This was a woman who abhorred waste and adored waists.  Her crisp white working smock was cinched in under her ribs as if she were scared a morsel of salad would dare descend to her colon, the snakeskin belt acting as tourniquet on her digestive tract.  As a successful specialist in her field, she could have made a killing in the growth industry of obesity; but no, the wrinkles that furrowed her nose like a pitbull raising its hackles gave away her distaste all too clearly to the fuller figured people pausing at her clinic’s door.

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” was her personal motto [despite her training].  Nobody dared ask her if her bedfellows agreed, and I certainly wouldn’t, but looking at her ugly collar bone and antlers of pelvis I somehow doubted it.

All white – tiles, sinks, walls and wipe-clean chairs – the place had an aura of cleanliness and sterility that was at odds with her professional name.  And her teeth.  Her business card said ‘Janetta Vermilion: beauty therapist / eating disorder clinician’; her driving licence read ‘Ethel Hughes’.  The duality didn’t end there.

Front of clinic was the Treatments Area, for the rich old women who allowed the mirror to be their master, and the bored mistresses who often shared more than the services of Janetta Vermilion with the woman waiting for her moustache to pale or botox to take effect next to her.  ‘All natural ingredients – prepared on site!’ and ‘secret recipe – unique to Janetta’ were the proud boasts of the menu on the wall, as well as price lists to make your eyes water.  Whatever she used, and despite the faintly familiar smell troubling the odd nostril through the peppery odour of pink and white lilies beautifying the place, it worked.

At the back of the premises, in what used to be the kitchen and dining room of the two-up/two-down, was a large room of palest peach and a series of cubicles along the furthest wall.  Sofas and throw cushions made it almost comfortable, but the closest cubicles, with their clear glass doors, were off-putting to say the least.  What looked like fancy toilets sat there, waiting, all too visible to my curious eyes.

As an investigative journalist, I had to tread carefully or face being flung out the door.  Or worse – there’s a lot of folks not been told it’s wrong to hit girls, not told till I ‘educated’ them, anyway.  I might be small, but I’m shit hot at street fighting.  A whole bunch of dickheads have the scars to prove it.

“I advise my clients to change their habits one step at a time.”

Uh huh.

“Instead of binging at home or in the car or wherever you’ve designated your ‘safe place’, you come here.  Eat what you want; I’m not going to judge you.  Say what you want, you’re with people who care.  And if it’s coming back up, if you’re driven to purge…” she spread her arm to indicate the curious cubicles, and I noticed her hands were the smoothest of anyone I’d ever seen.  “…you do so here.”

I think I blinked.

“Most of my clients start with the more discreet ones at the far end.  But as you progress in your journey to recovery, you’ll find it easier to be open and accepting of who you are and what you’re doing to yourself.”

I think I nodded.

“When you feel ready, you’ll move to the cubicles nearer the group.  Then eventually, the closest ones.”

I figured I’d better practise gagging to order since there was clearly going to be no faking it here.  She smiled and her teeth were greyer than I expected, as if ghosts of their former use.

“I find most of my clients accept themselves and others more readily after a few days of treatment.”

Well, we’d see about that.

A few hours later I was biting my nails and wondering what I’d got myself and my poor teeth into.  I waited about outside till a scrawny girl with bad breath and dull hair wandered near.  Like me she was clutching a goody bag of bingeing treats, and I offered her a carefully nervous smile as we walked in.  The white chairs and front room were empty; beauty appointments were mornings only, the rest of the day devoted to ‘my girls’, as she called us.

We got ourselves comfy on the sofas as more clients joined us, and Janetta – or Ethel, as my boss called her in the newsroom – sauntered in.  We all smiled, and stopped rustling through our carrier bags of sweets, crisps, bread and biscuits.

“Hallo, my dears.  Every day, in every way, you grow more beautiful to me.  Every day, in every way, you are getting better.  Love yourselves for who and what you are.  Allow your bodies to serve you.  Be kind to yourselves.  And soon you, too, will be safe, happy, and healthy once again.”

I waited for more, but that seemed to be it.  Speech over, she smiled with those great grey teeth and lowered herself onto an enormous peach cushion on the floor.  And so it began.

All around me were wet sounds of gulping, gnawing, chomping need.  I have a very sweet tooth, twenty six of them, so I’d skipped my usual early breakfast of toast and honey knowing that here and now I’d need to feed.  Six chocolate bars.  A jar of Marshmallow Fluff.  And a packet of pink chewy sweets, to mark the beginning of food, and the end of purging.  I’d read a lot about bulimia to prepare me for this role, and I could see from glancing round the room that I’d chosen well.

A couple of the women were clearly used to this, this place, this ordeal.  They were first to leave us, first to purge in the clear glass cubicles that reminded me of Snow White’s location before her Prince’s kiss.  They barely made a sound, but I gathered bulimics, long term ones, rarely do.  One by one, the women joined them in bending penitently to retch their self-loathing to the porcelain toilets.  The place stank of sweet sick.  Janetta / Ethel had explained to me she only turned on the extractor fans when she was alone at the end; it was important for us to confront the realities of what we were doing to ourselves and those around us.  Or so she said.  When I looked at her now I could have sworn she was sniffing the air as appreciatively as I do when mooching past perfume counters in the department store in town.

I was last to go in.  The others sat about, weary, smelly, and hoarse of voice, murmuring encouragement to each other about ‘going for glass’ next time.  I chose the one at the end.  Closing the door, I breathed in the acidic fumes and thought of dogshit sandwiches, licking snails, sucking off my boss, and other revolting things.  I hate Marshmallow Fluff.  Doubling over at the waist, fingers down my throat, I felt the tide turn deep in my gut.  Up it came, all of it, I didn’t stop till there was a tell-tale layer of pink to show I was empty.

Relieved, I went to press the flush button – then realised there wasn’t one.  No handle, no button, no dangling chain.  Just a toilet which I now realised was actually somewhat different to any I’d seen before.  I could hear the others chatting huskily through the door, and very quickly stuck the tiny camera my boss had given me in a crack where the cubicle met the wall.  With the door open it would get a good view of the treatment room.  I’d just need to remember to use the next one along if I had to come back for ‘treatment’ again tomorrow.  No point sharing that with my colleagues, even with the danger money I was getting for this assignment.

The toilet had what appeared to be a seat, but when I tried to lift it, I realised it was fixed to the pedestal beneath.  Checking it, I found a small hole towards the back which I could only assume was for a key.  The kind of key cleaners use to unlock toilet tissue dispensers and things like that.  But why would a toilet be locked?  And unflushable?  I could only hope that the camera worked and I’d get the answers later in the office.  What it could have to do with the curious arrangements and practices of Janetta Vermilion I had no idea, but I was damn sure I was going to find out.

Curiosity killed the cat.

The dog dug it up and brought it back, whispered a voice in my head.

Lack of food didn’t agree with me.  I left the cubicle door wide open, and sprawled with the rest of the group till people started checking their watches and murmuring about school runs, then made for the office.

“See you tomorrow, dear,” I tried not to stare at her teeth, nodding.  I’d see her a hell of a lot sooner than that.

Back at work, I wandered into a newsroom that smelled like the salon I’d just left.  A couple of the guys were on the phone, but my boss was nowhere to be seen.  I could hear him, though, hunting for Hugh and Ralph in a bin behind some poor sod’s desk.

“What’s up, boss?”

Part of me was pleased about the situation, hoping if he knew what I was going through he’d maybe add a zero to the expenses sheet at the end of the investigation.  All right, it was all of me.  He’d fondled my arse several times too often, and the dickhead could barely even remember my name.

A hand wafted at me from behind the desk.  I took this as a sign to approach.  The monitor was on, and I could see it was receiving the feed from the cubicle at Janetta’s.  The cubicle door was still open, and so was the one between the front and back rooms.  My stomach lurched and I was kind of glad there was nothing in it. 

Now we knew what the secret ingredient was, anyway.

Janetta / Ethel / whatever her name was, was sitting on the floor of the peach room where I’d sat and fed my face not long before.  All the scatter cushions were piled on the sofas, and around her sat white bucket-shaped containers with weirdly flattened rims.  As she picked them up, one at a time, to empty them into a large metal soup pot – the kind my grandma uses for her Christmas soup – I realised they were the toilets we’d vomited into before, now free of their pedestals.  One of them was particularly heavy, apparently, and required both hands to lift, tilt and pour.  What?  What was that?  For some reason, she had a large sieve over the soup pot, I realised this when she lifted it and gave it a small shake, as I do when I’m straining spaghetti.  Someone hadn’t chewed their food a hundred times, that was for sure.  As the flow of fluid slowed to a dribble, she turned at her wasp-like waist and emptied its contents into another large metal pot at her side.  Tap tap, all out.

Then she did something I hope a stroke or Alzheimer’s will help me forget.  I’m not kidding.  Now I knew why my boss was meeting his lunch again so soon.

She dipped her hand into the white porcelain puke potty, the one she’d just emptied, and wiped her hand round like she was oiling a cake tin or something.  Then she drew it out and as I marvelled again at how youthful her hands looked, even glistening with sick, she sucked and licked the vomit off her fingers as if it were the finest champagne then worked her way round the rest of her hand.  I’ve seen cats clean themselves in such a way, I’ve even watched them lick their dirty arses, but the way she took such sensuous pleasure, such delight, in enjoying a stranger’s stomach contents really weirded me out.  Part of me wondered if it would still be warm, and that just made it worse.

I might have been okay, I might not have retched bile on the newsroom carpet and my boss’s expensive shoes, if I hadn’t watched the rest.  If I hadn’t seen her decant the stomach juices into her beauty bottles for acid peels the following day.  If I hadn’t witnessed her plunge her hands into the mush of masticated crisps and Mars bars, squishing and squashing, mashing handfuls of it against her face, preparing it for the still empty tubs of Face Masque ready at her feet.  Licking her lips as a gobbet dripped off her nose, catching it with her tongue, and chewing with those great grey teeth.

One of the guys, now off the phone, came round to see what the fuss was about.  Peering at the screen, glasses smudged as per usual, he said:

“Isn’t that the bird your Sandra goes to for her facials?”

It made me feel a bit bad, barfing on the poor guy’s feet.

By Gill Hoffs

Her mouth splits and demon teeth excrete,
She was so pretty,
That’s why no one believes me,
No one believes me . . .
But there she is at my door again,
Laughing to be let in,
Laughing because she can.
Will I make it through the night?
Devil in my hallway,
Her smile cracks and she is so Beautiful.
But she is evil.
Trying to swallow my soul.
Rip me to pieces tonight.
That’s what her eyes are saying,
That’s what she’s implying,
With every flick of hair,
And they’re all in love
Falling over themselves to smell her sin,
Her manically perfumed skin.
Did I ever think I’d have a demon in the next room?
A fallen angel working for Satan?
Slamming doors with her mind,
She’s shaking pictures off my wall,
Breaking glasses on the floor.
My mirrors are all shattered,
And the lights are starting to dim.
Upright, fist tight, holding kitchen knife for dear life.
Never thought I’d wish so hard for some holy water,
Or a fucking crucifix.
Her forked tongue fixes over cracked lips.
Time to break the window,
Demon bitch from hell,
You’ll never take me alive.

By Emily Smith-Miller

“Come on, boy, out with you!” The old man clapped his hands and stomped his feet with growing impatience. “We taint got all night, ya know!”

“But I was just starting to have fun, Grandpa!” complained young Bobby as he withdrew his sopping blonde head from the Desmond family commode.

“Well, I reckon there’s plenty a’ time fer that later,” the old man replied, throwing the boy a towel.  “After we poison that little cutie from your bible studies class!” The old man laughed and winked a mischievous eye at his grandson. “One a’ my better ideas, I reckon, signin’ you up at that dimwitted school.”

The boy rubbed the towel over his face and head, his mind wandering back to the previous night. Blue memories stirred his senses and his loins. Memories of his mother and the family dog engaged in some moist and noisome activity. He had stumbled upon them quite innocently, drawn to his mother’s bedroom by sounds of breathy grunting and slurping which were just audible above the frenzied squeaking of well worn bed springs. 

That unexpected coupling – viewed discreetly through a faintly cracked door – had been quite a sight, the sharp images of which incited a growing desire within the young voyeur.

“Stop daydreamin’!” scolded the old man. “We gotta’ prepare supper now, and I gotta’ make sure we got plenty a’ Rat-Away for the roast!”

“Yes, Grandpa.”

The boy was obedient but distracted as they abandoned the bathroom for the kitchen, his head filled with thoughts of his mother.

***

“. . . So,” said the little girl, sailing ever further down a swirling stream of words which she had begun navigating some minutes earlier, “I was really excited when Bobby invited me to dinner.”

She swallowed a piece of roast, succulent and toxic, and grandpa chuckled behind his hand.

“Yes,” offered Bobby, dipping a disinterested toe into the shallow waters of conversation, “I thought you would be.” He had no interest whatsoever in this girl. It was grandpa who liked them young; Grandpa who was always scheming and plotting, using Bobby’s blonde haired and perky good looks to lure unsuspecting waifs to the dinner table.

In the past, Bobby had sustained a marginal interest in his grandfather’s devious plans and the resulting goings on. But that interest had been completely eradicated by the incestuous lust so recently kindled within him. He would, he decided, have his mother tonight.

“Yahoo!” exclaimed Grandpa.

 Bobby blinked and looked up from his dinner plate (conspicuously free of roast beef) to see their little guest’s pretty face turning a curious shade of blue, her tongue protruding from her mouth as the Rat-Away claimed her. She stared at the two of them for a few frantic moments and then fell forward into her plate, splattering bloody juice and lumps of brown gravy across the table.

“That was a good one, weren’t it boy!?” Grandpa could barely contain his excitement.

“Yes.” Bobby agreed, rising from his seat and making quickly for his room. “I’ll see you later, Grandpa.”

The old man’s only response was an inaudible mumble as he leaned over the table and sank his dentures into the tender throat of their late guest.

***

Bobby peered up at the clock from the darkness beneath his bed – the luminous digital display indicated that it was now 8:30. He realized with some surprise that he had been lying there amid the dusty shadows beneath his box spring for nearly two hours! My goodness, he thought, how time flies when you’re having fun! But enough was enough. Mother was probably getting herself ready for a night on the town at this very moment, no doubt sharpening her knives while he dawdled.

Spurred to action by the thought of his mother’s imminent departure, Bobby rolled out from beneath his bed. He stretched young muscles and whistled a happy tune, anticipating the conquest to come. Things might go easier, he thought, if he disrobed in advance. So, with anxious hands he dropped shirt, pants and underwear to the floor until he was naught but naked flesh and goose bumps in the cool air of his room. He touched himself lightly and hoped that mother would not offer too much resistance.

Another look at the clock told him that he’d better hurry, for it was nearly 9:00 and his mother would be getting dressed soon. He strolled across the brisk space of his room and opened the door. Alice, the family’s husky German Shepherd, stood drooling in the hall. Bobby patted the dog’s head and whispered conspiratorially.

 “You had your turn,” he said. “Now it’s time for mine.”

The big dog flopped over and rolled about on the floor, craving attention. Bobby, however, was far too excited to indulge in any of their usual games. Mother’s room was just down the corridor. . .

***

Bobby entered his mother’s room with a certain swaggering bravado, yanking the door open and strutting in with all the melodramatic flare of a gunfighter blowing into some notorious saloon. His mother, standing partially clothed before a full length mirror, jumped at his unexpected arrival and smeared the lipstick she had been applying across her cheek. In her black panties and bra, pink garters on her thighs, she had the appearance of a sleazy but not unattractive whore; and Bobby, who had experienced a nervous loss of determination after his impressive entrance, felt his courage and excitement grow at the sight of her.

“M. . . M. . . Mother. . .” he stammered, “I saw what you were doing with Alice last night. . .” His eyes crawled over her as he spoke, her length of shining blonde hair and the garters on her thighs inflaming him. “I’ve been thinking about you all day and I’ve come to get what I deserve.”

She gazed at him wistfully and dropped her lipstick to the floor.

“After all,” continued Bobby, “I am your only son.”

“My only living son,” she corrected. She rolled a glistening tongue over moist and partially painted lips. Bobby thought that the lipstick smeared crimson across her face looked like war paint. “But since you are so cute, I won’t hold that against you. In fact, since you are so cute. . .” Her voice faded into a breathy sigh as she slid the lacy black of her panties down to her ankles. “I think I can give you something better than the dog got.” She stepped out of her panties, now a black shadow on the floor. “Would you like that, Bobby?”

Bobby nodded his head in vigorous confirmation, his swollen adolescent flesh a testament to his desire. “Yes mother,” he said.

She un-strapped her bra and tossed it toward him, naked now except for the pink garters around her thighs. “Please, Bobby,” she whispered, “call me Rita. No need to be so formal.”  She sauntered over to the unmade bed, all long legs and swaying hips. “Now come over here and make me forget all about that drooling canine.”

Feeling as if he might explode at any moment, Bobby hurried across the room. He clambered on to the bed, smiling at the familiar sound of bed springs squeaking beneath his weight; and there between the gartered thighs of the woman who bore him, he became a man.

By Richard Cody

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ricksha777

“You have a mass.”
If you’re not a priest, those are NOT words you’re ever wanting to hear.
“What?”
The doctor cleared his throat.
“You have a mass, in the left side of your scrotum. We don’t think it’s cancer, it’s not like it on the screen, but we need to go in and take a look. I think that’s best, don’t you?”
No. “Sure, whatever you need.”
“First I’d like to examine you again. Up on there, please, shorts down.”
I lay back, hating him, hating her, hating here. Scared shitless and hoping amongst all of this that I wouldn’t drop a fear bomb while he was down there. My girlfriend, Lizzie, had been sucking me off in the shower, tickling my balls just so, just the way I like, when she stopped. Slurped off and left me hanging, staring at my crotch as water dripped and her fingers stopped tickling and started exploring. Pinching and squeezing. S and M’s never been my thing. But she’d found a lump, and she was scared, especially since she’d just had her mouth down there, and God knows I’m not a virgin, nor particularly careful. I guess it’s only right I gave in to her demands and got myself and my errant ball checked out.
She isn’t here. She’s got work. And maybe she understands, in that witchy way of hers, that I can cope better by myself. That I don’t want her here, stirring post-shower boners, triggering horrible blood spattered memories of the time she nicked the end of her nipple when I slapped her arse just as she was moving the razor to her pits for a shave. The end healed white. I don’t suck that side now. Fair’s fair, she’s not sucked me since our little shower adventure, either.
I concentrated on the gore, not her hot, soft, wet, vacuum cleaner lips, and felt the physician’s hands palpate and move my sac, and his coffee breath as he bent so close to my thighs I could count the dandruff flakes on the crown of his head. Don’t fart. Don’t fart.
“There may be an ingrowing hair here – that wouldn’t cause this size of mass, but there’s a small possibility it led to pores becoming blocked, a sebaceous cyst forming, something of that kind. I’d like to try and clear it, if that’s okay?”
It was unsettling, seeing his pale blue eyes peering up at me from between my thighs. I thought of flesh-eating zombies and guys I’d ‘known’ at college, and grunted my reply.
“I’ll spray a little local anaesthetic on it, take away the sting.” It was cool, and I felt my penis shrivel away from it. I’d have liked to have done a runner, too. “Give it a second to take effect. Then I’ll try some gentle squeezing, and if that doesn’t release the hair, a little scrape and some tweezers should do it.”
A few minutes later, him humming Crowded House tunes as he washed his hands, me wondering if Lizzie would ever go down on me again, he re-appeared between my legs and smiled. He had lots of teeth. Lots of them, more than he was meant to, I think.
Down he went. The pinching didn’t work, so he tried the tweezers. They worked, boy did they work. He pulled, and pulled, and stepped away, and pulled. Still it kept coming. Lizzie was always complaining that I had a lot of hair ‘down there’, generally when she found herself gagging after a blow job, but hey, what’s a guy to do – trim it? Don’t think so. I’m not taking sharp stuff anywhere near there.
He measured it, checked online later, wrote me to let me know it was THE longest pube ever discovered. He said my left ‘testicle’ visibly deflated before his eyes. Apparently, I only ever had the one – the hair grew in and filled the space. I picture it coiling up like a sleeping snake, or a thousand rats’ tails, in the dark warmth of my scrotum. My phantom bollock.
At least it wasn’t cancer.
At least I get my blow jobs back.
And we’ll never have to buy dental floss ever EVER again.

By Gill Hoffs

‘If I put a knife

against your throat

would you fear

and run away

or would you stay and play?’

‘If I stuck the knife

into your throat

and gave it a gentle turn

would you cry out in pain

or moan in ecstasy?’

‘If I laid you on a bed

and slid a knife

just over your thighs

then up between your legs,

would you think me insane?’

‘And if I slid that knife deeper

into your sopping snatch

and cut out your womb

then glued it on my tombless cock,

would you worship me?’

I’ve watched you for days

spent nights writing you

beautiful things in thought, in poem,

and lastly,

drawing you pictures of you

just like that

with that knife so razor sharp

just the thought

of severing your flesh,

just the thought

of stealing your last breath

just the thought

of coming in your wounds

‘ooh’. . .like I said, it’s just a thought.

By Devlin De La Chapa

http://boyslut.wordpress.com

I ran. What do you do when you see that? You run right? You pick up your fucking feet and jet, no time to play hero when you see that. Fuck, I’m a coward, I could’ve helped. No it was over before it began, so I worked every muscle in my legs and pumped my way to the club district. Hoodie soaked by the light  drizzle,  jeans feeling tighter with the damp seeping though and my shivering skin ignited by the midnight dash.

“We’re going out tonight!” I called up at my mother’s bedroom, she would be somewhere between Ambien and sleep anyway. Krystal grabbed my hand and smiled, “This is gonna be fun, promise.” We sauntered out of the house with a devil-may-give-a-fuck walk, giggling at the world around us because we were ready to tease our way into several free drinks and dance like possessed cabaret stars.

The club was new, it was on the outskirts of our usual dives, which made it more enthralling. There was a danger to its very existence, and we thrived on that. Who could do the most fucked up thing, that was how Krystal and I had always played. Hang from the train bridge, like the Lost Boys had, stand at a railroad crossing backwards until the beast’s hot breath was on the back of your neck and hope you didn’t wait a second too long to get out of the way. A lot of our misadventures had to do with the train tracks, I was scared of them and Krystal knew it, that’s why she always dared me to them. She was fearless and she liked us to face things as if we had brass balls and a golden dick wedged somewhere between our slender thighs. Men, she would scoff, always think they’ve got the most machismo. Nothing beat us, we were the town’s resident bad asses. From spending nights in graveyards, to playing chicken with my mom’s Acura, fuck off you’re making us laugh. So we sprinted in the falling mist to our new spot.

Club Dead is what it had been lovingly named around town, because of all the violent crimes that took place in the neighborhood. The building itself also had a reputation for giving paranormal investigators a hard-on. Apparently a shitload of people died there, but our little town did love to cover things up, so we wouldn’t know anything about that. It was said to have been the old asylum, for the record I’ve never seen an asylum in our town so this could all be bullshit, and apparently some orderly went all Andrew Kehoe and decided that there was a fire sale and everything must go! They say he poisoned the administrator with cyanide and the shot the guards in the head, then he went to town on the staff and patients. When the cops finally arrived on site, the orderly, supposedly a man named Douglas Fennick, had tortured and killed the entire 187 people who were trapped in the building. I’m talking blood on the walls, people tied up by their intestines, women shot to Swiss cheese, patients hooked to the electroshock therapy at high voltage, execution style shootings in the shower room, pieces of everyone everywhere. The fucker was creative. This is a story found only by people like Krystal and me, everyone else goes on believing that it was a warehouse for a corrupt antique dealer who left it vacant once the cops booked him. Until three weeks ago the place was surrounded by razor wire and an electric fence. Yeah, I’m sure it was a warehouse.

Club Dead loomed in front of us, just as nightmarish as we had expected it would be. While walking towards the flat black entrance, Krystal lost her footing and hit the sparse grass and rock lawn surrounding the building. “Mother fuck!” she shouted and leaned over to tend her battered knee. “Smooth moves, bitch, you’re gonna wow em on the floor!” “Hey shut the fuck up I tripped on something.” “Yeah those stripper heels.” She began checking the area where she’d lost her balance and pulled up a half buried defibrillator paddle. “What the fuck?” “I guess this place really was a hospital,” she grinned widely at me. “Whatever, some crackhead could’ve brought that or something, bad joke.” “Now you shut up! Where the hell is a crackhead gonna get an 70-year-old defib paddle?” Good fucking question, the thing was ancient, but unmistakable. “Fuck it!” I threw my hands in the air and started toward the door.

The place looked deserted at first glance, a thin layer of smoke hung in the air and seemed heavier along the floor. The walls seemed to be black, there was almost no light, except at faint pink glow further out in the distance. “Great plan, Krystal, a smog machine and one fucking club light.” The music was gothic hard metal, not even our scene. “Let’s get out of here we’re like the only people anyway.” “Shut the fuck up this is great.” Krystal plunged further into the darkness towards the reverb and slight illumination. I followed weakly into the belly of the cryptic building. The farther inward I moved the more people I began to notice. Almost smoke-like themselves, they were mounting each other and grinding slowly in the deep drop beat. Naked women with black hair and dark smudges on their bodies moved through the fog with thick cocktails. Men reached for them and began spreading their legs on the dance floor, reaching inside of them, smearing more darkness on their bodies. Krystal was gone and I was in the center of something otherworldly. A tall form approached me and began stripping my clothes off in a sardonic manner, I said nothing as he undid my jeans and peeled off my shirt, unhooked my bra and let my breasts fall freely. His mouth came in close but the face was not there, I could see no features just the idea of a face existing before me. Moving his mouth to my bare chest I felt the first awakening moment, needles attempting to penetrate me, a whole mouth of points biting into me. I shoved him off with my boot and ran.

Outside in the rain I screamed for Krystal but I knew she was still in there, in that twisted blasphemous reality, their den, whatever the fuck it was. I put my shirt on and pushed through the door of the club screaming in agony for Krystal. They looked at me silently and kept their rhythm. I pushed past them, fighting my way through what seemed like hundreds of faceless monsters, moving all the way to the back of the club where I escaped the massive terror that was attempting to overtake me. Then there she was, naked and blood soaked with something not quite human with its snout in her belly, rooting through her insides, my Krystal’s insides. I ran.

The downtown clubs still had some stragglers outside the bars, but it was a weeknight and they were closing shop early. I tried to approach several couples but my hysterical ramblings left me sounding like a drunk college student and they shooed me away to sleep it off. No police anywhere in sight and I was beginning to feel frantic, panic striking me in my gut like a fist. That’s when I heard it, the grunting breath. The guttural groan from what had been submerged in my friend’s vital organs moments ago, demon creature of indescribable horror. It had followed me. I barely had time to push myself through a back alley before its long clawed fingers reached out to snare my arm. At first I had judged it as human-like, but upon closer approach it was evident that this was nothing but a vile consort of hell. I didn’t believe in hell, but I believed in the disfigured fiend salivating at my heels. I turned off the side street from one of the clubs and darted into an alley, but the thing was fast. It dashed after me and I had to keep pace. I felt fatigue aching through my bones. I felt that I’d been running for ages, and I couldn’t stop. That’s when I spotted it, like an old friend, like Krystal guiding me to my last dare, the train tracks staring at me in the distance.

My watch read 1:07; there would be a 1:15 passing those tracks any minute. I’d long ago memorized the train schedule, to make my dares more bearable. I always knew when they’d approach and there was something comforting in the knowledge. I made it to the bridge in less than two minutes. This was the last test — give it a go or surrender to death at the ends of the needle teeth I’d had pressed into my skin earlier. It approached me in a playful way, stalking me down, grinning with its grotesque jaws, leering, knowing I was trapped on the tracks, on a bridge over a river and a drop that would kill me. But I stood where I needed to stand. I knew where I needed to stand. Checked my watch: 1:15.  Fuck, where was it? The thing was on top of me, face nearly pressed into mine as it opened and closed its foul mouth, sniffing me. “You almost escaped,” it said with a voice that sounded not like a human voice but like an animal that somehow made its vocal chords work to form words. Then I felt the shaking, the bridge platform moving, and the train speeding across, eating up the tracks, closing the distance between us and it. “Fuck you,” I spat, and then I dropped, right as I felt the engine on my back, just in time to miss the hit. I clung to the underside of the bridge with all my muscles screaming. I heard the train collide with it, and saw oozing blood start running down the girders.

After the train passed I loosened my death grip on the girder and hoisted myself back up to the platform. The carnage was spread across the bridge, pieces of the demon wedged in the tracks, leaking off the edges and dripping down into the river. There was no body left to be found. I made out an arm and what could’ve been a mutilated torso . . . or something, but clearly the train had taken its victim. I looked down the tracks and noticed that a vehicle had stopped up ahead about a mile. Filled with the adrenaline of my daredevil escape, I jogged towards it. Upon approach I knew they’d noticed something had been hit after the fact. I sidled next to one of the workers and tried to make out their hushed conversation before interjecting. “What happened?” I forced out with my calmest and most curious voice. It emerged like more of a squeak. “We hit something,” the conductor muttered. “I don’t know what we hit, but it was something, something big. Its body is stretched from here all the way down the bridge. At first I thought it could’ve been a man, but it’s just too damn big!” I looked at him square in the face with wavering eyes and quivering lips. “You didn’t hit a man. I saw it. It was something else, I don’t know, but whatever it was there was nothing human about it.” “BOSS!” called one of the workers. “Come here now!” We all raced to the worker whose head was poking under the front engine. “Look,” he pointed. We stared down at the once breathing putrid face that had slit open Krystal and gorged itself. Its teeth were in a permanent snarl and its face was smeared with black blood. “What the fuck is that!” the conductor exclaimed. No one said a thing. I reached in and pulled out the severed head of the beast, then I punted its wretchedness as far off into the river as I could. “It’s dead, that’s what the fuck that is.”

By Emily Smith-Miller

My ………… mouth,

devoured the arms of children,
………… their sweet ……
and …….. juices.  Their short
prickly …… lodged themselves
in my plaque-stained …….

Their thighs tasted the ……,
………… when rotisserie rare,
the blood seeped through the ……
in my ….. and pooled off my …..

But on ……., the …. of ……, I
ate the brains of a ….. little
bastard.  They were gray …. sour
… reminded me of ……. onions.
………., ………, the …………
brains enlightened me … to this day
children have …… passed vampire lips.

By Andrew J. Stone
http://andrewjstone.blogspot.com/

Girlie magazines dating back to 1972  are scattered across the floor.

 The skeletons of two pet canaries lie dormant inside a wire cage.

Bessie Mae died 8 months ago.

From her lips, and from her eyes comes nothing like before.

Leroy, her lover and her only friend, the man she lived with for

Leroy has no friends to detect anything that might be suspect.

He wants nothing between the two of them at all, and no one

comes near to interfere.

Their bedroom is padlocked, stale, stagnant with mildew, looking

the way it did before she died.

Foul odors ooze up through their bedroom ventilation ducts,

Leroy contends that a dead rat in the basement is causing the odors.

Leroy loves to lie about his sacred love affair.

Layers of dust blanket over the mahogany floors, and the maid doesn’t

come here anymore

Bessie Mae’s remains are wrapped in a scarlet housecoat,

Dried blood sleeps in a small pool beneath her bed.

In time they both will sleep, sole witnesses to the fiasco

their lives will catch them in; enduring it, holding

their tongues till time matters no more.

Nothing appears changed, lovers unwilling to depart.

By Michael Lee Johnson

http://poetryman.mysite.com.