Sucker

She didn’t do it for money. She did it for blood.

They always said she had a mouth on her.  Back when it happened, just a few years before, when she was in the bar and somebody took her home, when she didn’t feel well, all that rum in her, maybe too much, she kept saying no, no more, that’s enough, stop, I don’t feel well, but he kept on with it, kept touching her, rubbing, prodding, urging, fingers craving, hands pushing, mouth angered and progressively abusive, forcing, pinning down, she didn’t want it, he said she did, it was he said, he said, she couldn’t say anything, she was muted by his lust.

But was that a long time ago? It seemed a century, but it also seemed like yesterday, like just last night.

She started practicing soon after. Started going here, there, all over. One then another then another and then yet another. It was easy at first, she was a natural. But she knew she needed to get better, she needed to get herself in the best shape, her mouth, that is. The mouth was the thing, the suck of the mouth. She always had a mouth, they said. Well now they were going to get the fullness of it.

She kept practicing. She got better at it. Like the one who fisted her hair and yanked her off, who screamed at her that she was hurting him, that he didn’t like to be bitten, just sucked. And then her face, that mouth of hers, blood on her lips, her tongue. His blood. That was it, he said, you’re a fucking crazy bitch.

Well, she was a crazy bitch. She wanted to get crazier. She kept practicing, kept up with the suck.

Another one and another. More, so many more. She invited them over, told them she was lonely, told them she just needed some company, needed them to be there. They had liquor in them, they would come, they would come for sure. They came, they kept coming, she kept practicing, they kept telling her to stop, she was sucking too hard, fuck, just stop, it hurts, oh fuck! But it was fine because there were more, word must have gotten around, some of them heard about her, she had a reputation, they kept coming, some of them curious, some of them not believing the hype. “Man that girl can suck cock!” Yeah, yeah. Girls suck cock all the time, why was she any different. She was different. But no one mentioned the blood. She kept having them over, they kept coming.

And some of them were repeats. Some of them liked it. It hurt like hell, they said to their dudes who asked how it went, but somehow it was hot.

She was getting better. She was making progress with the suck.

*

Was it years ago? Yes, years. She should have pressed charges. She let it go, just wanted him gone, he left but he was still here, still right here. Where was he now?

She put out an ad. It was short, sweet, attractive. Just like her.

SWF, 25, loves to suck.

 

Days passed but the nights were filled with more, just not HIM. It was good, she kept herself in shape, that mouth of hers. But she was growing bored, she wanted more than this, wanted more of that blood. The ones who came over limited her, stopped her before she went too far with it, before things got out of hand, so to speak. A few did go farther, not realizing that she not only bit blood but sucked it too. They just thought she was a blood biter. So. She succeeded. She liked the taste of cum, her cunt fucking loved it, but cum was easy. Blood was hard to get. She finally started sucking it out of them too, she was getting stronger. And cum mixed with blood made the cum taste even better. They grinned and laughed and moaned as they watched, not minding seeing their blood on her mouth as she looked up at them, her eyes wanting to see him, not any of them.

She got a response, it came suddenly. She clicked the mouse. She responded. One came over, it wasn’t him. Another, then another. She would do this. She would do this until he came. She would do it.

Two months, nothing, but everything. Her mouth was ultra. The freaks started showing up, wanting it, she gave it, she took it. A few of them passed out, she sucked too much out of them. They never came back once they revived and left. Others, and more of them, her mouth was ready, so fucking ready for HIM. Where the fuck was he?

Well, here he was. It took another month for him to show.

The door opening to him, her smile telling him all had been forgiven, him stepping inside, she closing the door, locking it. Feeling how ready her mouth was. It was on fire.

“You saw the ad.”

He nodded, he never had been one to say much. He just fucked, came, and left. But not tonight. Tonight would be different.

“Drink?” He liked it before shit started. She got him some whiskey, but not too much, just a taste. “Fuck,” he said, that remembered grin of his making her sick of him already, “that’s it?” And her nodding, her sweetly given smile, that forgiven-you smile of hers, that mouth. He threw back the sip and kissed her. Yes, a good one, he was good at that, but she knew he knew he was good at a lot of things. That tongue of his, thrusting, poking, licking inside her dutiful mouth. And she accepting it, for now.

Sure, she got excited, she was human wasn’t she, her pussy got wet as fuck, of course it did, she was a girl who liked it, a girl who liked everything about it, and more. She wanted it, sure she did, she wanted it, even from him, even now, even after all these years.

She had just been 19, then.

But now it was different, now she was more mature, she had passed through a dark tunnel, one he had created, and now she was on the other side, she was practiced, eager and ready, yes, for him.

He seemed stronger, rougher, but that was fine, she liked that too, she felt her cunt get tighter, wetter, it was only natural. She could handle it, just wait. Just let him fist her hair, spank her ass, ram his cock in her cunt, all that again, all of it, and when he pulled out he fishhooked her mouth, that fucking mouth of hers, she was ready for what he wanted to give her. She felt her throbbing swollen cunt where he had been, her juices running down her legs, inside her thighs, sure she was excited, but she had his thick cock in front of her now, and his fists were tight with her hair in them. It all came back, it was similar to before, and here he was again, that cock, that same cock, right in front of her, jutting up and ready for that mouth of hers. Well, then. Give it to me, fucker.

She licked the head, teasing him like she was supposed to do, grabbing his ball sac and lapping, licking, tasting…not yet sucking. She wanted him, yes, of course she wanted him, but he wasn’t just a cock, he was HIM, and she had him right here. She opened her mouth, he was bigger than most, she opened wide, took him, felt his hands fisting her down on it, forcing it deeper, she tasted herself, tasted her own excitement but that was nothing, she knew what she wanted, and she was going to get all of it.

She sucked him easily at first, felt him get incrementally bigger. And then she started.

“FUCK!” he shouted. She felt those fists tighten, but he didn’t pull her off. She bit harder, sucked harder. Her mouth, that mouth of hers was ready, it was at the apex. She was going to make him her ultimate trophy. Harder, she turned it up, got her mouth in higher gear, her tongue engaged under him, her teeth gripping tighter. Soon, his blood, and that ignited her. “FUCKING BITCH!” She felt his hands, yes he was trying to get her off him but she sucked harder, she thought of her mother’s vacuum, when she put the palm of her hand on the end of the hose, such a strong suck that was, it was a powerful machine. That mouth of hers was just like it now, all that practice paid off.

“FUCKING STOP!” She scratched his ass, sucked him harder, and yes his blood, not from her biting, it was coming out of him now, it just made her suck harder, her mouth craved it, she sucked it out, sucked it straight out of his dick, and what a dick he was, such a motherfucking dick, he deserved this, she was just a teenager then, what did she know, she thought he loved her then, no he never said it but his face seemed to, that fucking face of his, that fucking cock of his in her vacuum-suck of a mouth, his blood oozing into it, his fists fighting at her head, sure he was strong but the pain she gave him weakened him, and she kept swallowing as it came out, came into her, the taste of it making her suck faster, harder, the intensity of his hands subsiding. She was sucking blood out of his cock, out of his body. She wanted to suck blood out of his fucking evil soul. Well, she did, in the end. He fell to his knees, his hands fell to his sides, his cock still hard in her mouth, that mouth of hers still sucking as he fell on his back, her teeth biting into him like pincers so she didn’t let it slip out. She sucked and sucked and swallowed and swallowed, breathing through her nose, hungry for more, hungry for his fucking death. She kept sucking kept swallowing, looked over his pubic hair, saw that his eyes were closed, saw his hairy gut moving up and down, kept sucking swallowing, her stomach full of his blood. She felt dizzy, felt full, but kept it up, kept sucking the fucking life out of him until his pig gut stopped moving. She felt his cock go limp in her mouth. She looked at his gut again. It was most definitely still. He was certainly dead. A person has to have some blood in them to stay alive. She sucked more out of him than he needed inside him. He was her involuntary blood donor, and now he was dead.

She released his cock and looked at it. It looked like a dead one-eyed animal that had been attacked by some vicious beast. Her bite marks looked lovely.

It was over.

She had waited for this for what, four months? Five? It felt like a century.

So much cock, so much cum. But never enough blood.

By Jeff Callico

How Much?

She placed the polish brush against her nail for the 4th coat. The black color was beginning to get thick but she kept painting her fingers obsessively. The nails were naturally long and slightly curved, she was often complimented on them. The door shook again, raging on the other side. The hinges rained loose plaster flakes onto the faded white and black bathroom tile while she just sat on the sink in her garters.

“Leila! Open the fucking door baby!'”

You beast, she thought and smiled, finishing another coat. Break it down great ape. Break it down for me. She knew he would. Blowing on the fresh lacquer, she looked up coyly at the shivering door, her nipples hardening, making her cunt tighten slightly.

You look like Ava Gardner, Cosi told her when she was twelve. Leila was filthy, but when she smiled she did look like Ava. That’s where the lace garters and corsets came from. Probably why she started her burlesque career at fourteen. Why her and Cosi left Minnesota and squatted on the Sunset Strip. Those hinges won’t hold.

“Remember,” Cosi said. “We will make it. You’re Ava and I’m Bettie.” The knife had gone into the handsome man, and they stood over him in surprise then.

“What have we done Cosi?”

“We survived Leila, take everything out of his pockets.”

“The knife!” Cosi licked the blood off the blade. “We’re keeping it”

That was 6 years ago, no one noticed murders in Los Angeles, not murders by burlesque dancers mistaken for old Hollywood pin-ups. Cosi and Leila, their act was raunchier the more they killed, and the more killing they did the richer they got. They bought, furs and silks, outfitted themselves in lovely see through costumes that showed curvy young womanhood. Cosi and Leila worshipped each other on stage as they delicately ripped the fabric of their show gowns. Men went wild for a tantalizing moment alone with them. Strippers were obscene and tasteless, yet somehow so much tamer compared to the performance the carnal duo proposed. When they took the stage, there wasn’t a soft dick in the house.

“What if we bring blood into the act?” Cosi asked.

“You mean like pour it all over each other?”

“Paige would’ve done something like that.”

“Not Ava though.”

“Sweetheart,” Cosi would cuddle up next to Leila’s breast and coo. “You’re not Ava, you’re her bastard, satanic, blood thirsty child.”

Leila had pushed her away. “Am not”, she huffed, arms crossed, suddenly confused as to what it was they were really doing every night at the cabaret, and then in the alleys afterwards.

She developed a taste for cheap sex, Leila had. She liked men to make her an offer of money before she let them take her body. Then, right as they were about to cum, she’d knife their belly, a deep stick through the soft middle flesh that made them collapse.  Just the way Cosi had that first night they discovered their predatory nature.  She would feel their insides the way they felt hers, this made her smile, as she often dug her nails in through the wound. Then, as they were dying, she’d ask them, in a cozy, smug tone, “How much am I worth now?” Ha you’re whole life, she thought, every rotten cent you’d ever make and every woman you’d ever dream of fucking.

Cosi thought this was funny, she was more ruthless with her killing. She poured two gin fizzes for her and her man before taking them down a deviant lover’s lane, slipping him a tetrodotoxin, for making “zombies” she said. They’d think they were about to get their dick sucked when the poison started kicking in. Totally paralyzed and yet completely aware of everything, she would dismember their manhood, and show them the scraps. They often didn’t die of blood loss, Cosi said, but suffered massive asphyxiation from the panic she caused, like frightening a rabbit to death. Cosi, was imaginative. And they were a team, obviously, the gruesome twosome of whorish gruesome inclination.  However, Leila left Cosi, when she woke up next to her dead lover.

Luke was nothing special, but Leila did not want him dead. He was a sharp lover and he never asked questions. Cosi was  jealous of anyone standing between her and her crimson companion, but Cosi never killed out of the night scene, never off the safety of sadistic LA. One night Leila went to bed with Luke, in a vicious embrace, ripping the satin tapestries from the walls and causing her to moan as many of her murder victims had during their final moments of ecstasy. It exhausted her to the point of delirium. She woke up in a sticky pool, to Luke’s cut throat and his cock shoved down his
own throat. Ironic, he had once said, she was the only one who could really swallow his whole dick, turns out he was the other one.

Trapped in the bathroom Leila was ready for the brute to come at her, maybe tear her to pieces, she figured after what Cosi and she had done that was the least she deserved. He didn’t know any of that, however, no he didn’t know anything. He was just the thug she’d been letting beat the shit out of her to keep Cosi at bay, and maybe get a little of what she thought she deserved. Now the big gorilla was working his way through the door and she was gonna let him kill her this time. In this instance the door caved and the burly barbarian barreled into the bathroom, blood hungry from snorting lines of blow off her tits all fucking night. She was ready for this. Though, the next thing Leila knew she was on his back with her nylons double wrapped around his throat. Killer instinct taking hold. He suffocated within seconds and she was on top of yet another body. Her shoulders released and she let a breath out softly. Then, a coquettish voice jumped at her from the ripped hinges.

“How much are you worth now?”

By Emily Smith-Miller

Premenstrual Terror

“When you walk about, and you’ve got one in, do you get a little thrill?”

I look at him, handsome, cheeky, wife at home so not really of concern to him or me.

“No, you don’t feel it.  Certainly not if you’ve put it in right.”

“Oh.”  He seems a little disappointed.  I decide to flirt a little, what the hell.

“Would be pretty cool if it did.”

He squints up at me from the desk by the window, the one with the half decent view.  The one we all want, but this new guy, a month in the door, somehow has.

“We’ll see.”

 

The month passes and he’s there with a grin, noticing spots poxing my chin as if a gremlin’s sprayed me with a tiny AK47 from the chocolate bar I’m lifting to my mouth.

“I’ve been looking in the shops.”

“And?”

“That shit’s expensive!”

I nod, grumpy and wishing it wasn’t so obvious that the curse was upon me once again.  Fucking moon, fucking menstruation.  Fucking men.

“Your point?”

He smiles, sly, eyes glinting with mischief.

“I think I can help you out with that…”

I snort.

“What, sponsor a sanitary pad?  Treat me to a tampon?  Piss off.”

He leans closer, and despite myself I want to pull his perfect earlobe into my mouth and never let it go.

“Better.  I can get you something so you never have to pay for protection again.  Period.”

He sniggers at his little joke, and I’m intrigued.

“I’m not fiddling about with one of them moon cups, I’m clumsy, I’d spill it, trust me.”

“No, trust me.  I can sort this out.  My brother’s good with this kinda thing.”

“What kinda thing?”

He taps his nose, and I notice his nails are clean but just slightly too long.

“You’ll see…”

 

I thought his brother worked in the quarantine section of the zoo.  Maybe he did, maybe he was just an inventor on the side.  I never thought to ask.  Not till later.  I wasn’t thinking about the cons when he brought me the pro.

“Stick this baby in?  Sliiiide it in like it was your favourite…” he looked at me and I blushed “…toy.  And you’ll never need another of them fiddly paper bullets.”

“Really?  How?”

He folded my fingers round the small metal sheath lying heavy in my hand.

“It’s kinda like a washing machine.  You just need to know it works, not how it does it.”

“Eh?”

Again with the nose tap, and I’m hypnotised by the creamy crescent of nail like a child’s tooth on his fingertip.

“Trust me.”

“Don’t I need to take it out and replace it?  Wash it or something?”

“Nah.  Just let it do its thing while you do yours.  But you’re gonna have to let it settle in.  And no sex.”

“No sex?!”

He smiles and I can hear him breathe, feel its heat on my skin.

“You won’t want to with this.”

I raise an eyebrow.  He opens his mouth and I pre-empt him, “I know, I know, ‘trust me’”.

 

In the ladies, I look it over like I wanted to at my desk but couldn’t.  Similar to a blunt steel syringe, quite like an applicator tampon, but there’s no string dangling like a dead rat’s tail, and it has an unusual weight to it.

I can feel the surge of the crimson flood, and I hate the pads, the tampons, the care I have to take in getting the angle right for insertion, the fear of a leak, the pain when I yank the string for removal and catch a pube too.  Fuck it.

I stick it in, as far as it will go, push the plunger and feel a warmth spread through me as if I’m drunk and vibing it up, as high as the speed setting will go.  Ohhh, it’s good.  I walk out the cubicle as if half asleep, wash my hands with plenty of soap, stick the empty steel in the bin under plenty of paper, then wink at myself in the mirror.  Looking good, kid, and feeling fine.  Pretty damn fine.

 

I don’t question it, would you if you were always coming, and never going?  Would you?  Course not.

Not till I have cause to months later.

It’s after the office party, well after.  The pretty girls are done photocopying their bottoms, the boss has gone home with a hard-on to his long suffering wife, and me and a few of the guys are off to the pub for a follow up.

Then I’m in the beer garden, lighting a fag, still in that good good mood of great, effortless continuous sex.  And he gets me from behind.

Nobody knows I’m here.

They’ll think I’m in the ladies, or on the dance floor, or at the bar.  His hand splits my lip on my teeth with the strength of sick silence, his other one tugs my skirt up and his zip down.  Since the silver syringe, I’ve done away with knickers, never wear them.  Never need to.  I wish I had that flimsy barrier now.  I struggle and squirm, hating him, terrified, that BASTARD, and he prods me with his thing, stabs it in-

and shrieks with pain.  Tries to pull away.  Now he’s the one twisting and squirming, battling to be free.  There’s a horrible, hideous tearing sound and he falls to the ground with a squealing scream.  It reminds me of the pigs my daddy used to butcher on the farm, before mum left and I chose to go.

I clamp my hand to my groin and feel wet warmth there, where I haven’t for months.  Then as I whimper, and he groans far away on the floor, flopping in the pooling blood, I feel it pulling away.

What?

What the fuck?

What the fuck was it and where the fuck’s it going?

Someone throws the door open and light falls over my attacker.  He’s twitching with shock now, pale, anonymous; I’ve never seen him before in my life.  But I’m sure he used to have a penis.

There’s just a horrible meaty mess amongst the hair now, and the bouncers rush to help him, taking care not to stand in the wet red surrounding him, ignoring me in the shadows by the wall.

I stick my fingers in, glad I kept my nails short.  They feel the stub of him, feel the warm strength of my vaginal vault, then… holy shit.

No way.

I pull my fingers out, quick, hold them up to my face.

The bouncers are calling for an ambulance now, looking about for his penis.

I step into the light, and all I see are my fingertips.

And the teeny, tiny bite marks my pet made, nibbling me within.

Before it knew it was just me, just mummy.

And carried on with its welcome feast.

By Gill Hoffs

Hey Shitbag, What’s My Destiny?

You hit a nerve, made my hands shake when you grazed those painted nails across my arm. The way you shook your ass at me and that peek-a-boo on the sly when you bent over and let me get a good look at ya cunt from behind.

You made me make a sacrifice,

For you,

Not me.

I hated the thought of your smile and your fake pouty lips, but I loved the commune of your flesh, shared and tattered. You gave it a bad rap. Your life, you said. It was just porno and tap water, malted milk balls and restless cocks. You called yourself Destiny, and I wondered why someone like you would work in a chicken house like this. Maybe you was mad at your daddy. Hope I didn’t look like him, so I sat at the back of the bar, in the dark, contemplating your full lips and how they would look severed from your face and mounted on my throbbing cock. You said you could see the future in that little deck of cards you carried around in your purse, said it with a “Hey Mister,” when you asked me if I wanted to know mine. “Ten bucks,” you said, and I replied, “Divine.”

You thought I was talking about you, but I wasn’t. I asked what you did for a living while I flipped the tassel on your boob, and you said you liked to fuck. “With a crystal ball?” I asked, and you laughed at me. You didn’t want to know what I did, what my passion was. You said it was all in the cards, and that death with his rusted out scythe and his emerald green eyes was just a beginning. I nodded and fingered the razor in my pocket, cause I supposed it was true. Well, you believed it, along with the moon and the stars and the voodoo priestess who told you “you” had a gift. You didn’t want to know about all the naughty things little girls like you shouldn’t know about. You didn’t want to know about my fascination with skin.

I am a sculptor.

What’s inside you is weak,

And I can fix it —

With plaster.

I want to fuck you with a chisel. Scrape the ligaments from your bones. What I do is a labor of love. I bring things back to life, but you didn’t even really want to know me beyond the free drinks and the bits of coin I dropped in your tip jar. You thought you were a hipster, a girl gone wild, but you’re really just a fucking parsley smokin’ bigot, getting back at her rich drunk daddy. Your bust will look nice mounted next to the saw palmetto by the shed. I’ll use pencil erasers to keep your nipples hard, yet supple. That’s what I was thinking while you giggled and practiced your “witchcraft” as you liked to call it. You went on and on about sinkholes and bedbugs and why it’s so important to wash the fucking sheets. What if I default on my lottery payment? Will I get sued for all those vile accusations I made about the frigid bitch of a mayor? or Was I letting failure bloom when I spread my seed to the hookers on the next street corner? “Fuck no,” I replied. “This is a small town, honey, and there ain’t no jobs in a dust-storm famine funeral parlor. I got clients. Not a lot of huntin’ to do around here,you see, so I might be easy money, but this strip ain’t the only game in town.” You smiled again, said I was hokey and quaint. Wanted to know whether I wanted to smoke a joint and get a lap dance or not. Now, I don’t know nothin’ bout your big city ways with your tattoos and pierced clits and all that greasy black eye makeup. I just skin em and stuff em; well, you don’t really stuff em, not like a scarecrow with sawdust and hay.

I do like your sky blue innocent eyes, though.

I think I’ll keep them for myself.

By Cheryl Anne Gardner

WARNING: May Cause Serious Harm, Deafness, and Decapitation

Nobody tells you the real reason you shouldn’t poke around in your ears; I bet they don’t even know.  Actually, I know they don’t.  Now.

It was an ear infection that did it.  I blame the swimming pool.  Whenever I venture into its stinking blue heat, I find myself diverted from lane swimming and smooth strokes of front crawl into avoiding the peachy plasters, succulent scabs, pubic hair and skin flakes texturing the water with infection.

Whatever the reason, I bought a box of cotton buds, tiny white dumbbells of deafness, from the chemist next to the takeaway down the road.  ‘Warning: do not insert into ear canal – may cause serious harm or deafness’.  My Uncle Jim always said the only thing you should put in your ear was your elbow.  Yoga, stretching, even the near dislocation of my shoulders never helped me attain that impossible goal.  Salt water, that’s what he’d recommend.  Cures anything.  Broken heart?  Have a cry.  Sore throat?  Gargle with it.  Sunburn?  Bathe in it.  But water in my ears got me into this mess, no chance I’m adding to the worrying wetness, none.

Now, with the itching threatening to scour my sanity and pale liquid trickling like piss from my ears, reminding me of my one dalliance with alternative sex and Golden Showers, I was doing something I’d promised my mother I’d never do.

I was going to clean my ears out.

Oh, the relief.

The twirling of bud after bud, turned soggy and yellow, piling like little paper bones in a heap on the bathroom floor.

Just one more.  Just this one.

But I had to go deeper; I couldn’t not.

Chunks of brown and red, stiff and rank, almost hairy round the edges.  Could I make candles?  Should I?  No…

This must be another old deposit, I held the fuzzy end in frantic fingers and pushed, trying to hook it free, shove it out, clear the infection.  I should have stopped.  I know that now.

I heard a ‘click’, felt the obstruction shift, and suddenly my head was full of noise.  Pulling the cotton bud out, nothing came with it.  But the voices, oh, the voices stayed.

Did you know there was a switch in your head?

That if you work hard enough, dig deep, push and pull and itch and squirm, you can flick it, too?

I don’t recommend it.  People sometimes wish they had the ability to read the minds of others, in a nice, clean, pick-and-choose way.  It’s nothing like that, nothing at all.  The films about it?  They bear as much resemblance to the reality as celebrity sex tapes do to Friday night fingers in the shower.  My flatmate was considering which of her teachers she’d most like to fuck and how; I had no idea her breath stank from eating Mr Overbaum’s shit.  Stan at the shop below was wondering if his mum would mind him using her microwave to explode wasps on the lowest setting.  It made them last longer before they blew.  And that nice old lady, the one from down the road who waved at passersby and gave babies shiny new pennies – she was the worst of the lot.  Helping Hitler, looking out for non-blonds.  I’d dash the coins from her evil old hands next time I saw her.  She wiped them in her knickers first.

It was all too much.  I tried it for an hour, and it was just overwhelming.  Nothing useful, nothing sexy, nothing I wanted or needed to know.  Just a constant torrent of other people’s nasty little ramblings and wonderings, inane shopping lists and to do files, whining and whining and scuzzing through my head. 

No point running to the doctors for help, they’d have me on happy pills in the time it takes to swaddle a near adult in a straitjacket.  Who believes in telepathy?  Not even me.  Perhaps if I flicked the switch back… yeah, that should do it.  Then stick the rest of the packet in the bin.  Done, never to fuck up with again.

It was hard work moving it the first time, but my mum’s due over any minute and there’s no way I’m hearing what she gets up to with my dad.  No way.  In, dig, move, move…

Oh shit – too far – it’s gone over the other way – normality must be the middle setting.  I’m surprised at how much it hurts when my face hits the floor, how cool the summer air feels on the wet base of my neck.  My lip’s split on my teeth, but it hardly matters now.  A tear seeps onto my cheek.

As the oxygen fades I can hear them at my door; just footsteps, no voices.  My body crumples over to the side, hitting the sink with its empty hands, and someone in the hallway asks if I’m alright.  But there’s nothing the chemist can do for me now.

Re-label the boxes, you bastards.

They should read ‘Warning: do not insert into ear canal, may cause serious harm, deafness, or decapitation’.

But seriously, who knew?

By Gill Hoffs

Trois by Peter Marra

Gris-gris Double Friction

a mexican guitarist plays in the subway car
gets out at the next stop
falls to the track
in the shadows of his illness.

moth in subway car
lands on man’s bandana.
early morning: large
blood clot on a deserted platform.
wings flutter slightly.
red rivulets reach out to speak

down a street night
neon flesh sliced in half
going to bed / tonguing with leaves of glass
walking out into sound

hillbillies and wives shot down / shot up

sacred texts to watch out for
walk away walk away walk away

a silence for the swamp girls with their
lustful minutes and a boneless

corpse from madness in her backyard

eyes bleed
retinas spin
cornea explodes
watched the face
transplanted to the clouds
looking down now
at the grey snow
burning holes
in the windows
explores.
slick mice
time is out
time is off
the wall twists frequently and
a trap
we walk quickly to the heartbreak dance
so we can dance slowly then lie down
beat
beat
beat
against the wall

her heart cries slowly
comes to rest
on the concrete
 

Preacher

Watching the mommy
breastfeeding her child
as the last gospel
explodes from her heart

Watching the light
from the boulevard
cascade and ricochet
through the window onto the table

Watching the atomic faces
swoop down slowly alight on her spine
take root and cringe

Watching the body
fall to the floor
tremble then stop
waiting for the chalk line

Watching the night come
rising of the moon
laughing behind doors
as the plaster crumbles red

Neuron

Iron
sheets.

Sweat and blood coursing

The ganglion tightens around the bed,
Trapping

the
Sleeping shadow.

The glow of the glass gas tubes and

White noise massaging
the folds of the skull

Iron sheets and
Iron cages

And the cracked window.

Touch the leather glass

The nightingale frightens.

Iron sheets.

Frying
blood.

Claws
clutch at the figure

Reminders
and remainders.

The ganglion tightens around the house,
Trapping

the
Sleeping shadow.

Mom and dad
Hurt.

Sperm dancing
through
the dark light
sighing
as
it
comes to rest.

Watch.

She bends
down and
cries and
watches.

By Peter Marra

www.angelferox.com

Paper or Plastic?

Cycling down, compressing, Ronald watches as the arms and legs hanging outside the machine snap off like muted branches.  Thick and bleeding, they fall to the concrete floor, no longer a part of what once made them whole.  Occasionally—perhaps one in five—these appendages roll towards him, but most times they do not.  Inert, they remain still about his feet, pooling, each piece preceded only by the dull thud its weight creates against the floor.  It is Sunday, pre-church, and before the morning rush.

Does he care that they make fun of him?  Yes.  More than they could know.  Does Ronald show it?  Never—not once.  He is good at this; at holding things in.   He lets them stew, boil.   That is how he cooks; how the man inside him rolls.  In the mirror, naked, he repeats:  I am rage. 

At sixteen he is hit by a car.  It hurts, but he survives.   Scars come, many, and every day he limps because of it.   So what, he thinks.  It beats the hell out of being dead.  Dead can’t bring closure.  Dead could not extract revenge.  His right hand turns inward as well, up and towards his chest.  It resembles a claw, but one which has lost the will to live.  Chicks never look at it, not if it can be helped. 

At least I survived.

He says this whenever an associate asks.  And he says it with a smile on his face each and every time.  He believes it keeps them humble, the ones he secretly despised.  They think he never hears their whispers; that he could ever possibly know.  Each of them is wrong; all of them his rage.

Mr. Gray keeps him on at Mister Food even though Corporate doesn’t want him to.  Ronald gives the man credit for that.  He really, truly does.  Mr. Gray—tall, bald, bad breath—shouldn’t have done what he did though, and only because of what it would produce.  He should have given Ronald severance; just ensure he went away.  He did not however, and soon enough Ronald finds out that Mr. Gray is no better than the rest of the people behind his back.  He never yells at Ronald, nothing as vulgar as that.  But he whispers along with the rest of them, and at times Ronald would see him laugh.

The final straw involves the baler, and the day Mr. Gray takes him aside.  Mr. Gray says it is only meant to house cardboard and plastic—that only a bale of each could be made at a time.  Ronald says he understands; that it hadn’t been he who mixed the two.  It was then Mr. Gray chooses to call him a liar, and his voice, had it been raised?  Ronald can’t remember, only that his fellow employees have stopped in their tracks to stare.  One of them had been Cara, a girl Ronald wished he could call his own.  She would never fuck him though, and he was happy he held no delusions concerning that.

  “And Ronald, really, you need to be washing your uniform more than once a week.”  Ronald nods, takes what has been given, and then watches Mr. Gray walk away.  From the side he sees him roll his eyes as he passes Patrick, Bill and Mark.  They smile in return, the secret shared and understood.  The rage comes forward then, leaping, but Ronald smiles instead, his big grin containing what will no longer be contained.  Later, while masturbating, the staff meeting at the end of the month enters Ronald’s mind.  They are always held out back, where Mister Food keeps all its excess stock.  Mr. Gray purchases folding chairs and everyone gets a seat.  Beside these seats looms the baler, metal and brown, stickered and wide.  Plastic and cardboard Mr. Gray had said, saying it as though Ronald were new; that he hadn’t been an active member of the Mister Food Team for the past twelve years.   The baler produced rectangle kids after you fed its mouth and the plunger pushed down until it no longer could.  After that came the twine, six lengths of rope you tied off in order to hold the child you created in place.  Ronald was far from wondering about cardboard and plastic as he spasmed into his hand.  He was thinking about bodies; about stacking them high.  Could it be done, he thought, and realized he had been talking out loud.

“Mr. Gray?”

“What is it now Ronald?”

“At the staff meeting—could I be in charge of the refreshments?”  Pausing, Mr. Gray finally swivels in his chair.  “Of course you can,” he says.  Ronald notices that Mr. Gray is more than enthused that he has offered to do this.  Good for me, Ronald thinks—everyone needs a little happiness in their lives.

The dosage is enough, more than, and all but Florence had taken a glass.  It doesn’t take much to persuade her however, not once Ronald puts the full force of his limp on display.  She takes the glass, sips—comments on how peachy it tastes.  Thirty minutes later all thirty-seven employees lay prone before him.  Where to begin, he thinks, and suddenly he notices how hard his breath has become; how hard his heart is now knocking against his chest.  “I am Rage,”  he says and looks around, taking each of them in at a time.  I will be stacking you, he thinks, and then goes on towards Mr. Gray.  In time—stupid fucking hand—he gets the big man up, rolling him up and over the baler’s bottom lip.  Easier, he takes the cashiers next, each of them half the weight of Mr. Gray.  Eleven of them inside, Ronald closes the safety gate and then pushes the big green button on the side of the machine.  With a start and then a screech, the plunger descends, crushing breath and bone alike.  They never wake, not one of them.  They only bleed, forming a lake like syrup to which Ronald sees no end.

  The buggie boys come next, followed by the Stationary Department.  Of them all, Sheila the office girl proves the most difficult.  Over three hundred pounds, she is more than he can lift.  Using empty milk crates, Ronald creates the leverage he believes he will need.  In, she sinks half way down, her face coming to rest beside George from Frozen Food.  Amanda is beside them, her brain exposed and grey.  Done, he looks around at the empty chairs, at the skids full of overstock beyond.  He takes in the blood that continues to seep from the bottom of the baler and arms and legs that rest within.  Should I leave them, he thinks, but knows a job is not complete until you have cleaned up after yourself.

He makes a bale using twine that will never again be white.  It does not turn out as he had hoped, not as rectangular, nor as solidly built.

From skin that runs in flaps to muscle that hangs and drips, Ronald stands in front of the baler’s open door, squints into the chamber for all the faces he can still make out.  There is Stacy and Beth, both of them covered in Shawn.  Below them he sees Richard, the man finally inside Peggy-Sue.   And there at the bottom lay Mr. Gray, his bright eyes now dull, his nose below his mouth.  They would not be laughing anymore, nor would their whispers continue to come.

Washing up, Ronald changes into his extra uniform.  He then goes out and fills the milk.  He rotates the product as he’s been taught, finds that the person before him has not.  He sighs when he finds this; dejected to see that someone had not been doing their job as they were supposed to.  Finished, he takes his empty crates out back and piles them away.  He stacks the chairs as well, the ones Mr. Gray had rented for the day.  Making his way up front, he realizes he has lost track of time; that the customers have been waiting longer than they should, many of them now tapping their keys against the glass.  Opening the doors, they look at him weird, like they have never experienced rage before.  Have I missed some blood, he asks himself, and then he looks to his one good hand.  Seeing nothing, he welcomes them in; informs them that the cashiers will be up front shortly.  The customers smile in response to this, but Ronald feels that something is off.  He doesn’t know what, only that it is there.   The customers do not whisper however, nor do they laugh.

By Beau Johnson

The Lodge

Part one:

 A highway bends over the horizon.
 A walk through the entrance.

Judges sit at a long table
that vibrates from the music.

Fitful playthings touch you ever so gently
closing the windows

drawing the moldy curtains
they’re still accusing outdoors.

A rusty iron odor engages the viewers
Inside the cabin.

They performed surgery outside and
she enjoyed the feeling.

Given a new life
She breathes death into her followers

Final.

Next door the crave engine convulsed
with a female.

Part two:

A doll smiled.

A round room
semicircle window
silhouettes reflected

touch
touch
them

Part three:
slinky

slinky women scream
while dancing
wrapped in
shadows’ times
wood paneled fears / time to break out
rancid cats dancing
on her forehead

watch with delight
while the hangman’s card
quietly placed in
Persephone’s mouth is split
bodies here and there watch her sit
while she counts her fingers
a teaserama for the toy box
time to talk to the red women

outside is a red black sky

The final tornadoes touch down.

By Peter Marra

http://www.angelferox.com

Cost and Effect

“How much for those?” she asked, ogling my breasts.

I leaned back in my chair and stretched, buttons straining to be free, adding to the allure of the package.

“What do you think they’re worth?”

Her hands restless in her lap, baby rats squirming for their mother’s teat, I knew what she wanted.

“They feel great, too.  Certainly not fake, but better than real.  With a pair of these, the industry’s yours for the taking.”

Or faking.

“How much?”

I tapped a fountain pen against my lower lip, as if lost in thought.  Assessing her.

“What would you give for such a tempting rack?”

Her shoulders hunched up and down.

“My eye teeth.”

A hand fumbled for her bag, delivered her wallet onto my desk.

“Done.  You can pay me after.”

***

 She was drowsy after the procedure, the herbs took them that way sometimes.  The right address, a lab coat white as a Hollywood smile, and they didn’t ask too many questions.  Not till after.

“Can I touch them yet?”

I smiled, reassuring her.  It made it … tasty.

“Touch what you like, with our procedures there are no scars, no infections, no healing times.  Just… satisfaction.”

Ours.

Her hands squeezed 32Ds, plump and warm, and she sighed with happiness.

“Can I get you a drink?”

She nodded, tried to look around the room properly.

“My face feels weird.”

I nodded.

“It will for a while, but you’ll soon get used to it.”

Taking the glass of water in her hand, she tried to focus, and I trembled with glee.

“Shall I settle the bill now?  I love what you’ve done, I’m so happy.”

I couldn’t help a giggle leaking out like a spoonful of pee with a fright.

“You’ve already paid.”

She cocked her head to one side, frowned a little.

“But we never agreed a final figure.”

“Oh, we did.”

Her other hand found her face, tried to rub her eyes as she concentrated on what I’d said, then flitted from side to side as if in semaphore of terror.

Priceless.  The tapes were rolling.  My customers, my real customers would be very pleased.

“What’s this?  What’s on – my eye, what’s wrong with my eye?”

“I just did as you said.”

“Huh?”

I leaned in close, so close she could smell the sulphur on my breath.

“When we agreed prices.  You said.”

“What?”

Nearly a whisper, but the sound guys were good.  They’d have caught it.

“To give your eye teeth.”

And as she cried, as she wailed, I watched the tears creep past the thick white lashes of bone round her eye.

Now mascara; that might be a problem.

By Gill Hoffs

The Haunted Housewife

They called her the Haunted Housewife. She wore June Cleaver dresses from the 50’s. They were moth-eaten and dyed black to match the circles underneath her eyes. Her skin was doll’s porcelain, powdered into transparency. Some say she didn’t exist at all, that she was only a ghost who showed herself in the windows of the sinking Georgian manor on Pine Street. Holding a martini for a husband who would never come home and cooking dinner for children that could not digest anymore.

They called her the Haunted Housewife and her black hair was streaked white. Empty bottles of chemicals were found in the trash bin on the mornings after her sightings. Whole gallon jugs of Windex, tile cleanser, bleach and lye. The women would all whisper, what was she doing in there? Did she still clean that house? Did she polish the silver? Did she buff the floor? When did she emerge? Neighborhood children made a game of knock knock knock on her door. They ran away and hid behind the trash can and flaking picket fence.

She used to have a family the older women would say. She wasn’t always alone. One day no one was there, except the haunted housewife. Left to make empty beds, and iron unworn shirts. the police came. Everyone talked, but there was nothing said. Except that the husband and her two boys were never seen again.

Then, the children started disappearing in the woods off of Pine Street. Little boys with chubby cheeks, and a penchant for marble games, shooting things with BB guns. Winchester model. Hollering after a felled squirrel, compatriots would watch them fade into the forest fog. No one saw them after that. Now and then a boy’s sneaker would show up, smeared with mud with the faint odor of cleaning products.

Peering out she smiled, in the dark when they all slept. She was their joke but she had them all wrapped around her bony white finger, little did they know. Mounting the stairs she descended to the basement family room. It was set up just as they left it: trains, tv, molding floral print couch and reclining lounge chair. Underneath the big red wool rug, she pulled pieces of floor, exposing a locked door. Fitting the key carefully into the heavy lock the Haunted Housewife adjusted her heels, and opened up her real home. Down she twisted into the lighted hole where her family had multiplied like bunnies. Her husband sat at his work bench reading the paper, her boys were on the shag carpet with their Erector set, and the others . . well the others had come to live with them forever. Once her husband had said she should take up a hobby, now she was quite proud of her work. Taxidermy was a very considerate art after all.

By Emily Smith-Miller