired into the crowd of people. Alex stared at Rick’s face as he fired. No emotion touched him. The act of killing was nothing but business to attend to.
When one gun emptied Rick ejected the clip and loaded up another. Alex stared down at the clip discarded on the floor and ignored the screams of panic and pain. He ignored Rick, who had moved out into the aisle for more mobility. What he held in his hand wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He held onto a real clip, whose bullets had killed his classmates.
Alex ran from the room. The gunshots had ended, as had the screams. Alex didn’t know if Rick was still there, or if he’d already made his own retreat to wherever it was he went.
The main hall to the building was empty. He stepped out into a surging crowd of people right outside, some of them covered in blood. They were the survivors. The campus police were running up. The flashing lights from their cars filled the day, along with the constant murmur of the crowd as they talked about the horror of it all. Alex pushed through them and fled.
****
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Alex said to his mom. He heard the tension in her voice, and listened as she told his father that he was fine. On the desk in front of him Alex stared at the picture he had nearly finished the night before.
“Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“I was walking home from class.”
Alex wanted to end the conversation. He understood his mom’s concerns, but he was the safest person on campus. Right now he needed to think about what he was going to do. He wished he hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. In truth, he had been expecting it to be Rick.
“Have they caught him yet? Do you know anything about it?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I think you should come home for awhile.”
“I’m not coming home.” Alex’s finger began to tap harder and harder as he listened to his mom. He didn’t have time for this right now. “I have to go.”
“I was just calling to see if you were okay. You should at least consider coming home for a while. Who knows what kind of affect this has had on you.” Her tone hardened, and it became clear that she had already made up her mind on the best course of action. While she talked as if she was merely trying to convince him, should he continue to refuse, her words would turn into demands.
His ex-neighbors weren’t the only people who played loud stereos, and Alex listened as some people in a room down the hall started up theirs. The music shook his room while his mom kept telling him to come home. Alex closed his eyes, and saw a couple, arm in arm, thrown off of a bench as a shotgun blew their faces off.
“I’m not coming home,” he screamed into the phone, and slammed it down in the cradle. For a few seconds he sat in his chair, hands clenched into fists, face tinted just a little red from the anger. He stared at the wall and thought about the people playing that music. He almost wanted Rick to come and shut them up. He wanted some peace and quiet.
And then, right as the smile began to touch his face at the thought of it, Alex understood his mistake. Rick might come for those people and kill them, but probably not first. No, Alex had given Rick two other targets first. No part of Alex denied the truth of this statement.
The drive took him two hours. By the time he pulled into the driveway at his parents’ house, the sun had already set. He didn’t see any lights on in the house.
Alex got out of his car and slowly walked into the garage. The door to the kitchen was unlocked, and a dark, empty kitchen and dining room greeted him. He called out to his parents, but he didn’t get a response. He knew what had happened, but still, his mind tried to come up with excuses to explain away the situation.
He descended deeper into the house. He turned on the lights as he went, and found nothing in each room, until he opened the basement door. A light glowed in the far end of the basement. Alex slowly walked up to the couch along the wall where his parents sat. They stared at a blank TV, but then, neither of them really saw it. They had their heads tilted back from when a bullet blew through their foreheads.
No red marked the wall behind them, which meant they hadn’t been killed down here. Rick had moved them here, positioned them to be together. It even looked like the blood had been cleaned up around the back of their heads.
Alex collapsed to his knees as he stared at them. His eyes burned, but he didn’t cry. From behind him he heard soft footsteps on the carpet. Rick stopped right beside him, and stared at his handiwork. He held a gun in his right hand, perhaps the weapon he’d used to kill them.
For a long while they just stayed that way. Alex remained on his knees, slumped down, hollow inside, and Rick stood next to him.
“When are you going to go away?”
“I’m not.”
“Since I made you, I want to unmake you.”
“You can’t unmake a child. You have to kill it.”
Alex lowered his head and stared at the ground. “Then I’ll kill you.”
Rick chuckled, and pulled out a cigarette from his pack. He moved over to the wall and leaned against it as he lit up. “You think you can, do you?”
“After what you’ve done?” Alex met Rick’s gaze.
“I’m not questioning the conviction, I’m questioning whether you’re physically capable of doing the deed. You think I won’t defend myself? I’ve got the skills, you don’t.”
“Then I’ll kill myself.” And Alex meant it.
“Think that’ll get rid of me? Maybe it will, and when you die I’m gone too, or maybe it’ll just sever the ties between us and I’ll go my own way. I don’t know.”
They lapsed into silence as Alex thought about it, and Rick smoked his cigarette. “If you’re just going to sit around like that, I’ll leave you alone. I have a few stragglers I need to finish off from earlier today, and take care of those people living next door to you.” Rick started to walk to the stairs. “Don’t blame any of this shit on me. You’re the one who made me. I didn’t ask to be born, or whatever the hell I was.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but only shook his head and walked up the stairs.
Alex stood up and walked over to the couch. He sat down next to his parents. The blank TV screen drew his eye, so he stared at the reflection in it. Maybe, if he thought about it really hard, he could hate himself enough to make Rick kill him. Alex didn’t know exactly how the system worked. He knew Rick could kill whomever he wanted to, but could he choose not to kill someone Alex hated? Perhaps he should put that to the test.
Every horrible thing Alex had ever done floated to the surface. Every angry thought, selfish desire, and a sense of self-disgust over took him. He needed only look to the right and see his parents to help it along. He blocked out all else. Maybe it really would set Rick free, and let something like that roam the world. Alex didn’t particularly care. The world wasn’t his concern anymore.
Three hours later, he heard the front door open. He heard Rick walk down the stairs and through the living room. Alex hated himself. He wished someone would just kill him, and he listened to Rick approach.
By Philip Roberts
Can’t escape living purgatory,
as the inability to breathe
damns me with inevitable
lasting consciousness.
Each moment I close my eyes,
cancer of reminiscence
burrows somehow acidic
in black shards of unstable mind.
In days of life condemned,
wasting tortuously gradual,
I’ve scarred these wrists—
succumbed to weeping pain.
In all of the years
death was so desperately sought,
pain-pills and alcohol
slowed memories like photographs
mounted in picture frames.
For so long I’ve killed—
every pointless memory of you,
yet I cannot flee misery
in the miracle of resurrection.
Each second I hold my breath—
scraping razorblades
across your face,
memories bleed
wishful death.
Escape me,
drunk and numb;
leave nothing—
traceable in life.
Free me of indulging
pride in remolding you
so ungodly ugly—
with bloodstained razorblades.
By William Andre Sanders
The argyle socks intimidated me, the way they dimpled just below his big fat ankles. He wanted to swim with them on. 
Aqua man in bad leisurewear. There were some bricks lying around the pool, and I wanted to pick one up and heave it at his head. His father and his father before him were starting to show more and more on his face. Men that would never admit that they looked a fool in speedos and socks and sandals. I watched him walk over to the poolside, kneel down, and attempt to retrieve one of his sandals that had fallen into the water. He looked like a turnip with socks. Except that turnips don’t have hairy butt cracks. I wanted to look away, but when I tried, I got a cocktail umbrella in my eye. I was feeling very slippery from the suntan lotion, so I didn’t want to move my seat for the sake of changing the view. It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes or so before he noticed me staring at him and decided he might take a shot. I couldn’t really see his face all that well. He had a lot of gold chains snarled in the grey hair that was matted down with cocoa butter all over his flabby man-tits, and the reflection from the sun off the gold and the greased blubber was blinding.
It was a weekend retreat: no deadlines, no budgets, no authority figures, and my horoscope said to accept any and all invitations offered, so when he said, “Would you like to accompany me to the buffet?” I thought shit, you are the buffet, honey, and then I wondered if his kidneys might taste good boiled or fried with or without onions and a little butter. Should I pickle his eyes, his ears, his nose, and his toes? But we could decide all that later, after the salad I ordered, after a few generous glasses of strychnine laced iced tea, and after the thin mint I had for dessert while I chuckled silently at his red jiggling face as he chewed and chewed and chewed, grease from the supersized burger he was eating dripping down his six chins. Through the partially digested cud in his mouth, he asked why women like me — you know, skinny — always ate rabbit food. I felt a gob of sinew hit my cheek as he laughed when he said he liked rabbit burgers. I told him, “Meat never sticks to me,” but that he seemed like he had no trouble. He said dieting was the only thing he never had trouble with. I believed him. His neck was so thick; his muscles, I imagined, marbled with nice creamy fat. He was huge, and it was then that I realized I might actually have trouble choking this one out.
By Cheryl Anne Gardner
http://apocryphaandabstractions.wordpress.com/
http://twistedknickerspublications.wordpress.com/
http://www.google.com/profiles/cheryl.anne.gardner
CARNAGE PATRONS, WRITERS AND READERS ALIKE! SUMMER TIME ALWAYS MAKES ME THINK OF SUMMER CAMP, HOT NIGHTS AROUND A FIRE TELLING THE MOST HORRIFYING GHOST STORIES WE COULD DREAM UP. SO! THIS SUMMER THE CARNAGE CONSERVATORY WANTS YOU TO COOK UP THE CREEPIEST, SPOOKIEST, CRAZIEST, SPINE TINGLING SPECTRE STORY YOU CAN PUT IN PRINT!
LET THE GHOULISH GAMES BEGIN!
The rock connected.
Stone to cranium,
you can’t fight force.
The guy with
his pants around his ankles
fell
into a puddle
of piss and rainwater,
dead rats
floating like papier mache boats.
He’s bleeding
and crying,
maybe swearing,
can’t understand him.
The girl
with the torn dress
stopped screaming
but
she’s looking at me
with the same broken eyes
like I’m just
his replacement.
That offends me.
I tell her
to go
and she runs off.
Stupid bitch,
I’m going to fuck someone
but its not her.
By Christopher Hivner
Menstrual red
spattered about the bed.
White as cocaine,
she poses attractively stiff.
Exploring gray veins,
bulging on her firm breasts,
I scrape my tongue slowly
across frigidly hardened skin—
seeking relief in the depth
of the most amoral sin.
Fingering the jagged gash
across her gelid throat,
I dispense the warm,
liquid life of me
into the cold, still waters
of her ovarian sea.
Unrested on a crimson grave,
for how long beautifully intact
will she remain?
By William Andre Sanders
If waking to find a decaying bird on the corner of your bed isn’t a bad omen, it should be.
Just how it came to be precariously balancing on Robert’s quilted bedspread this snowy
December morning is unknown. It is a dead bird and it has been dead for quite a while.
He would have let out a shriek, however the shock sucked all the breath from his lungs. He would have woken his girlfriend, but her throat is missing, and the flesh on her face is mutilated, causing her jaw to drop down – way down – opening her mouth wide. What is left of her skin and bones are glued to the remains of her spinal cord by drying blood.
Fumbling from the sheets, he tumbles out of bed face first onto the floor. The initial pain is excruciating: he is sure he had broken a toe or maybe an ankle. Then he opens his eyes. He is lying sprawled in her disemboweled stomach, oozing with last night’s dinner and her small intestine coiled around. Pushing himself up, he realizes he has slipped on her large intestine which had been carefully draped from headboard to footboard like bunting, just touching the floor.
He scrambles, slipping and sliding across the floor, tripping on her liver, then her spleen, trying to escape the souvenirs of death until he crashes headlong into a wall. There, wedged in a corner, curled up in a ball like a fetus, his knees tucked close to his cheekbones, he wails and screams for his mother, his father, or anyone else who might hear.
His bare feet are cut, bruised and cold. His breathing outpaces his heartbeat. No level of logic or reason runs through his thoughts; his synapses are firing erratically and he knows very well that he is not dreaming. His screams gradually cease. Heartbeats now pound through his brain, as Robert melts into a catatonic trance.
Daylight is struggling to overtake the night, and begins to bleed through the curtains. Slender, focused rays search the contours of the room. They spotlight the once dripping blood, now coagulated under the dangling left arm of Robert’s girlfriend. This is where the blood from her throat traveled – down her shoulder, trickling down her arm and tap, tap, tap from her fingertips onto the wood floor.
With the exception of the man wedged in the corner, the room is undisturbed. In time, there is a knock at the bedroom door: curious since Robert lives alone. His girlfriend only spends three to four nights a week, depending upon the demands of her job. The knocking persists: one rap, two raps, never three, with neither cadence nor insistence.
Whether Robert actually hears the knocking is not known, but after a few minutes it stops. Blood oozes from under the bottom of the door, spreading into the room within a couple of feet from the fetal man.
Slowly, elegantly the red fluid rises in a slender and tall column, shifting and shaping, reaching and stretching, to form a man. A man made of blood that continually flows and swirls from the top of his head to the pool below and back. Two large, blazing white eyes fix upon the fetal sole. Robert’s head is lifted upward to face this being by a force not his own, so that he cannot help but stare into those eyes. He presses his own palms into his own eyes, but he never loses sight of those white eyes – white eyes that never blink or move, that do not have pupils, that just blaze through his hands into his brain.
Slowly, a mouth forms below the eyes and even slower a blood arm emerges from the front of the body, reaching for Robert’s gaping mouth and falling tears. There, in its hand, it holds a beating heart.
“She said this belongs to you.”
By Joseph J. Patchen
josephjpatchen.weebly.com
Lapping at a pool of blood
on all fours
like a dog,
I smell
a strange scent.
Raising my head
I feel
my watcher
tense
and when I turn
he bares
black fangs.
I straddle the corpse
of my kill,
ready to defend her
from one more
vampire
too weak
to find
his own victims.
The smell of blood
lures them
from their
starvation comas
and they think
they can steal from me.
I finger my necklace,
my trophies,
six sets of
discolored fangs,
other would-be thieves.
I may be human
and mortal
but my girls
stay with me.
By Christopher Hivner
http://www.chrishivner.com
It was a noisome club, with stuffed-shirts loitering around holding beers and peering at women, but the soundtrack was Chopin’s “Nocturne in b-flat.” Nobody could hear it, nobody but Melanie. Memory plays louder than any stereo.
Cara approached Melanie, with fresh drinks. Cara told Melanie that Stan and Mike wanted to go somewhere else. Melanie asked why Cara was getting new drinks, Cara said that Stan was buying some candy-cane outside. Melanie sipped her drink, Cara swigged.
‘Roses don’t even grow on that kind of soil,’ Melanie said, and Cara told her to stop thinking about it. They went outside. Stan was grinning and Mike wiped his nose, said it was good stuff. Cara did some off the back of his hand.
Stan offered his jacket to Melanie, her teeth were chattering. She said she didn’t need it but he said two lines kept him plenty warm, somebody might as well take his jacket. She pulled it around herself. A breeze from Lake Michigan made the arms blow up and flap around. Her shadow looked like a monster from a bad movie.
Stan commented that Melanie seemed a little distracted. ‘There’s this rose bush,’ Melanie said, ‘it keeps cropping up on the grave of someone who used to be in my life. I’ve gotten them to tear it out twice now, but…I don’t know who could keep planting it.’
‘Who used to be in your life?’ Stan said. Melanie told him it was her husband, and Stan said she looked too young to be a widow.
‘He wasn’t sick or anything,’ Melanie said, ‘it was a suicide. It’s okay, it’s not hard for me to talk about. I mean, it’s not easy, either. But we just got married too young. We didn’t have much in common. If he ever wanted to go out, ever wanted to put his books down, it was to the opera, not to a club. That kind of thing.’
‘So he was gay?’ Stan said.
Melanie sighed. ‘Did I say that?’ Stan tried to apologize but Melanie cut him off, told him to forget about it. She looked at him and smiled, said she was having a good time, but she wiped away the bleeding mascara from underneath her eyes. Her hair flew up with the wind. Up ahead, Mike was giving Cara a piggyback. Behind Melanie, something stepped out of the shadowed lower-level doorway of a brick terraced house.
A desiccated skeleton, wearing a grey suit with a red tie, was walking towards them. Stan grabbed Melanie. She wasn’t screaming. Stan wished she would scream, he couldn’t find the strength in his own voice. There was a small jagged hole in its right temple. It held out its hand, and nestled in the bones was one long stemmed rose. Melanie moved toward it. Stan tried to hold on to her but she slipped out of his jacket.
Melanie took the rose. The skeleton brushed her face with those sharp, thin fingers. It turned and walked down the stairs, into the darkened doorway, and Melanie ran to follow. Stan rushed after her.
When Mike and Cara found Stan, he was shouting Melanie’s name, beating his fists against the bricked-up doorway of the terraced house.
By Neil Ballard
The Carnage Conservatory 