A lady in white, who used to be my lady, sits silently upon a marble bench in the churchyard of my youth, a silver ladle lying in the wet grass at her feet, stale frosting and cake crumbs dusting her lips and her breasts.
 
It was an anxious, tormented love, she felt, for me, like a cold rain chastening her heart. She had defined it so often, justified it more often than that.
 
She had ventured into the churchyard that cold and clammy November morn, had walked a mile of grey shadows and stone. It was a misstep, once made, and she couldn’t help but look up at me as she tumbled down, down, and down the moonlit shaft into a crypt below, white orchids clenched tightly in her hands.
 
In this quiet place, she could forget, could forget the loneliness and time. Could forget me, and I her. Or so she thought. You see, the churchyard was filled with the wounded, and she belonged there, certainly, but there was no place for her, not while she still felt alive.
 
And so I would wait, six months, a year, until the screaming stopped, then I would come back to her, when she had lost all hope, when the chill had set permanently into her bones. She would want me then, and I would have forgiven her her refusals.
 
You think me odd, but a woman needs time to come to her senses. In the gloaming, she was not without her loveliness. The grey slag of her skin shimmering in the torch light, she seemed less bitter now, less brittle than a day without rain ago.
 
“I brought champagne, my dear.”
 
Her lips said yes.
 
Her whole body said yes. The lace in her bodice disintegrated, the blue veins in her breasts flushed with moonlight as she stared into the distance she knew only as me.
 
She begged me take her, begged like she’d never had before as the shadows, spun from cobwebs and tears, collected in the damp corners and empty spaces around us.
 
They would bear witness, finally, to our love and to our only moment of wedded bliss.
 
I hated to leave her. Hated to deceive her, but I desired another. So fickle are the passions of a man, and eventually, she, too, would find herself here — waiting. They all do. Waiting for me to touch them, to love them just a little.

By Cheryl Anne Gardner

http://apocryphaandabstractions.wordpress.com
http://twistedknickerspublications.wordpress.com

and I don’t like gristle in my meat

 

if you’re taking the time

to scrape the flesh from the bone,

do it properly

do it clean

I like mine bloody

and lean

 

I don’t like bits of bone

mixed in with someone’s ashes

in their stainless steel cup;

if I wanted their skeleton,

I would have buried the son-of-a-bitch

and waited for a night with a blood-red moon

to dig them up

 

and I don’t like empty threats

from textbook psychopaths

with nothing better to do—

your poor excuse of a knife

will hardly be enough to end MY life;

it takes a lot more than a rusty switchblade

to take me down

 

I’ve got more lives than a goddamn cat

and although I have an insatiable need

to bleed,

you’re hardly the one

that can take me there

 

I’m definitely set in my ways,

beyond any conceivable reason or fact

I guess I’m just a stubborn bitch

with a hell of an itch to scratch

By Cynthia Ruth Lewis

It had taken a week. For one week Jasper’s lover was left lonely in the dank cellar of the old urban duplex. He had done what he could about the insects. The ceiling of the little concrete room was a maze of fly paper. The floor was littered with little saucers of beer to lure slugs. Tons of those little hexagonal death traps built special for the ants.

It had all worked pretty well aside for her right eye. On the fourth day of her mourning, he had gone down with a box of air fresheners only to find the fluid from her right eye leaking down her cheek. For a moment it looked as though she were crying, if her tears were a bit more viscous and gel like then they would have been in life.

After he had wiped the fluid from her cheek with peroxide, he saw that a rough square had been chewed from her iris and part of her pupil. He cried silently to himself without realizing it as he propped her head upright, so no more fluid would leak from her eye.

Dangling the fresheners one by one from the fly paper and the occasional errant nail from the ceiling, he wondered what to do about it. The eye was not so bad, considering how old the basement and building were, and considering the colonies of life that must be mainly hidden from view in the house.

No, the real problem was the moisture and the heat. Jasper was no mortician or forensic scientist. He had no way of knowing if what he was doing was even effective or not, but it was all he could think to do. So three times a day he would come and wipe her down with a cloth and peroxide, hoping to kill off the majority of the bacteria he knew must be eating her, breaking her down slowly to take her away from him in little rotting chunks.

When he had finished dangling the air fresheners he decided to fill in her eye with a product called new skin. After it had dried, it colored itself a milky white, not the clear invisible coat that the bottle had advertised. As he wiped down her cheeks with his peroxide dampened cloth he wondered if an epoxy of some sort would have worked better. He was crying again, but he still didn’t realize it.

A week of sleepless nights, driving around parts of the city you wouldn’t want to drive down in broad daylight. Sometimes he drove with the lights off, because the drug dealers and the addicts tended to scatter if they saw your headlights. All those rapists, and thieves and killers would scurry away just like the despicable roaches that Jasper knew they were.

He searched high and low in the alleys where crack and heroin were sold for prices ranging from ten dollar packets to an evening with someone’s unfortunate minor. All to no avail, the killer was laying low somewhere. Hiding until Jasper’s light burnt out. Except that Jasper knew the rage burning inside him would never be spent. As the nights stretched on without any sign of the killer, a gnawing sense of desperation grew inside him. Pounding in his temples and hammering away in his chest.

On the sixth day Jasper’s landlord came to the door, suspicious. A loud insistent knocking brought him away from his cleaning routine. When he opened the door he found the elderly man who owned the home, and lived next door, staring at him through the tiny crack that opened.

“Thomas,” Jasper cracked in what was intended to be surprise, but instead just sounded weary. “Am I late on the rent again already?”

The older man frowned at him through the door, “No Jasper…well uh, yeah, but that’s not what I’m after. I know that you and Celia have just had some kind of incident. I notice that Celia has not left the house for some time now and I just want to make sure the two of you are alright.”

Thomas had heard the gunshot the night the killer had broken into their home and had in fact called the police. Jasper had been very careful to speak to the police and Thomas separately, since Thomas had known that Celia was home. Although at that time, he had not known why, aside from the intense fear that they would take her from him.

Jasper quickly shuffled out onto the porch closing the door behind him. Thomas backed up a good five feet, crinkling his nose with a sour look. “Jasper,” the landlord asked slowly. “Are you having a problem with the septic system? I appreciate you trying not to bother me much, but that can be a serious problem.”

“Oh no, it was just the storm from the other night, sometimes those sewers start to get full and the smell can work its way up for a few days is all. Yeah, and don’t worry about Celia. She’s going be just fine, she’s just a bit shook up you know. If I hadn’t made it home when I did…”

Jasper had made it home at the right time. The house had been pitch black, he could hear her crying in their bed room. He could hear her pleading with someone. Storming into the bedroom he could see her half naked in the dark and cringing. The only thing he could see of the shadow hovering over her were those hollow caved in looking dark eyes. The ones reserved for life time hard drug users.

He started to scream when there was a motion from the hulk and then a gun shot rang out as something flicked by Jaspers ear. A second rapid motion followed with another gun shot and then Celia had stopped screaming. The shadow then ran from the room and out of the house. Jasper could have saved her. He just failed to do so.

“I can’t lose her Thomas,” he finally said with his eyes staring off into the memory. “I just can’t ever lose her.”

“Look Jasper,” the landlord answered him absently. “I can see that you both need rest. Just let me know if you need anything,”

“Oh sure, and thanks Tom. I’ll let you know if that smell doesn’t clear with the flood waters too.”

“But you know the rent is past due.”

“Thanks again Thomas,” Jasper said as he smoothly stepped back into the house and shut the door. He knew that at six days, soon she would fall apart completely on him. He needed that bastard and he needed him now.

***

“Nah Davis,” Big Gus dropped in his rumbling voice. “I’m telling you that this cat was looking for somebody.”

“Probably just the cops,” Davis said waving Gus’ words from the air around him.

“Nah Davis, everybody knows Big G don’t give a shit about bacon. I strolled right up to him, coasting through here with his lights down and I said to him, ‘What’s the biggest rock you can pick up?’”

“That isn’t gonna prove jack, Fatty.”

“I told you not to call me that shit again Davis.”

“Cool it now Big G,” Davis said as he reached behind to put a hand on his pistol grip. He’d used the last two bullets about six nights back, but Fatty didn’t know that.

“Just saying Davis, been a minute since we had a punch out. The cat didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. A cop would have said something crazy high, or at least known what I meant. He wasn’t looking for tail either. Rolonda was shakin’ it at him figuring that’s what he was after. No reaction.”

“Yeah, well whatever. Hey G, do you know if Dice has bullets?”

“You been acting rough this week Davis. It ain’t healthy to bring business home with you.”

“Fuck off, Fatty.”

Fatty moved a hand to his waist band but Davis was faster. He slammed the barrel of the empty gun hard into Fatty’s temple.  Fatty smiled back at Davis but stopped with his pistol pointed in the air.

“You jus said you was empty Davis.”

“No I didn’t Fatty,” Davis answered, praying to god that he hadn’t. He had not yet had a fix today, it made it difficult to think clearly. “Now are you gonna give me your piece, or do I cap your ass right here?”

***

The read out on the clock in Jasper’s car said it was nine o’clock.  He pulled around the little alley and suddenly saw those same haunting eyes. He blinked and jerked his head back in that direction, but this time only saw two men standing together. One was holding a gun to the others head, while the target passed over another gun back to him.

“I SEE YOU MOTHER FUCKER!!!” He screamed as he flicked on his brights and stomped down on the gas pedal.  The two men briefly cried out, before the car slammed hard into them. One of them flopped hard into the front wind shield splitting it and spraying some blood. The other dropped suddenly out of view, as his leg snapped at the knee and dragged him to the ground.

“DON’T DIE!” Jasper screamed, as the airbag exploded in his face. For a moment the wind was knocked out of him and he couldn’t move. Then he started breathing rapidly and panicky, as he hauled himself out of the car.

The big fat man was groaning, the smaller man who had been dragged under the car was not making any noise. Hoping he was the right man, Jasper dragged the big man into the back of his car and drove backward out of the alley.

Davis continued to lay still and pretend to be dead for another ten minutes, before pulling out his cell phone and calling 911.

***

Huffing and puffing, Jasper rolled the fat man down the cellar stairs. He cried out a bit and then his head bounced hard off of the exposed brick walls, and he fell silent. The clock struck midnight as he managed to shove the man into the room with Celia and gather his chalk, blade, and candles to the room.

It had only taken a week for him to become uneducated and superstitious like his mother had been before him. He was thinking in particular of an altar set up he had seen her working at.

“What’s this one for?”

“It’s for making deals.”

“Deals with whom?”

“Spirits.”

“Are they good?”

“Who could know?”

He hadn’t asked anymore questions after that. Her rituals scared him, not like his brother Mateo who had taken it seriously and relished it. Mateo who killed himself in his bedroom, with those same funny symbols scrawled all over the walls.  Jasper flipped through the pages of the big old book his mother had called “The Family Tradition”, trying to recognize some of those symbols.

Flicking through the pages, Jasper thought of another incident when he had asked his mother about her rituals.  It had been shortly after the incident about deals. He had opened the little door to her room and saw a statue of Jesus in the center of a circle. The symbols scrawled around in all directions did not seem to make him nervous as had the symbols from last time.

“Do you believe in the Jesus man, momma?” He had asked her in all seriousness. It was the first familiar image he’d seen in her ceremony area. His mother looked at him with a smug smirk, not knowing that as they spoke Mateo was upstairs committing ritual suicide.

“I believe he has a place, and that he can useful to me.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he won’t be no use to you.”

It seemed to Jasper’s memory that Jesus was not of use to his mother either. Only six hours later she would be screaming out for him over and over again. She never did get the answer she was looking for.

Finally a page turned and he saw what he was looking for. He clicked on the light in the cellar room and grabbed a piece of chalk from his bag.

***

The morphine drip felt good. It wasn’t quite the fix Davis would usually scare up, but under the circumstances it felt just fine. The guy that ran him and Fatty down was the man from last week, he knew it. He hadn’t got a good look at him, but he knew it just the same.

Something was going to have to be done. Davis did not understand how the man could have known it was him there in the dark.  That didn’t matter either. He wasn’t sure why he had carted off Fatty. It wasn’t to hide the evidence, because he hadn’t laid a finger on Davis. It all made him feel very nervous.

Probably that bitch he shot was dead, otherwise there was no way the guy would go through so much trouble to hunt him down. He might have assumed as much, he’d pressed the gun right against her temple before firing.

If only he hadn’t woken up so late that day, he never would have been in that neighborhood. Normally if you got up early, you could find things that people were throwing away that could be pawned for some cash. Never very much, but then again, you didn’t really need too much. If you could scare up twenty bucks, you could be set for a day or two.

Instead he slept till noon, because of the previous nights partying.  All the curbs were already cleared by the time he made his way out to the streets. So he just started walking in one direction, and kept walking until it was night. He had been walking by that house when he saw her in there without a top on, and the light from her lamp gave him a wonderful view. He didn’t think the back door would be unlocked.

Now he just needed to decide how to handle all of this. Something had to be done. Otherwise that guy would definitely come back and finish up the job. Maybe he thought it was Gus and not him who had capped his woman. Still, Fatty would holler like a stuffed weasel that was too big to get back out of the hen house in no time.

***

Jasper studied the fat man who was staring blearily at him from the center of the black chalk triangle he’d been chained too. The big man had started to come around once Jasper had begun to carve the symbols in his flesh. He didn’t think he was doing this exactly the way the book said to, especially since he was only skimming the pages. Still, he was pretty sure ordinarily you only pick one spirit to call.

Since he had no idea which one was the right one, and didn’t feel that he had the time to figure it out, he simply started carving all of the seals he could find into the fat man.

“What’s your name man?” the big man’s voice boomed in a whisper. “I don’t know you. I done nothing to you. You don’t have any call to be carving me up like this. This looks like some voodoo shit. Are you doing some voodoo shit to me?”

Jasper ignored the man and flipped through the pages of the book. Then he squinted and peered up the fly papered ceiling. “I… I command you to come.” He said finally.

“You mother fucker!” the big man swore at him. “This is some voodoo shit. Stop it.”

“I said I command you to come!” Jasper shouted this time.

“Who are you calling man? You cut that shit out.”

“Where are you? Cowards!” Jasper screamed out in frustration, then began hammering the big man in the triangle with his fist over and over again. “I said, COME!”

Blood wet his knuckles and began to trickle down the man’s chin. Then he began to chuckle, except it wasn’t the kind of chuckle you would expect from a big man like him. It sounded like a lot of people chuckling.

“Well here I am Jasper,” said the voice’s from the grinning bloody mouth of the big man. It further confused him, that the voices said slightly different words at times. Instead of I, some of the voices said we, still others said us.

Jasper stumbled back a few feet from the big man, who continued to grin wildly at him. The man’s eyes became shadowy and glittered with hatefulness. Jasper waved the big ritual blade at him. “You can’t trick me. Are you throwing your voice?”

“Who needs to throw noise?” a voice growled right into his ear, even though the big man’s lips hadn’t moved. “Why have you called us here?” the voices asked from his mouth this time.

“I need my Celia back,” he said pointing at his lover’s week old corpse. The man’s head tilted slightly in that direction and sniffed.               

“She has not been prepared,” some voices saying ‘it’, others ‘vessel’.

“I don’t want to prepare her, I want her back.”

“You misinterpret us,” other voices stating ‘me’, and ‘misquote’.

“Are you saying that you can’t do it?”

“She is with us,” ‘Me’,echoed other voices. “She cannot see it clearly. What will you give us?”

“I have brought this man for you. I want to trade him.”

“A fool presumes to give us (me) what (that) is already mine (defiled).”

If it were not for the multitude of pitches in the voices, it would have been impossible to understand any of them. Even so, listening to the voices speak while catching the random deviations in their vocabulary was pressing Jaspers mind into overdrive.

“You will not help me?” he asked the grinning and bloody living altar before him, beginning to sob. “Please, I’ll do anything, give you anything at all.”

“We (I) (Us) (They) might (may) (can) service (fulfill) you.”

“What price do you ask?”

“The cost (price) (deal) has already been struck (forged) (sealed). We (I) (us) will take (possess) (own) everything.” Jasper felt a chill crawl up his neck as he noticed none of the voices had deviated on the last word.

“And what about this man?”

“Kill (end) (ruin) him (it)”

“Do you want to depart from him first?”

“No (why?), cut (carve) (remove) it’s (his) (the) heart.”

Pushing the tip of the blade firmly against the man’s chest, the voices began to cackle at Jasper. Sweat began to bead on his brow as he hesitated, licking his lips and taking a deep breath. There was a slight bit of resistance, as he pushed deep into the man’s breast before the pressure gave way with a sickening speed.

The flickering and hateful shadows cleared from the man’s eyes, and his rumbling voice began to scream, mingling with the horrific laughter. Another sound below the others reminded Jasper of the squealing of pigs.

The bones of the man’s rib cage made snapping and scraping noises as Jasper twisted and pried at the man’s chest with the big dagger. A sour tang started to fill his stomach and almost forced its way out of his mouth, but he bit back the bile. Somehow he was certain that if he didn’t finish this, all he hoped for would be lost.

The big man’s eyes locked onto Jaspers as he dug the heart out of rough hole in his chest, causing both to scream shrilly.

“Feed (give) (present) it (us) to us (me).”

Still screaming Jasper shoved the heart up to the man’s grin, whose lips suddenly parted and snapped down into the right chamber hungrily, as blood sprayed back into Japer’s face from the valve tip.

The man-thing took several more ferocious bites, staring into Jasper’s eyes with that same conscious terror before suddenly slumping over. A gust seemed to rush through the room, stirring the freshener and fly paper. It may have been his imagination but he swore he saw some of the dead fly’s legs kicking.

“Jesus…” Jasper whispered spitting blood out of his mouth, wondering what kind of diseases the dead man may have had. As was the family history, no one responded. He shook his head and told himself that it likely didn’t matter if the man had any disease.

He wasn’t sure if the spirits would stay true to their words. The only thing he was fairly certain of was that this man had not been the man who shot and killed Celia. That, and the fact that he was probably going to hell.

***

Davis drummed his fingers off the newly installed steel bar holding his leg together. If he wasn’t so pumped up on the morphine it would have been excruciating. Now it just filled his leg with an oddly powerful vibrating sensation. He was getting annoyed that Shark wasn’t picking up the phone.

On the ninth ring, there was a click and an annoyed voice snapped out at him. “What fool? I’m at Christa’s.”

“As in the mother of my child?”

“She said you got a small dick.”

“I’m in the hospital.”

“She said it’s shriveled up and scrawny from all that smack you do.”

“I need you to come help me out with some business.”

“I don’t care about your business,” there was a grunt and the voice was pulled back from the phone. “Oh my god, you’re like a vacuum.” Another shift and the voice was back on the phone. “Christa is really pissed off at you. You need to come call her a skank some more please.”

“Shark, you need to come handle this business, I got money on it. Besides, everybody knows that you puff that rock all day long.”

“Yeah, I’m blasting fifties right now cuz, but it doesn’t make me stop wanting to blast this bitch’s throat.”

Davis snarled and bit his tongue hard. He’d kill Shark when this was over, but with Fatty gone and probably dead by now, there was no one else he could get to do it. “Listen, you want a hundred dollars or not?”

“GOD! Sorry baby…” Shark had started to say but he was interrupted by a female voice a little too close to the receiver, “Its O.K. baby, it went right down,” Shark started laughing and then got back on the phone. “Yeah I want a hundred dollars. Are you at Westing Receiving?”

***

The whole house was dark and empty besides Jasper and the two corpses. The house was still full of noises even as Jasper lay silent and listened in his bed. Laughter echoed from all directions and corners of the house. Squeals from pigs or worse sounded often, and there was the constant steady buzz of insects.

Knocking sounded from different walls or ceilings or floors, completely random in location but always in a series of three. The strength varied as much as the direction, but also in a series of three. Three house shaking booms in the bathroom might be followed by three pinkie taps above the bed.

The bedroom door swung open carrying with it a breeze that reeked of rotting meat. The thing that stood there did not look like Celia. It was her body sure enough, but it was nothing more than that. Jasper could see that the thing had been at work on the fat man.

The creature inside Celia’s body had torn off the man’s flesh, and was wearing it like a makeshift cape of some sort. Keeping it in place by sticking its head through a gash in between the face and the body of the skin. A crown of what could only be intestine was wrapped around her forehead and tied off almost to look like one of those Egyptian snake crowns you see in movies. Both of the Celia thing’s hands were palm up and stretched toward him. He could see in each hand between the thumb and fore finger one of the dead man’s eyes, and he had the horrible feeling that somehow they were looking at him.

“I (we) see (know) you baby (meal) (slave),” the thing grinned at him horribly.

Jasper simply began sobbing and shaking as the thing in his lover’s body took shambling steps toward him. “Kneel (worship) (bow) before (to) me (us),” it said to him. It stopped just before the foot of the bed.

“Celia?” Jasper finally mumbled. For a moment the things eyes cleared, and something that might have once been Celia looked at him, but there was no love in the dead things eyes. “You made a mistake baby,” it said in her voice. Then it reached out and hauled him face to face with it, pulling him close as though it would kiss him before sinking its teeth into the tender flesh around his lips. As the creature’s teeth scraped across his own, taking gouges of flesh away with it, he tried to scream. As his mouth opened the things teeth closed around his tongue and the rush of blood into his throat silenced him as he drowned in its arms.

***

Shark backed away from the window slowly as his body slicked over in a cold sweat.  On his initial approach to the house, he’d thought there was maybe a party going on in there. He’d heard several voices speaking at different pitches of excitement. That idea turned to confusion as he peeked into the window and saw only two silhouettes pressing against each other in the shadowy room. “Must be watching fuck films,” he muttered to himself after a moment.

Then the other noises came through the window, muffled and distant. There were crunching sounds, and something like wet flesh smacking together. The silhouette that looked as if it were wearing some drape like cape let go of the other and it fell to the floor with a hollow thumping sound. The fear that suddenly flooded his system was more powerful than anything he’d felt in his fifteen long years of smoking crack.

The strength and power he normally felt from the drugs, mingled with the fear and his body began to twitch with the urge to run. He bit his own tongue hard, drawing blood in order to stop the scream he didn’t know was about to escape from him.

Stumbling backwards from the window, Shark pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed up Davis. He hadn’t even heard the other end pick up when Davis voice crackled out at him. “You handle that Sharky?”

“Nah Davis, someone already handling this shit for you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m peacing out on this bitch.”

Shark flipped his phone shut ending the conversation. A familiar mechanical clink sounded behind him, and he automatically held his hands in the air.

“You’d better drop the phone too, son,” Thomas said in his watery voice. The shotgun in his hands was shaking a little, but the man facing Jasper’s window couldn’t see that. “I’ve already called the police, so I don’t expect you’ll need it.”

“Listen man,” Shark answered trying to keep the fear from his voice. “I was just leaving.”

“I heard that, what with you needing to make a phone call. I guess you or a friend might come back.”    

“I swear to God,” Shark said, unable to contain the terror he felt as he watched the shadows in the house. “I will never, ever be here again.”

“You got a piece on you kid?”

“I was just about to peace man.”

“Not that stupid. I mean a gun, a pistol.”

“Yeah, I got one.”

“Throw it down on the ground, slowly.”

Shark reached into the waistband of his pants slowly and deliberately, pulling out a chrome pistol and dropping it unceremoniously to the ground.

“How about a wallet?”

“You gonna rob me?”

“Probably should, bet you got filthy drug money in there. No I wouldn’t touch it. Pull out your wallet.”

Shark pulled out his wallet and flipped it open, prepared to pay for the privilege of fleeing the scene.

“I said not your money. I want your identification.”

“What?”

“Throw it down with the gun,” Thomas watched as the man slowly slid his ID out of the wallet and flicked it down with the pistol.

“Now you walk out of here. Don’t turn around and face me, you’re going the other direction. You keep walking that way until you know that I can’t see you anymore. If I see you again, I’m going to shoot you. You should leave town. I’m going to give your ID to the police. When you find a working pay phone, you should call your friend and tell him to run as well.”

“He ain’t my friend, you can have his ass.”

“Thug,” Thomas spat the words out his mouth. “You get the fuck out of here before I just shoot your ass anyway.” He watched the man walk away without ever seeing his face. He’d see it soon enough, along with a name and address. Once he was a few blocks down, he decided that the man was not going to turn around. That was good, the police response time in this neighborhood was slow.

Resting the shotgun in the cradle of his arm he sighed as he strolled toward the house. He knew something was wrong, it was like a hollow cold feeling in his bones. The thug had run off and the danger was over, but he didn’t feel any better.

When his hand knocked against the door it simply swung open with a slow creaking sigh. He couldn’t see anything inside the house but darkness and yet could not shake the feeling of seeing motion in the shadows.

“Celia, is that you in there?” he called out as he tip toed into the house, crinkling his nose at the over powering stench of rot. Sewer back up my ass, he thought to himself, there’s a dead dog in here.

That made sense. He had a no pet policy, and Jasper and his wife must have kept a dog. The intruder shot the dog and Celia was upset. Jasper was keeping him out of the house until he could bury it under cover of darkness.

“I’ll to have to get new carpets in the whole damned place,” he thought out lout to himself.  A shadow started to thump its way toward him, and he turned to it finishing his line of thinking. “This is exactly why I don’t allow dogs Celia,” the last syllable of her name left his mouth in a gasping exhale.

“What the hell’s happened to you?”

The things inside Celia had been busy redecorating their new vehicle. They had ripped out Jasper’s teeth and imbedded them root first into the ridges surrounding her lifeless eyes and a straight line down her nose.

Four white and jointed protrusions jutted along the edges of her face line. Fingers! Jasper thought frantically, Help me Jesus those are fingers.  “Bow (Worship) (Adore) to (us) me,” the thing said to him.

“Not gonna happen,” Thomas muttered simply in his no non-sense voice. Then he tilted the shotgun to his chin and pulled the trigger. 

***

“Listen,” the male nurse was telling Davis for the fifth time. “I’m sorry, but your medi-care is not going to cover you anymore. If you do not have another provider or form of payment, you need to leave.”

“Ya’ll just throwing me out huh?”

“There’s a cab up front that will take you wherever you need to go.”

“What kind of goodies am I getting?”

“ Vicodin. ”

“Don’t you mean Oxycotin?”

“No, now I’m going to roll you up to the cab O.K.?”

“One thing first.”

“What?” the exasperated nurse asked, ready to do anything to get rid of the man.

“Shoot me up a big shot of that morphine.”

“O.K.”

***

Officer Rourke wasn’t sure what to expect as he parked his cruiser outside the old duplex building. This wasn’t the worst neighborhood in town, but he was on his own today. It could be bad for police to be on their own in the neighborhoods of the city. The people there had tendency to band together, and they often distrusted the police.

The call had been a potential breaking and entering. Rourke knew that last week someone had broken into this house and shots had been fired, leading him to believe that there was probably an ongoing dispute over drug territory or product margins.

The house was dark and quiet. Most likely it meant that whatever was going on in there had already happened. He knew though, that it could just as easily mean that someone was in there with a gun trained on the door, waiting for him to come save the day or die trying.

“Dispatch,” he spoke into the walkie strapped on his shoulder. “This is officer Rourke of car twenty-six. I have arrived at the scene, and it’s quite. I’m approaching the house now.”

“Affirmative,” the distant crackling response came. Never truly alone, Rourke thought to himself as he drew his gun and put a hand on the door. “Alright,” Rourke called out loudly. “This is Rourke with the DPD, if you are armed put your weapons on the floor and your hands over your head.”

No one answered him, although he swore he could hear giggling and something else that might have been the words plaything.  “Now,” Rourke continued. “I have received a call for a potential B&E, your door is open, and I am coming in over concern for your safety in accordance with police code. Do not make any sudden movements until I have assessed the scene. I will fire if provoked.”

 He kicked open the door and immediately recognized the stench of death. Yeah, he thought to himself, someone has definitely been murdered here. Been dead awhile too. He squinted his eyes and tried to make out anything at all in the darkness of the house, but couldn’t see anything. The air was cold, too cold for this time of year. He reached to his shoulder and clicked on his flashlight, illuminating a ravaged bloody corpse with grey hair in the middle of the room. He did not get shot, Rourke thought to himself in a rapid and frightened burst of clarity.

“If there is anyone here,” Rourke shouted loudly. “Lay down on the floor and place your hands behind your back,” he turned around rapidly, shining his light in all directions and seeing no one.

“We (I) are (Am) here (present),” several voices seemed to come from as many directions to him.

“Who are you?” Rourke called spinning to find the source of the speakers. “Satan (beelzebub) (Adoni) god,” came the chorus of responses. Fuck, the frightened officer thought to himself, there’s some fucking wack job in here. Could be high on anything. Could be some pyscho satanist trash.

Finally the little beam of light from his shoulder illuminated the Celia thing huddled over the corpse, she hadn’t been there moments before. “Put your hands up!” he shouted training his gun on her. He nearly dropped the gun watching her rise and seeing the teeth and fingers protruding from her face, the sickening headband crowning her forehead and the long flowing cape of flesh dangling from her hunched back.

“Dispatch!” he shouted into the walkie on his right shoulder. “We got like some kind of torture victim here or something.” The Celia thing began to cackle at him, and he barely repressed the urge to empty his clip into it. “It’s… it’s fucking laughing at me.”

 “Officer did you say laughing?”

“Oh Fuck….Oh God help me.”

***

 The taxi pulled up outside the duplex as the shots were going off, and then silence. Davis noted the police cruiser, the open door of the house, the darkness that seemed to thrive with life and movement. “Nah man, this is the wrong place, I told you south west.”

“Bullshit kid,” The cabbie told him, obviously shaken. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull but you get out of my cab. Now.” The cabbie pulled out a gun and showed it to Davis to prove he meant business. “Asshole,” Davis muttered as he scrambled out of the car. The cabbie left in a hurry, squealing the wheels and nearly breaking Davis’ leg again in the effort. Davis looked around assessing the situation.

He was stranded at the scene of the crime. The police were there, shots were fired. He could not hope to walk home. No one would come to get him. Here he was, to see this mess through to the end. There were no other options.

 He breathed a deep sigh and began to slowly limp up the stairs to the house. Some things worse than dying boy. His mother’s words echoed back to him, he didn’t understand why. He paused outside the door with a dread filling his stomach. This was going to be the end of Davis, he was certain of it. Still, somewhere in the back of his mostly burnt out mind he knew, it was as it should be. There was justice here. There were forces at work more powerful then he, and they had come to collect payment for his crimes.

“Fuck it,” he muttered to himself softly, and then limped over the thresh hold.

By Jon Vincent

It was not yet properly dawn, just a meager, swollen yellowish light, and the earth was wet and cold, full of tangled roots, rocks, and worms. The sewer rats had torn your toenails off ages ago as you clawed and scrapped your way through the mud. You had drunk your fill at the banquet hall, had leered at the servants while feasting on baskets of bloody shrimp. Now your body aches, and you feel the hours poisoning your mind. Someone had covered your naked flesh with a quilt sewn of misty roses, misery, and clouds, but you can’t remember who had done it or when. Was it before the chanting, or after?

You just can’t remember, the candles fractured heat had long been spent, and there you lie, a languid image struggling against the dawn.

I had finished with you.

Finished with us.

I was tired of swallowing water every time I breathed you in.

The gravel had left its hateful memory on my face and my chest, but I continued heaving dirt into the hole with my bare hands as lightning split the sky off in the unthinkable distance.

It was nothing like yesterday.

I’d stayed too long, trying to make amends, your corpse stinking and rotting in the heat of the sun surrounded by a field of pastel trifles, your melancholia and your lapses of time and reason set to the baleful librettos of Wagner still fresh in your mind, or rather, what was left of it after the meat cleaver.

You’d lied to me. Tricked me into thinking I was a lady, but my cunt is just as rotted as my liver and my kidneys and my heart. Why do women have to fight to find their place? That was often how the conversation started, just as often as I’d find myself standing naked in front of the mirror, poking and prodding the mental and physical gelatine with all manner of tricky questions and even more complicated and elaborate answers. Supermodel, souvenir, or sex crime? What was I really … To you? The absence was never visible, you see, no matter which way I turned or which dark, musky crevice I exposed to the light.

You liked to pretend you didn’t notice me noticing you noticing how worn out I’d become. You smiled like you liked it when I called myself your wife, your lover, and your friend, but I was nothing more than a used up trollop with a bit of coin, gorging myself on sulky sweet-buttered smiles and secrets. Oh, but I had a secret for you. I’d made the pate myself from the cyanide poisoned rats I’d been collecting in the basement of your house. The house I wasn’t supposed to know you have, on the side, with her.

I took those cooking lessons you suggested: a little garlic, a pound of bacon, some sweet heavy cream, and just a pinch of pepper and sea salt. I’d wrapped it up real fancy, told you it cost a small fortune. You’d brought candles and cheap wine. Kept licking the hairy meat off your lips while telling me it was the best you had ever tasted. You’d often said the same about me when you flayed my flesh three times a week in the dark. Oh yes, lover, you liked the look and feel of contentment — suck my cock, you said, like it was an aperitif — but you didn’t look that way now. The black winged beggars had picked you starving and miserable. I know I shouldn’t have left you there. I thought no one had seen, but they had, and they came for you at dawn and at dusk, a swirling obsidian mass of hunger, hypnotized by your bulging bloodshot eyes.

By Cheryl Anne Gardner

http://apocryphaandabstractions.wordpress.com
http://twistedknickerspublications.wordpress.com

It was shiny, silver plated probably, and hanging upside down. He
stared at the ornate crucifix and gagged at the smell of feces and
vomit. The boy couldn’t have been more than ten. He lay, mauled, on
the bed. His hands were tied behind his head and his parents hadn’t
come to the room in days. The priest had to inch closer just to check
that he was in fact still breathing. Blisters and sores spread over
his tiny starved body, ribs poking through the scabs.
“Joseph?” he inquired at the boy.
“Father Stanley, you shouldn’t drink so early in the morning, you know
how people talk.”
“Sometimes we do what we must to get through the day Joseph.”
“Do the little boys get you through the day Father? Is that why you’re
here looking at my body?”
“You know that’s not what I’m doing Joseph, and I know you’re only
saying these things because of your  . . . condition.”
“What is my condition? I’m bound to this bed and the rats tell me
they’re going to leave me here to starve out the demons.”
“We don’t know what to do with you my son. After Father O’Reilly’s
death we’ve been treating the matter with much greater care.”
“You sick fuck, tying a little boy to bed and watching him wither to
dust isn’t what I’d call ‘great care’, fucking prick.”
“Why did you kill Father O’Reilly Joseph?”
“Why do you eat Sister Blanche’s pussy every Tuesday? That cunt can’t taste good, or is it fresher because she claims she works for God?”
“That’s enough Joseph.”
“You know she fucks the whole clergy, after every one leaves she takes them one by one into the confessional booth . . . your confessional booth . . ”
“I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH JOSEPH!” Father Stanley stood up to the tiny boy, whose black shark eyes raged back at him.
“So touchy Lucas, control yourself! Oh I’ve forgotten, you don’t know control, do you? When you cut the heads off of stray cats you find outside your shit hole apartment, does it feel good, playing with another kind of pussy?”
“Fuck Joseph! How goddamn clichéd do you have to fucking be?” Father Stanley tossed his hands in the air and glared at the little tow headed creature. Probably from Southern Irish descent and a fucking brat at that. He’d been working on this case for going on 2 weeks after Joseph jumped on Father O’Reilly’s back and ran a straight razor over his throat.
“You forget yourself priest!” Joseph screamed back, his voice raising an octave.
“Joseph, what fucking demons do you have inside of you?”
“Baphomet, Verdelet, Nybras, Belial . . ”
“You honestly want me to believe that arch demons of hell are wasting their time with you?”
“Azazel, Malphas, Caym, Samael . . ”
“Please shut up Joseph.”
“Mephistopheles . .”
“JOSEPH! You are really starting to annoy the fuck out of me!”
“GIVE UP PRIEST!” Joseph convulsed on the bed, writhing and wriggling.
“Look you little fuck, Father O’Reilly was a friend of mine, which is the only damn fucking reason I’m here in the first place. You are a rotten little cock sucker and the only thing the last two weeks has shown me is that if any demons possess you they are the most annoying dickheads Satan has ever encountered!”
Father Stanley stood over the boy, who seemed relatively unmoved.
“This is your last chance Joseph.”
“For what foul fiend of God?!”
“To admit you are a fucking demented murderous liar, who killed my
friend because he chastised you at mass.”
“The demons have me now priest! I will admit no such thing!”
“Joseph, if you don’t fucking admit this to me right fucking now I will be forced to kill you.” Joseph’s face finally faltered as he seemed to be reasoning things out.
“YOU LIE PRIEST! YOU CANNOT KILL THE EVIL TRIAGE OF MY POWE—” Father Stanley stuck the silver knife deep into the child’s belly, turning it several times before he was satisfied.
“Well Joseph, I warned you.” Father Stanley collected his bags and headed down the stairs of the townhouse. Joseph’s idiot mother rushed to him, she had sworn this was a possession the moment Joseph started taking the lords name in vain and shouting about demons. She was a dumb hysterical woman with frizzy red hair, her husband might actually be a retard, Father Stanley didn’t know. Either way they were overly zealous Catholics and having a genuinely possessed son seemed the only thing that really got them wet and hard.
“Father!” Joseph’s mother exclaimed breathlessly at him. “I heard a commotion in the room! Is . . is Joseph. . . has Joseph had his exorcism? Is he our boy again?”
“No Mrs. Farley, I’m afraid your son has succumbed to the evils of hell fire and his soul will burn for all eternity. He is dead, threw himself at me in a demonic frenzy, in a moment of confusion I stabbed him with my sacred blade. I am very sorry I hope you understand.”
She stared at Father Stanley like a mentally deficient cow, her bovine jaw twitching slightly. “Dead?”
“Yes, you know demons, very relentless creatures. You do understand that because Joseph is a hell spawn we will not be able to bury him in consecrated ground, of course.”
“I . . .yes that seems about right. Will the paper do any article on it or something? A memorial?”
“I’m sure there’s a network or a magazine that would be more than excited to cover the happenings, maybe you’ll even get a made for TV movie out of it.”
“You think?”
“Who can say. Again I’m sorry for your loss, have a pleasant afternoon, please don’t ever call me again,” and with that Father Stanley walked out of the Farleys’ lives forever.

By Emily Smith-Miller

She was cold to the touch. I sat next to her at the bar and when I touched her arm to make a point about something she felt like a corpse. Her skin didn’t give when I lightly poked one of my stitched-up fingers on it. I looked at her, then, looked into her eyes as she looked into mine. She wasn’t dead, obviously. Her eyes were wide open and moving in their sockets, she was looking at me, I could see she was thinking something, but what I couldn’t tell. We ordered another round and she talked more. I listened. Her voice was becoming raspy from the alcohol.

I want out of here, she said, as if something had frightened her. I wondered if it was me. I know I can come off as scary to most but something in her eyes, her voice said otherwise. Besides, we had been at the bar for nearly three hours together. If I was scary at all I’m sure she would have left right off.

Your place, she said. I liked that about her, her assertiveness. I paid the tab and we left.

When she got in my car she smiled.

I like long black cars, she said. Are you a good driver?

I nodded then sped off. She smiled again. I noticed her in my side vision, which was better than most, but then again I’m not like most. Not at all.

It didn’t take long to get home. We got inside and she stood in the middle of the room. She looked like a queen ready for her coronation. Her hair was black but what I liked best was the white section in the middle of it. I stepped toward her, my large shoes plodding on the hardwood, then stopped a foot away. She looked up at me, all seven feet of me, and gave me a gaze with those eyes again, then reached up and touched my neck. Her skin still so cold as she fondled one of my bolts.

Like that? she spoke, her voice back to something less raspy. I nodded and lifted her from the floor. My grunts seemed to excite her.

What a man, she said, then gasped.

She knew it was the worst thing she could ever tell me.

By Jeff Callico

I was travelling on a train through Sweden, but the mountains flashing past me through the window reminded me of the Carpathians. Draculated and moody, the mist collecting at the tops of the trees where the shadows hung unseen in the dawn. I’d had some brandy and some meat pie. Liver and prunes heated with a bit of pate brisee. I felt I should be writing in my journal but my fingers felt like sticks of meat. Mutton. Rotted and gangrened mutton. I’d lost my passport somewhere in Munich, and had to hitch a ride with Bjorn, the delirious dentist who liked scraping his toenails with a dental pick and drilling holes in his own teeth for fun. We were quite the pair. He the society derelict inhaling a bit of rustic pleasure, and me, a bashful yet aggressive forbidden thing who’d forgotten herself somewhere during the last full moon. I was one of The Rapture’s leftovers, strutting my slayer shit like it was a courtesy not a curse.

I was a Van Helsing, so I said was my destiny, though I wasn’t sure whether knowing that was an inspiration, a victory, or just a stalemate between what I needed and what I desired. I’d been hunting for a while, and I took the dating rules seriously. I wasn’t just a heckler in a crowd of pork rinds, pop-corn blondes, and sperm donors. I was in it for real, but I needed bone marrow with deep roots, no Bella Lugosi knockoffs for me. That’s why I was running, chasing shadows around the world and back again with Dr. Dementia over there.

The last one was a disaster …

We’d met at one those meat packing warehouse raves. He was glowing in the strobe lights. Pale, handsome, his nails — painted black — shimmered like flickering stars. He pressed me up against the wall in the alley. He felt heavy and cold, colder than the wall, and he was eerily brazen, so I told him to shove it.

“I wanna Suck it and Fuck it,” he said when I kissed the frigid skin of his neck.

“Do what you will,” I told him. “I can’t stand you, and I don’t fucking care.”

He said he liked the wild ones and that I had “spirit.” Said I looked like I was worth a taste. Then he said he was a thousand years old as if it made any difference to me. It didn’t. I pulled out the three-foot stainless steel and African Mahogany stake I had hidden in my trench coat, and he just said, “Kinky, but what am I supposed to do with that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Fuck it, Suck it. Do what I tell you to do with it. You are my darkness. I love you, and I can’t deny you, but I won’t ever fucking say so.”

He fondled my tits. Pinched my nipples through my bra. Then forced his hand down my panties and grabbed my cunt. He said he wanted to Suck it and Fuck it again, whispered it, with hot spit on his lips, and I told him, “Do what everyone else expects you to do. I feel indifferent, and you care too damn much about your image to think for your fucking self.”

He backed up, threw his hands in the air, and then called me a tease and a bitch and a whore to which I replied quickly and without words. Thwump! A swift kick to his chest. A gurgling exhale, and the sound of a hammer against steel, echoing off the wet brick walls, left the moon with little recompense.

The boy looked surprised, his black eyeliner running down his face. He just kept saying, “Fuck fucking fuck,” while grabbing and tearing at his oozing chest.

“Nosferatu,” I screamed. “Fucking piece of maggot riddled shit.” That’s what he was, with a bad suit and a gold card, no less. I’m never wrong about these things. I bent over and smiled at him. “It’s wet, and dark, and cold, and you know it. Just like all the fucking promises you whispered to me when we met.”

It’s hollow, he replied. I’m hollow.

“And you are a miserable excuse of a monster.”

There isn’t enough of me
To fill the empty space
I thought I had left
For you.

After that, every time I saw a full moon, I would think of that night long ago. I would think of Milan in the spring and all the blood splatter everywhere.

Until now.

Now the dentist drills their teeth out for me so I can wear them around my neck. He’s not bad company, really, and he makes damn sure I never fall in love again.

By Cheryl Anne Gardner

http://apocryphaandabstractions.wordpress.com
http://twistedknickerspublications.wordpress.com

I’m not your average girl
 
I don’t get turned on by clothes,
baby showers
weddings or nail polish
 
I prefer the darker side
I like dead things
ugliness, monsters and gore
sex offenders
serial killers
chalk outlines of human form
the sick
the twisted;
bring it on
it stokes my coals
and lights my pipe
 
cemeteries
autopsies
masochism and knives
really get my motor running;
make me feel fucking alive
 
if beauty is only skin deep
then underneath
is where the darkness creeps
 
nice, pretty things are superficial
and never last…
I’m the type to flip over the shiniest coin
in search of grime on the other half
 
I like to piss on people’s parades
spike the lemonade
turn blue skies to gray
 
I’m not the nice, friendly girl-next-door
I don’t pick flowers
go to church
or watch sunsets—
I like fast and furious fucking
slaps, bites and death threats
choke me
knife me
kill me, better yet
 
imperfections and scars
aborted fetus in a jar,
these are just a few of my favorite things
 
so don’t offer me roses,
promise me the moon and the stars
or ply me with diamond rings–
only the ugly, dead,
and downright disgusting
can  truly make
my blood sing

By Cynthia Ruth Lewis