Flatliner

There she is.

She looks fucking dead, man.

I know she LOOKS dead but she’s fucking not.

What did you do to her?

I didn’t do shit. I was working late last night and this tasty bitch comes in and I’m about to go all autopsy on her when the little slut opens her fucking mouth and tries to bite me!

Tyler, you do too many fucking drugs dude. Like stop taking that shit you sound like Evan.

Fuck Evan, that fried piece of shit! He owes me 20 bucks and a blow job!

Evan owes you a blow job?

NO MAN! I paid him 20 for this fine bitch to . . . You know what nevermind just check her out.

Uh I’m checking her out Tyler and I know you huff everything at that goddamn hospital you work at so necrophilia is probably totally straight but it’s not my fucking scene alright?

You are fucking dumb just wait a minute.

They stare down at her, obvious blunt trauma to the head, probably a car accident, most likely internal injuries, but her high cheek bones and aristocrat nose give away the fact that she’s absolutely beautiful. Her body is fine toned and elegant, with pert breast, perfect C cups. After staring mesmerized for a moment Tyler takes his hand and strokes the left breast feeling its abnormally cold sensation yet exquisite shape.

Mmm! She’s so tasty!

Tyler she’s fucking dead.

Her head jerks up and with violent reflex tries to rip at Tyler’s arm.

WHAT THE FUCK MAN!

HA HA! I fucking told you, where’s my money?

Jared hands him a crisp $20 and circles the steel table looking down on the girl who had moments ago been undeniably dead, her blonde hair matted with blood and her eyes unfocused, all that seemed active was her chomping mouth. The sound of teeth striking teeth made Jared shudder.

What is this man? What did you do to her? Why is she like THIS?

I told you J, she came in, she layed  on my table and as I put the scalpel between her titties she nearly took my fucking arm off. Voila.

She’s fucking dead.

No shit ass wipe. I did more tests on her than on a fucking lab rat and lights are on but no one is home! Her vitals are zero, flatlined, she’s got nothing happening, and yet here we are trying to keep her bitey bitch mouth from snacking down on our dicks!

Zombie.

Zombie.

No fucking way. What are you gonna do with her?

Well, I was gonna spread her little legs and stick my cock right up there until I blow my load all over her deceased tits. But, I don’t know what the fuck this is, which is why I brought you down here, I mean if I fuck her do I become all Night of the Living Dead?

You want me to do a toxicology report on her?

Yeah Mister Chemistry! Tell me whats going on in that sadly departed snatch.

You’re a sick fuck Tyler.

Taking blood and tissue samples while trying to avoid the avid nibbles of Miss Zombie USA, Jared studied her closely, noticing the marked bluish skin of a days worth of death setting in. Her motor functions were choppy and awkward, probably from the setting in of rigor mortis taking its toll. No there was no mistaking this girl was fucking dead, fucking worm bait, a goddamn cuntalicious corpse. What the fuck? He was starting to think like Tyler, he could feel his dick getting hard as he took the samples and tried to hide the desire he was feeling towards a decomposing Venus.

Got it?

Yeah. I got it. I have to take it back to my lab across campus I should have something by tomorrow.

That’s my boy!

Tyler slapped his shoulder and handed back the 20 Jared had given him for the doubts he posed. Jared walked to the lab while the clock was edging towards 3 AM. Sitting at the lab stool he pulled out his samples and started going over anomalies in their girls tissue and DNA. She was as fascinating under the microscope as on the table, her blood components had extra DNA identifiers and the tissue samples proved to react even though they were separated from their host organ. Jared managed to isolate the real intruder though, it was a clear virus he found in one of his samples. The virus was multiplying and replicating DNA strands with the added identifiers which meant the samples were in fact GROWING right before his eyes. They were growing separately from their host, it almost seemed as if they were trying to build a whole new girl, create some way to spread themselves. He picked up one of the lab rats and injected him with the smallest amount of her blood, then put him back to wait. Within 20 minutes time the rat had died and reawakened snarling and snapping viciously. 

Fuck.

Jared headed back to the basement where he knew Tyler and his new girlfriend were holed up. He just hoped that the dumb fuck hadn’t done something monumentally stupid.

Tyler! Fucking TYLER!

Tyler rounded the corner at Jared with sickly skin, holding his stomach.

Tyler what the fuck is wrong?

I wanted her so bad Jared . . .

You didn’t.

She was just lying there tied up with her legs open, that sweet pussy man . . .

You didn’t.

I had to Jared! I was dying and you were taking forever! I figured what was the harm. . . .

Tyler slumped down grasping the wall for support.

I found out what it is Tyler, what she is. She’s infected on a massive level with a lethal virus.

Fuucckkk. . .

I don’t know what I can do Tyler.

What do you mean what you can do . . ?

Well you’re infected. This is a bad virus. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this but I came prepared because I know what kind of fuck up you can be . . . all the fucking drugs Ty.

You came prepared with wh-wh-what?

Jared opened the duffel bag slung around his shoulder and pulled out the 9mm Glock his grandfather had left him some years ago, he’d never thought he would have a use for it. Most things aren’t anticipated.

FUCK YOU JARED! PUT THAT SHIT UP!

Tyler lunged for him, but his motor functions were deteriorating quickly, he was dying.

I told you Ty, don’t be a dumb fuck, don’t screw around with things you don’t understand, don’t stick your dick in a FUCKING ZOMBIE! You never fucking listen to me, and the worst part is this isn’t even gonna do it. This is just gonna kill you and knock your ass out, like pretty jaws over there.

Jared please . . . I know I’m a fuck up but I don’t deserve to die . . .

I’m sorry Ty, you’re already dead.

Jared shot Tyler point blank in the head. He pulled out a body bag and nitrile gloves. Stuffing Tyler in the bag was oddly satisfying. Fucking dick, he thought. Then he moved onto her. One in the head knocked her down and he repeated the process. The basement had a path straight to the incinerator, but dragging the bodies together was hard and Jared didn’t know how long they would stay out. He dragged one for a little while, then went back and dragged the other. As Jared rounded back to pick up Tyler’s bag he looked on at the empty bag covered with blood.

Tyler! I know you’re here! You don’t understand Ty I had to kill you like that! The virus was already taking over!

Jared spun around looking up and down the corridor, frantically gazing in all directions at once. Then the mind numbing bite came at his calf as Tyler’s zombie form pulled him down and began to tear at Jared’s flesh while he struggled to free himself.

NO! NO! NO! Noo noooouggg. .  .

Tyler was digging through his intestines eating greedily at them and ripping at his internal organs, stuffing himself on his friends innards. Then a sound made Tyler look up from his meal, the bell for first class release and the sound of raucous co-ed voices piling above him. He began moving in a different direction.

By Emily Smith-Miller

A.M. Coffee

Satan in my coffee

on a Tuesday morning

riding shotgun

to work with Bob

and his cat-Black,

in a white Chevy truck

black coffee

I need cream

to make it brown

and sugar,

lot’s of sugar

to kill the strength

to calm the storm

brewing earlier in my

roach infested coffee pot

‘they lay eggs, you know’

Bob says to me

the cat hisses

it despises roaches like dogs

particularly the one

crawling out from my thermos

By Devlin De La Chapa

 http://boyslut.wordpress.com

Goat Food

 

 

 

She owned a goat and the neighbors knew it. She kept it in her backyard and would feed it in the mornings. Sometimes the neighbors watched when she fed it. The fence around her yard was low and they could see everything.

 One morning she came outside naked. The neighbors were watching her through a slit in their curtains. She was naked and carried a pail to feed the goat. They watched as she fed it, the goat’s mouth in the pail, the naked girl feeding the goat. They watched her, saw her smile as she looked down at the feeding goat. It was right there between her legs, eating from the pail. The neighbors kept watching.

 When the goat finished feeding, the girl set down the pail and stood there. She grabbed the goat’s horns and stepped closer. She spread her legs a little and the goat started sniffing her. She reached with one hand and grabbed some leftover food from the pail and shoved it inside her. The goat kept sniffing, then flicked its tongue at her, getting it inside her, getting at the food she had there.

 The neighbors couldn’t believe what they were seeing. She grabbed the goat’s horns and pulled the head closer. They could tell she was excited by the goat licking her, eating its food from her. She had now become goat food and from the look on her face as they watched through the slit she was going to be addicted, so they made a point of watching out for her in the mornings when she got off on her goat.

After several mornings of this, they noticed that the goat seemed to be more ravenous when he ate the food from her. He sometimes would buck his back legs and lunge at her, his horns at her exposed belly, naked as she was. They watched and watched, morning after morning, until one day she didn’t bring the pail, just herself. She grabbed the horns and shoved herself on the goat’s mouth. The goat lunged at her, sticking its nose in her, its mouth and tongue appearing to devour her. It kicked its back legs hard and knocked her down, eating at her, even though there was no food in her; she had become its food and it was eating, eating, eating her, not just licking like before but biting her and pulling her flesh apart, sticking its horns in her and thrashing her open, cracking bones. The neighbors couldn’t move from the slit, couldn’t say anything, they could hardly think, hardly even breathe. Their hearts were racing as they stood at the window and watched through the slit as the goat ate her, tore her belly open and devoured her insides until its fur turned from white to red.

 The neighbors did nothing, even though they knew they should. They should do something.

 But what?

By Jeff Callico

Just Take the Edge Off

warm black milk in a red glass

goes down slowly with a slight gagging

while the buzz light flickers at full throttle

preliminary thoughts

she spoke about the grimy window

that she used to look through

while wishing that her naked feet were

massaged by cool sand in the evening

framed by the constant weak

murmurs of the ocean lecturing her

behind her back

behind her back

turn around look at it

if she could only perform

a vivisection and reclaim what they had taken

then she would be a success

a tight furry creature oozing mucous

capturing the electric light never returning it.

in manhattan

life proceeded as prescribed

lying spread eagled in a red brick circle

nails through palms

nails through feet

acid dipped arteries

memories drift then

 slide back in as thin-lipped razors

a mildewed structured

marble markers behind wrought iron

turn your face against the stone

turn her face against the stone

feel the cool licks below

lie in light that’s

colored by stained glass

clasp each other’s hands

lie in wait

waiting for them to arrive

By Peter Marra

www.angelferox.com

Graveyard Trash

She lived on the edge, the edge of the cemetery, that is. Their trailer was silver and ostentatious, an eyesore for the dead. Her mother put pink flamingos in the square of fake yard that they could call their own, along with other kitschy things reserved for parks designed to house such living quarters. They even had a fake white picket fence that just stuck in the ground, giving their mobile home a comical mimicry of traditional establishments. She was no less strange than the locale of her portable prison. Watery grey eyes rimmed with heavy liner, fried black hair from her mother having curled the locks at temperatures too high and leaving them to sizzle, and thin anemic translucent skin caked in powder. Sadly, Mona  fit in perfectly with her surroundings: a trailer park on the verge of death, graveyard trash. Her mother was a shrill woman who dressed in low-cut blouses and gave ‘it’ away to anyone who would lower her bills, buy her a meal, give her a ride, lend her $10 or to simply fix the crapper of their tin palace. She was a cliche before she even opened her mouth. Lipstick on the teeth, bleached hair with the roots spiking through, chain smoking Virginia Slims and wearing tight polyester leggings that rode up into a grotesque cameltoe. Mona never had a chance.

They encouraged her to make friends when she was little, socialize with the other kids, but even children can smell second-hand smoke and burning garbage. She was left alone as a child, wearing oddly fitting thrift store clothes and severely disturbing the teachers with pictures of funerals and open caskets. It was no surprise that she started working at the mortuary next to the cemetery when she turned fourteen. Mr. Grieves, the owner, was possibly her only friend. Kids would hiss obscene things at Mona during class and at lunch: “Did Grievesey touch your cunt and make you moan MOAN-A? Did you give him a handy in the back with all the dead bodies? Do you give your pussy to old Grieves like your mom throws her snatch at every dick in town? Is that how you got the job MOAN-A? Did you show him your little titties and let him cum in ratty hair? Is that why it’s so frizzy, all of Grieves’ cum sticking it together?” She never said anything, to any of them. She just ate cheap white bread sandwiches with peanut butter on them. She couldn’t even afford the jelly.

One day Mona didn’t walk to school, she didn’t ride the bus. Instead she pulled up in a sinisterly sleek 1959 hearse Cadillac. When she stepped out of the car Mona’s hair was full and straight, richly black and beautiful. Her translucent skin seemed to have turned from sickly to a more fine porcelain, and her typically wet eyes were bright and sharp. She was wearing a stylish red pencil dress, which hugged the curves no one had ever seen under the ill-fitted hand-me-downs she usually sported, and her legs stretched long and lean in a smart pair of shiny stilettos. Her carnivorously crimson mouth looked as though she had perfectly applied a coat of fresh blood to her sensuous lips. Mona was a bombshell.

“I wanna make you moan Mona!” several boys shouted at her as she stepped confidently across the high school quad. The teachers did double takes when Mona’s clear voice rang out in class with a sultry “here” at roll call. The girls who usually tortured her during her lunch hour couldn’t even see her through the throng of suitors crowded around the cafeteria table. Lacey Sullivan, grade A twat and life long terrorizer, finally approached her with haughty disdain in the hallway, blocking her path.
“What happened to you MOAN-A, finally start sucking dick like your mom to earn some extra cash? Or did you make a deal with the devil?”
Mona smiled sweetly.”I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, bitch.” She let the last word roll off her tongue in an evil foreboding way that actually left Lacey speechless

That night there was a party in the graveyard. A Mona party. A party that no one at Westwoods High School would ever consider missing. Their favorite object of torment had turned into Betty Paige over night and was rocking the headstones with three kegs and a live band — what fucktard was going to scratch that off the social event list?

The mouth breathers started spilling in when dark settled over the cemetery, yowling and yelling their battle cries for beer and booze. Tromping through the soft burial ground littering plastic red cups in their wake, while willing breasts were groped by horny hands. The band played on. They danced and fucked and drank, a sinner’s ball of hedonistic overkill. Topless girls played hide and seek behind grave markers, and football studs did keg stands only to spew their foamy guts on Randall Newman’s final resting place. No one saw Mona. Some said they’d talked to her at the beginning of the evening, she’d given them a red cup and pointed them at the keg. A few boys claimed they’d fucked her behind her trailer while she touched her toes. Several girls insisted that Mona was now, and always had been, one of their closest friends and that she was planning something spectacular for the end of the evening. Everyone lost their minds, and passed out on the cemetery carpet of well tended grass.

A pair of slick black high heels entered the graveyard gate and tiptoed over a multitude of unconscious teenage bodies.
“Do you think this enough?” Mona asked with laughter in her voice. “It’s most of the senior class and a couple of randoms.” The deep sharp laugh of a much older man came from the shadows behind her.
“Yes, my dear, I think this is probably enough.” Mr. Grieves emerged at her side with a wide grin and a handsome face. “Well,” he said. “Now the fun part.”

Mona and Mr. Grieves dragged the limp bodies of her classmates into rows. Grieves smiled as Mona went around to each of them and cut open their shirts, painting a large pentagram on all of their chests. While she made the initial preparations, Grieves began uncovering a series of open graves. The party had taken place no more than a fifty yards away from roughly a hundred gaping holes.                                                                                                                                                               “I have everything set up just the way you showed me,” Mona beamed up at him, licking blood off her fingers.
“You did so good, my love, my pet, my apprentice . . . they look so lovely all lined up like lambs for the slaughter. Are you ready for the finale?” Grieves seemed to be getting younger by the moment; wrinkles were smoothing themselves, and his face appeared to have passed from its forties into its thirties in the time it had taken the couple to complete their mutual tasks.
“Now remember, my darling, you must perform the ritual on each of them the same way you did on our first victim the other night.”
“Fucking cunt deserved what she got.” Mona heaved under her breath and spat in anger at the sacred ground.
“There, there, pet, is that any way to speak about your dear departed mother?” Mona grimaced and removed a scathing blade from a sheath around her inner thigh.
“Time to play kiddies,” she oozed, walking towards her first victim.

“Lacey, oh Lacey!” she cooed at her blonde childhood tormentor. “Time to wake up!” She drew her hand back and slapped her hard across the face. Lacey’s eyes fluttered open as she attempted to focus on the images before her.
“Wha-what? M-m-mona?”
“I told you you’d learn my secret soon enough bitch!” With swift downward strokes Mona sliced the pentagram through Lacey’s supple belly. She barely had time to squeal before Mona slit her throat and began collecting sweet human nectar from the welling red flower. With a full vial of fresh young blood, she performed the last step of the ritual: cutting up under the ribs and removing her full heart muscle. She dug her nails through Lacey’s tender fleshy entrance and felt her life force still fluttering and warm on her fingertips. Once the heart was secure in Mona’s hands she took the first ripe bite before passing it on to Grieves. Mona moved on to get to work on the rest of her graduating class, their bodies lined up ready for ritual sacrifice. Bellies full with aortic juices, the pair rolled the bodies of their massacre into the dug up graves and patted the dirt on the final hole just as the sun began to peek over the horizon, leaking oranges and pinks into the skyline.

“Congratulations to all our seniors,” Mona giggled, her mouth stained with dried blood that had run down her pointed chin. Mr. Grieves, looking like a young Hollywood actor with fresh youthful skin, circled his arms around her waist and clamped his teeth lovingly on her throat, gnawing at her savory skin.
“My dear,” he whispered. “It is time for us to make our getaway.” Mona grabbed a large molotov cocktail she’d fixed earlier from a nearby headstone and walked to the border of her cemetery. She watched the flame twist and lick hungrily as she placed it next to the gasoline soaked rag.  Then she smashed the thing through the open door of her trailer hell.
“Burn, my lovely.”

By Emily Smith-Miller

White Handkerchiefs

white handkerchiefs with

stains that she and i don’t talk about anymore

but it’s an implied

secret that we smile about occasionally.

brick stacked

upon broken brick

upon glass bottles

 

black. naked.

silhouettes lightly touch

before evaporating

moans escape as

a gaseous existence

timed to the slight keyboard sounds

of the surf organ sleaze

 

she wanted to cry in joy again

we gave each other fantasy and

a criticism construction

built slowly that collapsed

 

forever hers

forever mine

back to whispers

back to silence

about the documents

entitled the standards of care

 

as a symbol to her

the other species found the problem

her legs squeezed together

her nerves removed

her sinews dissected

heart set aflame and

sacrificed to the sun god

 

as she was disturbed

by the naked walls

as she was disturbed

by the non-stop sounds

constantly arousing her

then ending when she slid free

her hands free

then she stung

 

a serious tone as

she was sucked by the institute into

a black waltz

that left him watching

 

eyes surrounded

by pearls

fucked by the color spectrum

with blue as she permitted

her tics grew steadily

as she feasted on flesh

from the physicians that slowly

castrated themselves as she

dined

 

waiting for the surgeon as she squeezed

then rubbed her face across the danger

as the exhaust kicked into overdrive

 

“your screen is blank”

By Peter Marra

www.angelferox.com

A Vulgar Display of Power

Rain was pounding the windscreen hard. The wipers were going so fast, Jodie thought they were going to snap and fly off somewhere.  She hadn’t realized how drunk she actually was until she got into the car. The tequila shooters had been a bad idea. A real bad idea. Her pick-up was swerving recklessly between lanes on the road, some drivers sounding their frustration with their horn. Fortunately, the traffic was fairly light and there wasn’t a cop car in sight.

Her French husband, Jacques, had been continually harassing her when she was in the bar, bombarding her with text messages and phone calls. She’d ignored them for a couple of hours, but as the alcohol took hold, she figured she’d let him stew for long enough. I mean, what kind of douche bag tells Jodie what to do? She’s the type of girl that can do whatever the fuck she likes. She takes no orders from anyone, at least that’s what she told her best friend, Christine, as the two of them licked salt from their clenched fists.

‘Yeah, he actually told me that I need to clean up after Muffin. That’s a man’s job. I don’t want to clean up Muffin’s doo-doos. They stink!’ Jodie said, throwing her head back as the tequila nosedived into her willing mouth.

‘Like OMG Jodie.  Who does he think he is?’ Christine replied in her Californian airhead accent. ‘What a total dick.’

Jodie pictured Muffin; her pedigree Chihuahua and her pride and joy. She liked to dress him up in different clothes, sometimes to match what she was wearing. She smiled warmly as the bartender refilled their shot glasses. ‘Yeah, you’re right. He is a total dick. That’s why I’ve been screwing around on him.’

‘What? Ohh Emmm Geee. Who with?’ Christine asked her.

‘You know his friend Phil? The guy he works with?’

Christine nodded her head slowly, her jaw agape. Jodie smiled naughtily at her. ‘Yeah, him.’

‘Like, I’m so jealous. He’s such a hottie.’

‘I know, he has a body to absolutely die for. He puts Jacques to shame in the bedroom. We nearly got caught last week.’ Christine’s eyes widened as Jodie continued.

‘Jacques was meant to be staying late for some business meeting, so I called Phil and he came over. Then, later on when we were doing it for like, the fifth time, Phil heard the door opening downstairs. Thank God he heard it over all of my screaming,’ Jodie said, stifling a laugh. ‘It was Jacques. He came up to the bedroom and I was lying on the bed naked, and had to pretend I was doing it for him. Waiting for him to come home. Phil rolled out from under the bed and blew me a kiss while Jacques was standing there unaware.’

The girls continued drinking for a few hours. Jacques was still texting Jodie, in hope that she would come home and forgive him. After all, it was her 30th birthday.

A few hours passed. Jodie and Christine were well and truly drunk. They were sitting in a booth opposite the bar and were deciding on what song to put on the jukebox next, when Jodie received yet another text message.

I’m so sorry. Please come home. It’s your birthday and I’ve made a nice meal for you. Jac xoxo

‘Ugh. Jacques just text me again. I’m gonna have to go home; he’s made me a romantic meal for my birthday – woo-hooooo!’, Jodie said, sarcasm oozing from her words. Christine was so wasted she didn’t even argue, instead she sat on a stool, her short skirt not keeping much from the imagination, chatting to a cute guy working at the bar.

Jodie stumbled out to her car after saying her goodbyes, annoyed that Jacques had ruined her evening.

The rain started to calm as she neared the house. She stopped the pick-up truck at the momentous gates to their beautiful mansion, and clicked the button connected to her key chain. After they opened, she drove up and parked beside the garage.

She made her way inside the house, trying to get in from the drizzly rain, stumbling a few times in the process.

Something was different. The house was dark – very dark. Jodie felt the walls, searching for a light switch, but unable to find one. She staggered through the corridor, eventually making it to the dining room.

There were candles scattered all around the large table, the flames standing still and bright. Jodie noticed there was a large, silver display tray sitting peacefully behind the candles. The lid was still firmly on top of it, beautifully reflecting the candlelight around the entire room. A bottle of Cristal champagne sat beside the silver tray, hundreds of little droplets of condensation

‘Hello, my dear,’ whispered Jacques, walking from behind her. She jumped with fright and let out a little shriek.  He leant in and kissed her gently on the neck. He was carrying two plates, one in each hand. He placed them gently on the wonderfully decorated table, as he took his place.

‘Please, sit down’, he said to her, beckoning with his eyes. It smelled delicious, she thought, inhaling deeply into her nostrils. She did as she was told, for once, and sat down at the table.

Jacques had made her favourite meal; sautéed garlic potatoes, creamed cabbage, and venison with a red wine jus. The champagne opened with a pop, some of its contents leaking down the sides of the bottle. Jacques’ willing tongue licked up the expensive dregs.

He sat for a moment and watched his wife pick up the small slithers of venison with her fork and place them gently into her mouth.

The meat was mind blowing; Jodie’s eyes had closed with the pure ecstasy of the flavour. It was so juicy and tender, literally melting in her mouth.

The married couple didn’t exchange words throughout dinner. In her drunken state, Jodie quickly finished what was on her plate, stopping only a few times to gulp some of the Cristal champagne from her glass.  ‘I take it you enjoyed your meal?’ Jacques asked her, tilting his champagne glass slightly.

‘Yes. It was delicious’, she replied, wiping her mouth with the linen napkin. ‘That’s probably the only thing you’re good at; cooking.’ She grinned at him, her eyes fixated on his. He returned the smile, maintaining eye contact.

‘Where’s my little baby Muffin?’ Jodie asked him, breaking the awkward silence.

With this, Jacques let out a cackle. She glanced at him as he lowered his glass to the table. He grinned like a Cheshire cat, his perfect teeth glinting in the candlelight. ‘You tell me, my dear. How did he taste?’

‘WHAT?!’ Jodie shouted, quickly awakening from her drunken stupor. Jacques was now laughing uncontrollably. ‘I got you back, whore!’, he said unable to wipe the grin from his face. ‘Muffin?’ Jodie whispered, gradually realising what Jacques had told her. She glanced down at her empty plate. This is some kind of sick joke, she thought. It must be.

‘And now,’ Jacques said, standing from the table, ‘the pièce de résistance!’ He placed his hand on the silver tray.

Jodie leaned forward and saw her misshapen face in the reflection, feeling the alcohol turn against her. As she did so, Jacques swiftly lifted the lid, exposing Muffin’s boiled and hacked cadaver. The smell was what made the contents of Jodie’s stomach explode from her lipstick smudged lips. Vomit spilled over the table, little pieces of dinner floating around, dripping from the table onto her lap, spoiling her expensive skirt. When the heaving ceased, Jodie wiped tears from her eyes and picked up a piece of Muffin’s acid soaked flesh. ‘You bastard!’ she screamed, throwing it toward Jacques.

Only, he wasn’t there.

Where is he, she thought, turning her head around in confusion.

Jacques allowed her to turn her beautiful face toward him, giving her enough time to see the hammer as it smashed into the side of her head, caving it in marvellously.

By Conor Mckee

Me, You . . . and They

I drink the sound of you
Begging
In the darkness.
Begging for what I’ve given,
And for what you’ve taken
From me,
And I pray now
For the silence
To overtake
Your blackened heart.

You didn’t know that’s what I was writing on that piece of parchment stained with your blood. Things have been a blur lately, all emotions, anger, and don’t touch me because I’ll scream. It wasn’t the first piece of parchment I’d burned and buried under the light of the full moon, but it would be the last. The last words I would never speak to you.

“You clumsy fucking worthless piece of shit!” was not the only peevish and pedantic phrase you used to scream into my face after a long night of booze and pills and dangling your cock at every skanky twat working the freeway. Your dinner was cold. You didn’t like the way I vacuumed the carpet or cooked your special meat. I had forgotten to record your favorite program, or maybe I’d simply bought the wrong kind of beer.You liked to call it an intervention, when you humbled me with your fist. Said it would make me a better lady, wife, and someday — mother. Said the discipline would save my soul from the voodoo spirits that had borne me out of some trailer trash womb, but it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t. It was simply your way of justifying the use of all the angry words you had become addicted to.

I didn’t have to listen, though.

I had this place I liked to hide whenever you got in one of your moods and decided to kick start a marital uprising. I liked to go there when it was dark and snow covered. I prayed there, sobbed there, and bled there. In the dirt on the floor, I would scratch things down in inches of minutia and then straightaway cross them out. I would leave pieces  of myself in the corners — dissected thoughts and bits of hair and fingernails mixed with mud and saliva. I’ve piled up the worry stones over the years, on the stoop and up in the eves. I’d even wrote and re-wrote your obituary and passed the judgements I wasn’t entitled to pass, but nothing ever happened. Nothing good, anyway. Just dark, and cold, and quiet. Maybe it was like they said, when the  shadows came to me hollow-eyed in the misty dawn. Maybe I wasn’t soulful enough, hungry enough, wilful enough … to leave the memories well enough alone, but I wouldn’t stop trying. Praying of them. Begging mercy of them.

I took your hair and fingernails while you slept. Scraped your semen from my bloody bludgeoned cunt when you finally said you’d had enough. I’d even collected your fallen eyelashes when I pretended I loved you and kissed you softly, and your spit when, in anger, it hit my face. I stood in the circle, called the watchtowers, and drew down the moon a thousand times since we took our vows. Since then I vowed to put you in your grave. I thought I might try arsenic and old lace. It grew wild and beautiful in the abandoned field behind our house. That’s when they first came to me, when I was barefoot, gathering weeds in the wood. They said they wanted the meat, but I didn’t know what they meant by that. Just the meat — no hair, no bone, no gristle. Only meat. So I made offerings: rats, chickens, even your dog. Gutted it with my bare hands in the mid-day sun, but I got nothing in return, except a beating — from you.

Until now.

I went to the shed, you see. Even though you told me not to, ever. I found your “things” and wondered how many you’d tortured before me. I couldn’t remember you ever being this quiet when I put the claw hammer in your skull. Couldn’t remember you being this heavy when you lay on top of me, or that your skin was this tough. I was clumsy, like you always said, hacking away at you until the sun was set and the crickets had started chirping in the field. I lit a candle with my bloodied hands and just stared at your meat in the flickering light. You looked different to me then. I could finally see a softness in your glistening sinews.

They came for you that night, finally. After all the years and all my tears, they came, clicking and clawing their way out of the shadows to gnaw upon your rotted meat. They were hungry and waiting … for me.

I would never starve them like you did.

By Cheryl Anne Gardner

Ponder That Pedicure

You’ve seen the adverts for the fish that eat feet; they only gnaw the skin, just a layer or two.  Just enough to give a person feet that look as if they’d never been walked on.  I’d like feet like that, I would, especially with it being sandal season and my heels having cracks you could wedge a coin in.  But the idea of fish consuming me, tasting me, wriggling against my skin… it gives me the shivers.

“They are sterile, madam.  No diseases.  And all our clients ever feel is the smallest of tickles, nothing more.  They have such tiny mouths, just a few flakes is a mouthful.  All they would eat is the dead layer on top.  One treatment is enough for most clients, but those with more stubborn calluses may benefit from another visit.”

The manager had tried to persuade me of his salon’s safety, but I had to pay attention to the prickles behind my knees and the cool breath of fear on the back of my neck.  We agreed on the seaweed soak instead, with him performing the final pedicure afterwards.  He’d stay late as a favour to such a long standing client.

It was warm to start with, wonderfully so.

He pottered about the place, checking windows and re-stocking cupboards, closing the blinds to keep out the night.  Drowsing in the chair, I thought about my To Do list for the party I was catering this weekend.  ‘Veggie Tables’ was providing meat-free cuisine for a wedding reception and although I knew the forty head meal was ready and waiting for me to heat and serve up tomorrow, I liked to run through the logistics in free moments, just to ease my mind.  Cheesecakes and jellies were already in the fridge, I used seaweed extract to make them set.  Sitting in a soporific slouch, I knew how they felt.

The lights were on low, and the seat was so comfortable I felt almost as though I was drifting away.  My body was going to sleep, my mind drowsing, and all I could hear was the boiler gurgling upstairs.  The heating must have been on full blast because I was getting hotter and hotter, and starting to feel sticky with sweat.  Or something.

I tried to rouse myself, stir out of the chair, open my eyes and my mouth, call to the manager to cool things down.

But I couldn’t.

With enormous effort I managed to stick my tongue just a tiny bit between my lips.  Ugh, something tasted salty, foul… and slightly familiar.  Something from the kitchen, maybe.  Something I’d worked with a lot.

My right eye opened, just a crack, but all I could see was brown.  My nose felt funny, and soon every breath I took was filtered through fuzz.

As it moved within, I heard someone at my shoulder, tormenting me as my ears filled with new growth.

“If you’d stuck with the fish, there would be no revenge.”

My chest laboured, lungs filling, solidifying.

“Plants give us the very air we breathe; they like it when we eat the animals.”

My hair shifted as the seaweed spread across my scalp, creeping through my careful curls,

“Better that than eating them…”

setting my poor body, gone to jelly in the chair.

By Gill Hoffs

Virgin Autopsy

You make me feel alive;
brand new
when you speak to me of death
it makes my blood sing when you tell me
that I would make the most beautiful corpse on earth

put me on the slab
fold my arms across my chest
pull out the scalpels and the knives
it’s time to dress this doll
all the way to the fucking nines

it’s the only way I know how
to tell you I love you

bruise me, abuse me
because I care
hit me
slit me
because I’m there

slice the skin and fold it back
expose my bones
display my veins
reveal the beauty within

kiss my brain
caress my heart
stroke my diaphragm

I’m yours for life any way you slice me

peel back the sinew and the flesh
bare the secrets deep inside,
unfold the silent mystery–
the sentiments I never spoke,
brought to life
revealed
by my virgin autopsy

By Cynthia Ruth Lewis