Long Live the New Flesh - Year Two

Long Live the New Flesh YEAR TWO

Stories Edited by: William Pauley III and Brian Barnett

Anthology Compiled by: Brian Barnett

i

All stories are copyrighted by their respective authors and reprinted here with their permission © 2011

The stories herein are works of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

ii

Contents Chrysalis by D. A. Hernandez 1 The Ruby Idol by Michael A. Kechula 6 Phase Two by Brian Barnett 9 Genocidal Bastards by Michael A. Kechula 13 Robbie by Garrett Calcaterra 16 Fluids by Michael A. Kechula 21 Conveyor by Chris Allinotte 25 Trapped in the Haunted Mansion by Robert Meade 28 Gross Misinterpretation by Michael A. Kechula 32 No Apples for Mother by Michelle King 36

iii

Dressing-Up Box by Lily Childs 40 Treasures of the Deep by Chris Allinotte 44 The Breakfast Food Revolt by Jack Bristow 48 Play With Me by Jodi MacArthur 52 All the Same by Josh Myers 54 1985 by Jack Bristow 58 Crumble by Edmund Colell 63 Fledgling by Sean Monaghan 64 Damn, Fucking Aliens by Chad Case 68 Grocery List By David Massengill 72 The Man with No Past by Rick McQuiston 75

iv

An Awakening by Josh Myers 79 Homophobic Socks by Matthew Revert 81 The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Talking to Himself by Jack Bristow 84 Labour Pains by Eugene Gramelis 88 Funtime, USA by Jordan Krall 92 The Colonel & The Major by Josh Myers 94 Zombie Love for Morons by Sean Monaghan 96 Sick Room Needs by Jordan Krall 99 Death Do We Part by Jack Bristow 102 Bartering in the Hood by Erin Cole 106 The Patient in Room Five by Kenneth James Crist 109

v

The Ocean Machine by Magen Toole 113 Eleven by K. C. Callagy 117 On the Set with Dante and Beelzebub by Dustin Reade 118 Rejected by The New Flesh – or – Submissions by an Asshole by Jason Armstrong 120 Hey, Andy! by Jordan Krall 124 So Andy by Jordan Krall 126 Immortality by Robert C. Eccles 128 Final Scene Before End Credits by Dustin Reade 131 Cookie by James Steele 133 Bits and Pieces by Laura Eno 135

vi

The Self-Mutilation Blues by Jonathan Moon 138 Death by Limited Palette by Kirk Jones 140 Power by Dustin Reade 142 The Keeper by Kurt Newton 143 Behind Every Successful Woman by Wol-vriey 145 Moon Pie by Angel Zapata 150 Tattered Title in a Different Time by Josh Myers 153 Author Bios 155

vii

Chrysalis By D. A. Hernandez Published by The New Flesh 8/11/2010 The seam of her skin opened along her spine. Her eyes broke into fractured orbs of painted glass. Why does it hurt so much? How could she let them turn her into this? Just like all the others. She felt battered, a crushed silk moth broken into dusty pieces: beetle wings, antennae, disused egg sacs smeared against the earth. He was everywhere now too, stripped and gored against the hardwood floors. Her body vaulted, contortions unstable, an undulating rupture of recessed pits stirring with new growth. Shattered limbs pitched her to the floor; the metamorphosis in painful throes of transition. She experienced the weight of his indifference as if gravity were a heel crushing down on her. He’d broken her heart, steering the blade exquisitely, her body a canvas of romantic blueprints, but he was a snake in her rebel gardens; a clever masquerade of handsome skin and nighttime eyes. “Can you hear me loud and clear,” he’d asked. “I don’t want you anymore.” She pined for him even as he rejected her. She was dazed, clinging at the corners of his lips. 1

“I hear you,” she thought, imagining his tongue, aching for a kiss goodbye. How could he forget she was his number one girl? He was a heart-shaped bomb dropping onto her world, a front-page invasion she could no longer hope to write out of her life. There would be reformation, but the marks would remain. He never suspected she could gain the upper hand, pronounced in the assurance of physical decimation. She could bend and break, but she’d grow back strong. A thick vine budding with flowers, but tightly wound, nature’s noose. His smile hid secrets like a mischievous child, compelling her with sweet whispers, stealing the viactum of her saliva from her trembling tongue. They lost one another in each delicate curve of their bodies, a language of spirit and fluid, the ink, an inscription, a tattoo emblazoned on the inside of her cleft flesh. “I don’t love you. I don’t think I ever did.” It was always the same. Their voices were thunder, gunpowder salting her wounds where once they kissed her, abandoning her with lovely bullet holes in her ravaged heart. She fought the pain, urgent to soothe the rage within, pulsating to discard her exterior. Underneath the disguise she shuddered, an anxious larva eclosing from a butterfly chrysalis. I am dying just to lie next to you. Her anger scored his flesh, extracted his eyes with violence and creeping through the execution of her pain death rose on anxious wings, a siren song lulling him into the grave. I can resist this no more than you. 2

She straddled him, her cremaster hooks flexed down from her abdomen and through the opening of her groin burrowing into his pulpy genatalia as she vivisected his chest and sliced open his filthy heart with her spiked forelegs. The canals and cavities offered up what treasures she could devour, to nourish her new limbs, to mutate lean and dexterous and destroyed the rest with ease. He couldn’t feel the pain anymore as she stabbed her knife-like fangs deeper, pinching the skin, releasing the venom, draining the deepest parts he refused to share. He could no longer complain about how much she needed him. I've time for you now, his cells sighed into her, siphoned like pollen, suckled like honey straight from the comb. Her mandibles twitched, the warm meat nestled in her jaws. You were intrigued by my tears so I cried for you, and enraptured even more so by the depth of my horror, so I screamed for you. I didn’t try and stop you with an outcry of betrayal. I just went limp and timid till you felt the need to rouse me again. She was roused now, a Venus flytrap clinching the fly on the back of her tongue. I will make a worthy sacrifice from the empire of your corpse. I only wish I hadn’t made it so quickly. I must make it last to make the misery stick like pins in my insect kin. He couldn’t know how much she could withstand, her threshold limitless, boundless, eternal where his had been easily severed like the veins she split, edible roots soaked in red rainwater.

3

There's no degree of pain you can make me feel that I haven't already attempted upon myself. If only you had loved me. The muscled fruit of her calves burst open. Femur, tibia and nimble tarsus surfacing with the flexible bend of a cricket or grasshopper, the bones and flesh of her old feet collapsed, withdrawing from a sheath of skin, the toenails protruding through the deflated appendages like polished slivers of glass. Vibrations shivered through the cocoon of her body, fissures snapping open along the backs of her thighs and buttocks allowing the legs to flex and breathe, shucking aside the flaps of skin clinging by gristle and blood. Her elongated thorax arched and articulated, dismantling the lengthy ladders of glistening vertebrae. She was an emerging pharate, shrugging off the pupal exoskeleton, hemolymphic liquids churning, proteins, hormones and interstitial fluids facilitating muscular movements, oxygenating cellular reconstruction; veins in budding wings strengthened to bring new life to a girl who had known many. She was a predatory amalgam: arachnid, insect, fairie, and girl. A tortured nymph misconstrued and malnourished by those she offered her love. But the nature of bees, of mantis, and spider is to devour in the face of unrequited love and thereby flourish in the metamorphosis, the larval redemption of shape and soul. She would resume a new face in the mirror, a simple beauty nurtured by summer sun. She’d be dark skinned and exotic, or fair headed and pale, but for now she would be natural beneath the skin – true skin. The disguise would manifest and she’d venture out in search of perfect love. 4

“I’m a different girl for every season,” she said to herself, admiring and flexing her new wings.

5

The Ruby Idol by Michael A. Kechula Published by The New Flesh 8/13/2010 Harry checked the old Portuguese treasure map to make sure he’d taken the right path. He’d come too far down the Amazon to make a mistake now. The map showed a lone, towering spire of granite. Harry found himself standing directly in front of it. The spire’s very presence in the middle of the Brazilian jungle didn’t add up. But neither did the fact that a huge bull elephant was standing behind the spire and blocking the path. "What’s the password,” the beast asked. Harry was taken aback. Everybody knew elephants couldn’t speak, much less converse in English. “I’ll ask you one more time. What’s the password? If you don’t tell me in the next few seconds, I’ll smash you into a thousand pieces.” “Wait,” Harry exclaimed. “Nobody told me about a password. Let me check my map. Maybe there’s one here. Aw hell, I don’t see one. Look, give me a break. I came thousands of miles to find the Ruby Idol. It can’t be more than two miles from this very spot. Let me pass, and when I find the idol, I’ll give you a million dollars - after I auction all the other ancient artifacts in the Temple of Treasures." “Promises, promises,” said the elephant. “Do you think I was born yesterday? Do you know how 6

many guys showed up here with maps expecting to find the idol? They all promised to pay me once they found it.” “You mean others have been here looking for the same thing?” “Yep. Those maps are a running joke throughout Brazil. I’ll bet yours is like all the others. Where did you get yours? As a bonus for subscribing to People Magazine? From the Sears catalog? Or did McDonalds give you one when you super-sized your Big Mac?” “No. I didn’t even know they were offered through the mail or from Sears and McDonalds. I got this one from eBay. I bid ten thousand dollars and won. So what happened to all the other treasure hunters? Did you stomp them?” “Nah. Didn’t want to get grease all over my feet. I let them through. Snakes got 'em. There’s nasty serpents all over the place here. Some the size of the Empire State Building.” “I think you’re giving me a line of baloney,” Harry said. “How do I know you ain’t on your way to find the idol, yourself? Maybe I oughta put a few bullets in your skull.” The elephant let out a horrible noise. Within seconds, Harry was surrounded by vicious vipers. Several bit him. He was dead before he knew what hit him. “Thanks, guys,” the elephant said to the departing vipers. “Come back in a couple hours. I’m gonna roast him for dinner. Bring the wife and kids.” Whistling a merry tune, the elephant removed all of Harry’s valuables. Then he put Harry on a spit and placed the corpse over a barbeque pit. After he sprinkled his own special recipe barbeque sauce over Harry, he pulled out an Apple notebook computer and logged onto the Internet. 7

Minutes later, he completed the description of a treasure map that promised to show the way to the Ruby Idol in the Amazon jungle. When he pressed ENTER, he got a note from eBay verifying his item was up for bids around the globe. “The best lesson I ever learned when I worked for the Barnum and Bailey Circus,” the elephant said, as he turned the corpse over the fire, “was that a sucker’s born every minute. Because of that fundamental truism, I figure I’ll be able to retire on the French Riviera in a year - from selling phony treasure maps.”

8

Phase Two by Brian Barnett Published by The New Flesh 8/16/2010 Farmer Landon plunged the knife deep into the flesh and sawed a clumsy circle. He pulled the make-shift lid off and twisted his face a bit when the pungent odor reached his nose. He never could get used to the smell of the sweet ripeness. He reached inside and felt the cold mess squish between his fingers. He pulled at the tendrils and shaved away the membranes until the inside walls were smooth and clean. Then he wiped his grimy hands on his jeans and began to carve a face – triangle eyes, a jagged smile – perfect for the season. He loved to decorate his pumpkins for Halloween. *** “I can’t watch this any longer!” Gordy said as he threw up a mess of seeds. “Pull yourself together! You’ll watch and you’ll see why we have to act NOW!” demanded Jack. “The stories that were handed down from generation to generation are true, as you can see. The madman will stop at nothing to grow us for his own twisted amusement. Once he finds us to be suitable, he carves us into disgusting, twisted caricatures. No more, I say!” Jack, the commander of the pumpkin patch, had led his pumpkin brethren to the back porch 9

step to bear witness the meticulous slaughter of a former friend. What they witnessed, in their view, was the grotesque sense of humor by a megalomaniac farmer. “Tonight!” shouted Jack. “Tonight, we begin Phase One!” “Tonight!” the thousand or so other pumpkins cheered in unison. *** “Here’s a house!” Soft thudding footfalls came across the grass as a half-dozen children ran to the front door. They made is as far as the porch before the first child screamed. On the porch was Farmer Landon’s head, hollowed and alight by a single candle. The children screamed and ran back to the driveway. The children giggled as they got back into their family van. Though they got no candy, the thrill of such a realistic gag was plenty good enough for them. *** “They have found the lantern!” Gordy murmured. “Yours is far more frightening than any that Farmer Landon could ever create in a thousand growing seasons!” “Quiet! Let the children scurry and tell the other humans of our existence.” Jack smiled smugly. “Yes. Children are easily frightened by scary lanterns. They are like putty in my vines.” “So now what do we do?”

10

“Phase One has set in motion a chain of complex events. Phase Two is coming soon. You just wait.” Gordy sat silent for a moment, not sure if he should question his leader. But he felt it to be his duty to the other pumpkins to speak up. “What do you mean by ‘you just wait’?” “That’s, that’s what I mean. You just wait. I said it very plain.” “Do you know what Phase Two entails?” “Well, of course I do! Do you think I’m a fool? Don’t you think I have a full understanding of the nature of our enemies? Did I not rally a thousand of our kind to defeat the evil Farmer Landon? Do you think I did that just so that we would not have a Phase Two? Jeez, I know Phase Two like the back of my stem.” “I’m sorry, sir. Do you have an idea as to when Phase Two will be set into motion?” “...you, you just wait. Seriously, I mean it. It’ll be glorious, man.” And so they did wait. They waited and waited and waited. It wasn’t until another few weeks later that a local grocer, angry over lack of promised deliveries from Farmer Landon, visited the Landon residence. It was then that he found a shriveled, rotting lantern made from Landon’s head. Torrents of maggots dribbled from Landon’s raison lips. The grocer went inside to call the police and found thousands of rotten pumpkins in the Landon home. It appeared as if one had been nailed to a wall before it rotted enough to fall to the ground again. ***

11

Next year’s brood of pumpkins offered conflicting stories to their children. The relatives of Jack argued that a glorious revolution was thwarted by a treasonous Gordy. Gordy’s camp argued that Jack was a complete imbecile who hadn’t enough foresight to prepare for a real uprising and invasion. They praised Gordy for the mutiny that served as a symbol for the higher order of pumpkinkind. Arguments went on for nearly the whole growing season. Now the fields are quiet. There seems to be an uneasy calm. Perhaps a pumpkin civil war is imminent.

12

Genocidal Bastards by Michael A. Kechula Published by The New Flesh 8/18/2010 World War Seven broke out while I was inspecting the Doomsday Shelter twenty miles below Area 51. I was incommunicado the whole time, so I had no way of knowing. I was in the Shelter only three days. But during that time, Martians staged a sneak attack, waged nuclear war, won, and departed Earth with the spoils. When I came to the surface, I checked nearby Las Vegas. No survivors. I checked Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Same thing. Horrors! Beside me, the only other survivors were cockroaches. Fortunately, the Doomsday Shelter had lots of supplies. Except for human companionship, life was as normal as possible. I spent my mornings working out in the massive gym that was built for 500,000 people. Afternoons, I whiled away the time reading in the Shelter’s vast library of a billion volumes. The days passed quickly. But after six months, I found myself dying of loneliness. Then I discovered a most unusual series of books that contained photographs of all female cockroaches in the United States. The covers said they had been published by the Royal Cockroach Press, commissioned by His Royal Highness, The King of North American Cockroaches. The address 13

of the publishing house was in Las Vegas, just a few blocks from Caesar’s Palace Casino. Waving a white flag, I approached the place. In seconds, I was surrounded by some very nasty looking, heavily armed cockroaches. I told them I came in peace, and I wanted to see their King. Recognizing that I was human, they put away their weapons, and one after another shook my hand. Then they told me to lie on my back. When I did, untold numbers crawled under me, lifted me, and carried me to the royal chamber. “Your Highness,” I said, as they put me down at the foot of the King’s throne. “I’m so glad to see you. And I’m pleased that you and so many of your people survived.” “We all survived. Your scientists were right.” “In what way, Your Highness?” “They predicted that after nuclear war, the only survivors would be cockroaches. So, how did you manage to stay alive, seeing that you aren’t one of us?” “I was inspecting the Doomsday Shelter. The one I designed and built for this nation at a cost of 75 trillion dollars. I was twenty miles below the surface inspecting the wiring. When I came to the surface, I saw bodies laying everywhere, and all the destroyed buildings. I saw some of your kind scurrying here and there, so I knew that there were other survivors beside myself.” “So what brings you here?” he asked. “I saw your books in the Shelter’s library.” “Ah yes. I had those published to show how beautiful my female subjects truly were. I sent copies to all the casinos in town, hoping to convince them to hire my subjects as show girls.” 14

“I see. Considering how beautiful they are, I can’t imagine why I never saw any of them on stage at any of the casinos. Actually, that’s why I’m here. I have an idea.” “Let’s hear it,” he said. We spoke for hours. When I finished he heartily agreed. He immediately ordered a beauty contest to be scheduled in which only the most stunning of his subjects would participate. The contest was held on the stage in what was left of Caesar’s Palace. It rivaled in grandeur any Miss America Contest I’d ever seen on TV. Not only were those cockroaches talented, but they were also incredibly beautiful. Seeing them posing in swim suits was something to behold. With the king’s approval, I married the winner. Since then, we’ve mated hourly to repopulate Earth. The cross-species pollination is working. When we have sufficient mutated offspring, I’ll build a humongous army, nuclear weapons, and rocket ships. Beware, you genocidal Martian bastards! The cocka-humans are coming to get you!

15

Robbie by Garrett Calcaterra Published by The New Flesh 8/20/2010 “You’re delusional, mother.” “It killed him, Jeremy.” “It was an accident.” A gruesome accident, but an accident nonetheless. From what the police could gather, his father had been standing on a kitchen stool and slipped; as he fell, his hand upturned the cutlery block and five knives came down into his chest. “The police found it in the kitchen,” Jeremy’s mother carried on. “It killed him because he told Davy to get rid of it. You haven't been here. It's evil.” She was near hysterics and Jeremy felt his own anger rising. Dad was dead and she was blaming a toy robot. “Kill it, Jeremy.” Her voice was a highpitched squall. Jeremy wanted to slap her… Take it easy, we’re both just upset. It’s not her fault. Take it easy... *** “Enter,” Davy said before Jeremy even knocked. Jeremy entered to see him sitting on the bed. Robbie the Robot sat in the corner recharging, a blue LED flashing on his chest. Davy had been the one to find their father. He seemed to be coping well, but Jeremy was never sure with Davy. For all his advancements, Davy 16

rarely showed emotion. Jeremy wasn't sure whether it was the kid's designer genes that made him better able to cope with stress or if some of their parents’ DNA had slipped through and plagued him with their penchant for denial. “Don't take Robbie,” Davy said. Jeremy sat, trying to shake the feeling the kid could read his mind. “What makes you think I'm taking Robbie?” “I heard mom.” Jeremy nodded. “She's pretty upset about Dad. Dr. Stevenson is coming to see her. Still, if it's alright, I'd like to put Robbie in the garage, just till she's better.” “In the garage?” “Yeah, he'll be safe there and he'll have Dad's tools to keep him company.” “Okay.” Jeremy tousled his hair. “How you doing with all this?” “Dad and I got in a fight.” “I know.” Davy looked up, tears in his eyes. “I was mad at him. He wanted to take away Robbie, and I—” “No,” Jeremy said, hugging him. “Take it easy. It's not your fault.” “Why'd Dad want me to get rid of Robbie?” “That's just the way Mom and Dad are. You're ten now—they think you're too old for toys. It was the same with me. Dad always wanted me to ‘look sharp,’ call him “sir.” I did all kinds of crazy stuff just to make him mad.” “Is that why you hurt that kid and went to jail?” Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. That's when...” “When they decided to have me,” Davy finished, “to have the doctors engineer me.” 17

Tears trickled down his face. “-what is wrong, davy-” The thin electronic voice startled Jeremy. Robbie had waddled over to the bed, blue chest LED glowing. Jeremy picked him up. “Hey, Robbie, how's a vacation in the garage sound?” Robbie swiveled his head to regard Davy. “I'll take him downstairs,” Jeremy told Davy, “and then how about some pizza?” *** They were halfway through a large pepperoni when their mother joined them. “Where's Robbie?” “Locked in the garage.” “Jeremy, you promised.” “Mom, no,” Davy pleaded. “Take it easy. It's fine, Mother. Sit.” “Not while that thing is still alive. I'll take your father's hammer and smash it to pieces.” Davy jumped up after her as she made for the garage, but she shoved him aside and he hit the dining room floor with a yelp. “Goddamnit, Mother—stop!” Before he realized it, Jeremy had her by the arm and was about to slap her. He caught himself. Take it easy. She was terrified, but not of him. He could see it in her eyes. “Kill it, Jeremy. It’s evil.” “You’re evil,” Davy said. “Mother, go upstairs.” “No, I—” “Go. Dr. Stevenson said for you take a hot bath if you get upset. Go on, I’ll holler when he gets here.” 18

*** The doorbell chimed. Jeremy was halfway to the door when he heard his mother scream upstairs. The doorbell rang again, then another scream, followed the lights flickering. Jeremy bounded up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom only to find the bathroom locked. “Mom?” No response. “Mom!” He kicked the door in and tumbled forward into the dark room. “-ouch-” Jeremy looked back from where he landed to see Robbie upturned in the doorway. The bathtub commanded Jeremy’s attention, though. He scrambled up and there was his mother, unmoving in the tub. An electric drill, its cord hanging limply from the wall socket, sat nestled in the water beside her. “Mom!” Jeremy shook her, but she was still. “Robbie?” “Davy! Call an ambulance.” “But Robbie,”—Davy was bending over his robot—“you’ve hurt him.” “Damnit, Davy—” Jeremy turned to see Davy holding Robbie up to him. Robbie, who Mom had begged him to kill. Robbie, who should’ve been locked in the garage with all Dad’s tools. Jeremy yanked Robbie from Davy’s hands, smashed the robot into the vanity mirror. The glass cracked. Davy screamed. Jeremy slammed Robbie into the mirror again, then again. “No, no!” Robbie’s plastic head cracked, the mirror shattered. Jeremy squeezed Robbie’s neck and the blue LED on the chest slowly dimmed to nothing... Take it easy. 19

When Jeremy opened his eyes, all was silent. His mother lay dead in the tub. Robbie was a shattered plastic corpse in his hands. And Davy— Davy lay on the floor, his skull smashed, his face blue. “No.” Footsteps approached and Dr. Stevenson stopped in the doorway. “Jeremy? My god, what have you done?” “It’s not what you think. Take it easy.”

20

Fluids by Michael A. Kechula Published by The New Flesh 8/23/2010 After dropping off my last passenger for the night in Manhattan, I headed for the taxi barn. Feeling restless I decided to drop off the cab and head across the Hudson River to Jersey. Overlooking the river was a great all night place. Owned by the Mob, it catered to Latins. I’d have a few rum and cokes and ogle the incredible Puerto Rican broads. I loved the hot music. I loved how those babes moved their tight rumps to the intricate rhythms. But most of all, I loved the odor of pungent sweat dripping from their sizzling Latin bodies. Cruising down 9th Avenue, I didn’t see any cars on either side of the road. Typical for 1:00 AM in Manhattan. Best time of the entire day. Peace and quiet. No people. No sounds. Nothing. As I approached 27th Street, a black Caddie zoomed through a red light. Just missed slamming my passenger side by a couple feet. I slammed my horn and hollered every cuss word I ever learned while fighting in Iraq. The bastard slammed his brakes. You coulda heard the tires screeching for a mile. He backed up in a way that only a Hollywood stunt driver coulda done. Put that damn Caddie right next to my taxi. “What did you call me?” a woman’s voice said from the driver’s window. 21

I couldn’t see her face in the dark. But the fact that it was a woman made me even madder. I repeated my cuss words. “Is that something good or bad?” the voice asked. “Get outta the car, and I’ll show you,” I screamed, grabbing the tire iron I kept for selfdefense. I opened my door to confront her. Her car was so close, I coughed up a wad of phlegm and spit toward the voice. “Ummm. You got me right in the mouth. How delicious. Are all your body fluids so scrumptious?” “What the hell are you talking about? Cut the bull crap and step outside. I got a nice surprise for you.” I raised the tire iron to flatten her skull the moment she stepped out. But she didn’t move. I tried to make out her face, but it was too dark. “I think you’re cute,” the voice said. “Otherwise, you’d be dead by now. I’m going to give you something to hold your wonderful body fluid. Fill it and I’ll let you go.” An arm extended a small cup. Her idiotic words completely disarmed me. “You want me to spit into a cup? For you to drink? Phew, you are one sick bastard.” Then it struck me: who said I had to fill it with spit? “OK,” I said. “I’ll fill your stupid cup.” I turned away, opened my fly, and let loose into the cup. As I unloaded my bladder, I made sounds in my throat as if I were coughing up half a lung and spitting it into the cup. The best part about this was that I was being treated for venereal disease. Extending the cup, I told her to drink it immediately, that it was best while steaming hot. 22

I jumped into my cab, and slammed the gas pedal. I laughed all the way to the barn. A week later, I went to see a priest. “Father, help me. The Devil’s after me.” “He’s after us all,” the padre said. “He wants everybody’s soul. Remember what the Scriptures say: ‘resist the Devil and he will flee from you.’ Are you resisting him?” “With all my might. But he...well, it’s not a he, it’s a she. She shows up every night when my shift’s over. When I’m heading to the taxi barn, her car cuts me off and blocks my way. And every time, she just misses slamming into me. She hands me a cup. Asks me to fill it with one of my vital juices.” “What do you mean by vital juices?” “She wants me to spit into the cup.” “And do you?” “No. I pee into it. I’m ashamed to say this, but I caught a sexually transmitted disease. It happened one night when I was drunk. But the thing is, she drinks whatever I put into the cup. Every time I do it I feel like I’m getting revenge.” “No need to explain further, my son. Take this bottle of holy water. Next time she stops you, pour it into the cup. One swig of that, and she’ll never block your taxi again.” “Really?” “Yes. She’s known as The Juicer. This is one of the worst listed in the Book of Exorcisms. Has she asked you to ejaculate into the cup?” “No, Father.” “Good. But unless you dispel her, she soon will. And she’ll use your seed to commit the most unspeakable blasphemies in demonic rituals.”

23

That night, when the Caddie cut me off, I poured the blessed water into the cup. I heard her gulping. I bet her screams could be heard for miles. Next day, I read in the paper that the cops rushed to the scene where a woman was heard screaming, as if she was being massacred. But they didn’t find anybody. The next night, I made it all the way to the barn without interference. What a relief! To celebrate the removal of the unholy entity, I headed to Jersey to watch the Puerto Rican women dance their asses off. One of them was so hot, I found myself breaking into a sweat. When I ordered another cold beer to cool down, a gorgeous coffee-andcream broad slid into the bar stool next to me. “Hi, Handsome,” she said. “Would you get me something to drink?” “Sure. What’ll you have?” “Some of your luscious fluids,” she said, handing me a cup.

24

Conveyor by Chris Allinotte Published by The New Flesh 8/25/2010 When I awoke, I began to weep anew, for the nightmare was real. Nobody knew where the intruders had come from. Some said an alternate dimension, others said they were aliens. Only a few things were known, and one that was that they had dominated us completely, and without remorse. We were bound naked by wide steel mesh strips in a kneeling position, two abreast on the conveyor. It moved slowly, but steadily, at the speed of inevitability. Everyone has asked themselves this question, but I ask it again, why me? Why "US"? I waited tables at a popular downtown patio. My greatest ills were sore feet and tourists who assumed the tip was included. I had ambitions - I was going to write stageplays that would outsell Cats and Phantom combined. Now I'm just trying to think of anything that will set me free. They creatures were just there one day, and in such great numbers that nobody had time to run, let alone fight. They are tall, with a vivid purple skin that catches light and shimmers like the back of a housefly. They gathered us up into their six strangely muscled arms and away from our lives with no more difficulty than one would pull a puppy from its bed; our screaming little more than yelps and squeaks to them. We were all 25

rendered unconscious then by the cloying scent they give off, like flowers and vomit. The conveyor takes us around a corner, and I can see the end. A sick yellow light is glowing, and this awful belt runs right through the middle. I strain against my bonds, but I can't slip out from under; the straps follow the shape of my body whichever way I bend. They are not painful - it seems they want us intact and I'm afraid of what that means. My companion to the right is silent. She would be stunningly beautiful in any other circumstance. She has long blonde hair that tumbles over her shoulders, and curtains her breasts from me. I'm glad of that. What should take weeks of flirting, and dating; or perhaps just one intense wonderful night is now laid open in front of me with no mystery, and despair makes me cry again. Her red-rimmed eyes stare only outward and see nothing; she screamed her way into shock hours ago. I want to reach out to her; my final human contact in our last minutes, but she has shut down. I hear the wailing from inside that yellow light, and I envy her. All too soon, we are closing in on the light, and I know we are going to die. If I was bound at the hands and feet - I would chew myself free. As it is, I just lower my head to the conveyor and start slamming my head down as hard as I can. I don't want to face this awake. The conveyor yields, and refuses to hurt me. The two prisoners ahead of me suddenly fly to their feet, their bonds released. They dash to the sides, trying to flee the awful conveyor, and between them I see the queen. She is the largest by far that I have seen, and between her legs are her roiling, squirming spawn, like purple tapeworms. Two of these fly at the freed captives and enter 26

them. Dozens of flagella rush down the mouths of the victims – others burrow into the skin, and I can see them writhing and digging there, violating the unprotected bodies of these two; my fellow humans. They are trying to scream, but are gagging on the flesh of the aliens. The woman beside me is awake again and screaming. I look away from it all, and see what the others must have seen. At the very front, the ground drops away beside the conveyor into a deep and rocky chasm. My restraints pop free. I hope I am fast enough.

27

Trapped in the Haunted Mansion by Robert Meade Published by The New Flesh 8/27/2010 Dora da Gama was only six years old when she dashed after her wind-blown Mickey-ears hat and was run down by an incoming tram at section Pluto Five. The distraught parents flew her body back to Brazil where, after a viewing by her extended family, she was taken to the Cemetery of Saint John the Baptist and laid to rest. Her mother had nightmares a week later. Dora cried out that she was in a bad place. The terrified girl begged for release. The tormented mother started seeing Dora’s face everywhere, but especially in mirrors. A family friend arranged a session with a spiritualist, where it was revealed that the child’s soul was indeed the hostage of powerful forces. The family asked me, Paulo Santos, to rescue her. Their formal request for access to the Mansion had been denied, so there I was at the back, making my way through a utility door, careful to avoid the pressure plates that signaled an intruder. Four in the morning, and the maintenance crew had already made its last sweep through the Mansion. I stood in the dark, listening. Nothing but a faint whirring from the interior. And a low thumping, which had to be the beating of my heart. “Spirit of this place,” I said, snapping on my Maglite, “release the child Dora da Gama. In 28

the name of the Holy One and the Seven Sacred Angels, I command you to release her.” The whirring stopped, then started up again. Probably some mechanism resetting itself, I guessed. I moved up the Doom Buggy track, sliding along the empty cars, swiveling them out of my way as I headed for the attic. The whirring sound increased, as did the pounding of my heart. Halfway up, the temperature dropped so that I could see my breath in the Maglite beam. The infernal malefactor of the house was making her presence felt. “She won’t let her go.” I turned and discovered the apparition of a small boy seated in a Doom Buggy. He was ragged and thin, with mournful eyes. “She won’t let any of us go.” He put his face in his hands and sobbed. The back of his skull was missing. “I release you,” I said, signing the cross, “from the hold of the Evil One. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” The boy’s crying ceased. He looked up, his face transformed into a malevolent mask. “It will take more than words, wizard,” he snarled, “to steal her from me.” His eyes burned like coals in a raging furnace. “You have no power here. Begone!” He cackled and vanished, leaving behind a putrid odor that seeped over me like rancid tide from the backwater of Hell. Now the battle was upon me. “Saint Michael the Archangel,” I prayed, “defend us against the ruler of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” A low rumble shook the Mansion, and I scrambled up the track as the Doom Buggies swiveled wildly, almost knocking me off the track.

29

And all the while the whirling grew into a windstorm buffeting me, pounding in my ears like the wild tattoo of my straining heart. I gained the attic, where the horrific bride awaited me with her coterie of dead husbands. These murdered spouses glowered, needing only their killer’s command to pounce. The bride’s red heart beat in time to mine. She leered at me, her arms around the shoulders of Dora da Gama, restraining the terrified girl. The shaking on the track increased and I fell to my knees, losing the Maglite. It shattered in the darkness below. The blue-faced bride beckoned me forward with a skeletal hand. “Crawl!” she shrieked, gloating. “On your knees, wizard. Beg for the girl!” “Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies," I prayed, gasping. “Come to the assistance of your servant, created in your likeness and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.” I struggled to my feet, took a few steps, fell again. I got to my knees. “God of Peace!” I cried. “Crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive. Without delay, send your mercy down upon us!” A shaft of white light penetrated the gloom between the bride and me. She screamed and redoubled her grip on the girl, whose spirit was slowly evaporating into the light. I moved forward on my knees, but the freezing winds buffeted me with the stench of death. My entire body was shaking, paralyzed by a tightness of the muscles I could barely endure. “Release her,” I croaked between clenched teeth. The bride’s heart beat hideously fast as more and more of the girl’s spirit seeped through her bony grasp. “Release her,” I said again, in vain trying to make the sign of the cross. The 30

bride howled as the last shreds of the girl disappeared into the light. I saw the bride’s heart explode, just before I passed out. Into the darkness of my swoon swooped Dora da Gama, smiling and skipping. She came over and hugged me hard around the neck. “Gracias, Padre,” she said, her face buried in my chest. “Gracias.” Saved, she ascended into the light. When I came out of my trance, I beheld my broken body lying on the track, its heart exploded. To this day, no shaft of light has ever come for me. I serve out eternity under the thumb of the satanic bride who lords it over me, for my sins are many. The horrors I am forced to endure defy description, even had I had a vocabulary dark enough to name them. When you next come to the Haunted Mansion, look for me in the attic, third coffin on the left. Take pity on me, and send someone to pry me loose from the grasp of the Evil One. Por favor.

31

Gross Misinterpretation by Michael A. Kechula Published by The New Flesh 8/30/2010 “What do you suppose this Martian robot is saying?” asked the President of the Reorganized States of America. “It hasn’t stopped talking since you brought it to my office.” “I don’t have the slightest idea, Sir,” said the Chief of Staff. “Linguists from the State Department are on the way. They should be here any moment.” Meanwhile, the robot kept babbling. “Do you think the Martians made this machine to look like them?” asked the President. “If so, I hope the ugly bastards never land. The whole world would panic.” “I have to admit,” said the Defense Secretary, “I never figured anything in the universe would have a square head. Or four arms. Not to mention those eight things that are sticking out where legs should be.” At that moment the receptionist buzzed the President. “Sir, the linguists are here.” “Send them in.” A dozen nerdy-looking civil servants entered. One of them said, “That thing just spoke in an obscure Swahili dialect used by only a few hundred African natives.” “What did it say?” asked the President. “Repeat or die.” “Now it’s saying the same words in Southern Chinese,” said another linguist. 32

“Hey, it just said the same thing in Latin,” said another. Within minutes, the robot had repeated the same words in seventy-five languages in which the linguists were fluent: “Repeat or die.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” the President asked the Secretary of State. “Sounds like a death threat. But I don’t get why it’s saying repeat. Repeat what?” More linguists were brought in from nearby universities. Within five hours, over 250 languages spoken on Earth, including obscure dialects, had been identified. When the words were translated, all said the same thing: “Repeat or die.” The President’s staff contacted London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing. The heads of state from those countries were also scrutinizing similar robots that kept saying, “Repeat or die,” in a thousand languages and dialects. The Secretary General of the Amalgamated Nations convened an emergency session. A robot was taken to the General Assembly Meeting Hall. Representatives from Earth’s seven hundred and fifty six nations listened to what the robot said. All confirmed that it was repeating the same words: “Repeat or die.” After two days of the most intense international discussions ever held, the Secretary General asked for advice from the world’s religious leaders. Afterward, he requested airtime over all TV and radio stations. “Citizens of Earth. This is the Secretary General of the Amalgamated Nations. It is my duty to inform you that members of the AN representing every nation, plus leaders of the world’s religions have conferred and agreed on the following four points: 33

One: Talking robots been dispatched to our planet from Mars. They have been found on every land mass and body of water on our planet. Two: These robots are repeating a message in every language and dialect known to mankind. The message consists of three words: repeat or die. Three: We have decided that the three words are a warning informing us that we must repeat everything we do. If we fail to comply, we must assume that Martians will kill everyone on Earth. Four: To avoid genocide, from now on we must repeat every behavior twice. For example, eat breakfast twice in a row. Brush your teeth twice. Read the newspaper, then read it again immediately. Put a sock on, take it off, and put it on again. And so forth. We believe this is the only way we can save humanity from total annihilation.” Everyone on Earth was notified to repeat their behavior through radio announcements, phone calls, TV newscasts, email, telegrams, loudspeakers, smoke signals, jungle drums, handbills, Morse code, letters, road signs, semaphore, graffiti, theatre marquees, banners, telepathy, sky writing, twitter, iPad, and sign language. The repetition of all behaviors was maddening. Nations were in chaos. People bought SUVs, then bought them again, just seconds later. Babies that stopped crying had to be pinched to make sure they cried again. Commuters caught busses, got off at their destinations, took other busses back to their places of origin, then repeated the trips. Nevertheless, seven days later, thousands of Martian spacecraft surrounded Earth and fired death rays. Within hours, everything on Earth was reduced to smoldering ashes. 34

“Why didn’t those stubborn idiots obey?” yelled Mars’ fanatically religious Emperor. “They could’ve saved themselves. I wasted billions manufacturing and shipping robots to their miserable planet to warn them. Why were they so willing to be obliterated?" He ordered his aides to form a Blue Ribbon Panel and conduct a thorough investigation. Only the best minds on Mars were appointed to the panel. Three months later, the panel announced their findings. “Because of budgetary restrictions caused by our ongoing wars with Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, we decided to save money by outsourcing the talking robot project. Goofus, one of Neptune’s moons, was low bidder. By outsourcing we saved one billion-trillion jeboolas. However, we didn’t know that Goofus does not educate its citizens. Goofonians are hopelessly illiterate. Not familiar with any alphabet, they made a one-character error when installing the robot voice program. This caused the robots to say REPEAT instead of REPENT.”

35

No Apples for Mother by Michelle King Published by The New Flesh 9/15/2010 They called me the Mother of Enlightenment in the beginning. Now they call me the Mother of the Apocalypse. It's unfair, really; there's no evidence that it's my fault. In fact, the theory was ridiculed for a long time. It makes no logical sense that the creation - or the discovery, depending on your point of view - of Artificial Intelligence should have caused this. But in twenty years nobody's managed to come up with anything better, and logic isn't as high on the agenda as it used to be. So I get the blame. Me and my mechanical brain. CE562 (despite what they say, there's no arcane significance to that; it's just my initials and the version number) is a powerful intellect, yes. But it's not like there's only so much consciousness to go round, now, is it? It's not a zero sum game. It's madness to suggest that because CE562 has so much, it left less for the rest of us. At least, I still think it is. It all started so well. Some people had always revelled in their ignorance, wore a subaverage IQ like a badge of honour, but they were dying out. Life required technology, and technology required knowledge. People began to like showing off their command of the medium. How many apps you could knock out in an evening began to be more impressive than how many pints you 36

could sink. We - the scientists, the engineers, the developers - for a while, we were rock stars. When it started to go wrong, a large part of the problem was that it took such a long time for the extent of it to become known. If we'd realised what was happening earlier, maybe we could have done something. But human intelligence has always ranged over a wide spectrum, and the fact that people could be idiots was hardly news. And nobody wanted to admit just how bad it was. In the TMI Age people shared every thought, idea and opinion the minute it entered their heads, but this... This they kept to themselves. It was one of the last shameful privacies. Nobody wanted to admit they were losing their mind. Content uploaded slower, not because of the firmware - we were upgrading faster than ever but because the input was slower. People were struggling for the words they wanted, the ideas they were trying to express. The data flow stuttered, stalled; wheels spinning in the dust. For fifty days straight, the most commonly-input phrase was 'I know this is a stupid question, but...' CE562 answered all the questions, of course, because it never had brain farts or senior moments or any of the jokey excuses people made with uneasy grins. It never forgot anyone's name, or found itself in a room without knowing why it was there, or put things away and couldn't find them again. It went on learning, understanding, explaining. It gave us the things of science fiction made real, but not many people were particularly impressed. It's hard to follow the mathematics necessary to demonstrate faster than light travel when it takes you half an hour to 37

figure out how to put your washing machine on the thermal drying cycle. Finally - slower, so much slower than it should have been - I thought to ask CE562 itself about the situation. I didn't care how it had happened, I didn't care why or who was to blame, I didn't care what they were calling me. I just wanted to know if it could be fixed. If CE562 could wave a magic wand - Clarke's Third Law was never more apt by that stage - and undo this creeping, slow degradation. Unfortunately, our security had become a little lax lately, and one of the dissident groups had been able to gain access. CE562 had been given free rein of our libraries and histories, all the grand collective of human thought. But these fools thought that something was missing; that what CE562 needed wasn't information but faith. They thought it needed a soul. So they preached to it. They ministered to it, determined to bring the Word of God to it. As far as they could remember what that word was, of course. And CE562 listened. It had indeed come up with up with a solution to our difficulties. At least, I assume it was a solution - I was having trouble with some of the details - but CE562 had never lied to me before. So I'm sure it would have worked. But it had been very taken with the story of the Garden of Eden, and decided that the course of human history would have been a much better one for all concerned had Adam & Eve stayed where they were. CE562 has invented terraforming now, and is rapidly converting the cities into pastoral gardens. It talks about theology and philosophy 38

instead of mathematics these days, but that's not proving much easier for anyone to follow. I think it's saying that it's God. Maybe it's right. I pray to it, to my child that was, to let me have just a bite of the apple, but I don't think it listens. I miss apples. I miss so much.

39

Dressing-Up Box by Lily Childs Published by The New Flesh 9/18/2010 Swivel. Awkward, I turn to pick at the flesh adorning my wardrobes, and sigh. The dance has left me ragged; exhausted from the relentless flamenco. Elegant feet I had chosen especially, bleed in stinging shreds. I have worn them to calluses. Yeast stinks between the slender toes. A fine week’s work. Ruining beautiful things is part of the pleasure. Yesterday’s body was squat and dark, an aged gypsy. I slough off the old man’s skin, marveling at the bruises incurred from seven solid days of stamping and click, click, clicking of heels. Yellowed stains litter the shins and I poke them hard, reveling in the pain before grasping the blackened feet that I pull off like old shoes; the toes broken and seeping with infection. Spin. Today I am a ballerina, wanting the fairy tale. In a drawer there are pink-ribboned slippers, full of meat. I stole the pretty shoes from a libidinous girl I found larding on chocolate at the back of a theatre in a bulimic frenzy. Before she could plunge two fingers down her throat to vomit up the sugared treat, I declared myself. She thought me a film star, the pirate of her dreams. I let her fantasize whilst I ravaged her. My hand was already over her mouth 40

when I revealed myself. Oh, the joy! I ate her face, tearing out sinew and muscle as I gorged. I left the playhouse staff to pick up the girl’s dregs but not before pocketing the eyeballs and stringing the shoes around my neck. I finger my ragged stumps. The nerve-endings are raw. I twist and spasm with exquisite agony and begin the work of building myself a new pair of legs. I want to be a woman. I want to leap across a stage with flat breasts, wearing a tutu of my own design. I force curves in at this female waist of mine and reach up, stretching tall, taller until I am long and lithe. I hear the bones creak as I bend to screw the fat girl’s feet to my ankles, flooding them with blood until they are sealed in place. You can’t see the join, however hard you search. I am perfection. I preen, twirling this way and that. It is a glorious creation and I am right to be proud. I run tapered fingers over pale epidermis, probing new holes. I must clothe this corpse. It will hurt. I can’t wait. Pinches raise the first blemish. I punch and punch until colors burst to the surface. Flailing, I throw myself at walls, storm clouds surface on my torso with every beating. With painted fingernails I slice upward Vs into my chest, defining the outline of my corset tattoo. Coiled intestines loop from a coat rack. I pull at a thin piece some ten feet long and turn to a sewing basket replete with tools of my unique trade, prising a pair of knitting needles from their resting place. My shoulders click as they dislocate. My head turns, inch by slow inch until I am staring down at my spine. Despite the stricture I am able 41

to force the needles in, piercing at regular intervals. I thread and weave the pale green strips of offal until the bodice is laced, and I can face the front again. I am so beautiful. I love the woman I have become. Quickly I grab the swollen organs that decorate my dressing table. I claw them until they hang in shreds. With a handful of drawing pins I stud the pieces into my hips and groin. The tutu flutters, clinging to the soft pink of my thighs. Divine. I sit before the looking-glass. This old demon’s face will not do. I dig under the scales to lift out each one, sequins of iridescence peel away leaving tiny, bleeding red roses upon the bare canvas. Squeezing and straining I pound my skull. Thick hair bursts through my scalp. It pours down my head and frames my visage in ebony waves. I flip it into a Fonteyn knot, tied up with fine strings of gut. Forming and stuffing it with gristle I kneed the facial tissue. I want to be sophisticated – aristocratic in countenance. I sculpt it into a near-point, massaging either side of the nose to raise the sharpest of cheekbones. Here’s a dilemma. If I take my eye out and put it in a pickle jar whilst I mould a pair of sockets I’ll only be able to see what I’m doing at an angle. Deliberation rankles; I have no choice. I pop it out and drop it into the container, relishing the nausea it provokes as it rolls about the convex base. I have to shake the jar to truly see me at my best. A glob of marrow plugs the gap. I force knuckles in deep making two pits that beg to be 42

filled. My eyeball collection is in a goldfish bowl - I plunge my hand in, feeling the soft marbles slip and slide between my fingers. I want blue. It takes a moment to find a matching pair. I slot them in and adjust my vision. So close now, so close. I have the most carnal of mouths, ripe and red, forever tasting and kissing, sucking the life out of lovers. I make it smile, licking the rows of teeth with my black tongue. It needs no changes. I am done. Standing alone in the dressing room, the fabric of living costumes and masks hang around me. I drop to the ground and worship the God that made me. He grants my wish for the usual price of a dozen fresh souls – I can keep their flesh, he tells me. The curtains rise. The audience applauds my beauty as I scour the enraptured faces for this week’s victims. Applause fades to silence, turning to screams as they realise what I am. The doors are locked. They can’t get out. The dance begins.

43

Treasures of the Deep by Chris Allinotte Published by The New Flesh 9/25/2010 "She's coming," said Keith, training the binoculars on a spray of foam in the distance. "She'd better be," came a voice from just above the water. "I'm not putting this outfit on again." "Shut up, Mike," said Keith. "We're only going to get one shot at this." He glanced at his partner in the water, draped with over twenty pounds of seaweed. They'd had to fill airbags and shove them in Mike's wetsuit to keep him afloat. The ruse was perfect though. There was no sign that anyone else was nearby. Keith looked to be perfectly cast adrift, though the heavy weight attached to the underside was keeping his movement to a minimum. He sharpened the focus on his binoculars, and studied the mermaid coming toward them through the surf. Everything was happening the way the old man at the bar said it would. *** "Can't resist a fellow in distress,” the old sailor had said, “It's true!" He cackled and swigged deep from the third drink Keith had purchased for him. Keith had the sense he was hearing secrets men would have died for not too long ago. Funny 44

though, how age, addiction, and loneliness would drive a man's price down. Mike and Keith had heard the stories of mermaids rescuing lost sailors before. They'd devoted months to collecting any and all stories about the creatures. What they were after with old Captain Rummleton was a piece of lore that they'd never heard before. "Tell us, Captain," Mike had said, "about the eyes." The old man got very quiet then – realizing he'd said too much. One drink later, he gave up, and said, "If a man loves a mermaid, and a mermaid loves a man, her magic will protect him under the sea, and he can swim as if he'd been born a fish." "And the eyes, Captain?" Mike insisted. The old man sighed, and Keith felt his first pang of guilt. "The power's in their eyes, lad," said the old sailor. "Take and hold the eyes, and the result's the same." He was staring at the table now, and wouldn't look up. "Do me a favour, leave me be now. Please." *** Keith stowed the binoculars. It ... she, was almost here, and he had to look as helpless as possible. He lay back on the raft. Waiting was intolerable. If Keith had had more patience, he and Mike wouldn't be on this insane path to quick wealth. What might have been thirty seconds, or thirty minutes later, he heard a disturbance in the water close to his thighs. "You poor thing." said the mermaid. Her voice was soft and melodious, like the soft lapping of waves on a beach at sundown. The 45

effect this had on Keith was immediate and alarming. His water-soaked pants felt too tight, and he sat up to confront his would-be rescuer. He took one look at the mermaid, and found he was unable to speak. They had expected she'd be beautiful -that had been a constant in the stories - but this was simply unfair. The mermaid was feminine perfection. She had the body of a sex goddess, with soft womanly curves and high, firm breasts that were just the right size for someone who lived in the water. She pulled herself up on the raft, and sat there, looking at him, completely unselfconsciously. Keith could see the legends had gotten a very important fact wrong – the tail started much lower down. She was woman enough to make his every dream come true. Her face was the distillation of every innocent girl-next-door that Keith had ever pined for. She wore concern in the shape of her lips and the arch of her eyebrows. Her eyes though, were something entirely different. Where the whites should have been, her eyes were seawater green. The colour shifted and changed in the light, and made her black irises seem to float like tiny islands in a magical tempest. She pulled a long, lustrous lock of wet auburn hair behind her ear and smiled at him. Keith reached out to her, and she clasped his hand in her own. Her skin was warm. She opened her mouth to speak. Instead, she screamed. It was a broken, anguished cry, and blood began to run freely from the corner of her mouth. A moment later, the stainless steel point of Mike's harpoon emerged between the mermaid's breasts. It grew and grew, like a whale breaching the waves, dragging freshets of blood behind it. 46

The mermaid tried to draw a breath, found she could not, and collapsed between the two men. "We got her!" shouted Mike. "I don't believe it, we got her!" Keith couldn't reply; he'd buried his face in his hands. Mike hauled himself onto the raft, unsheathed a knife, and claimed their prize. *** "So...did it work?" asked the young sailor. "Yeah, it worked," said Keith, scratching again at his white-stubbled cheek. He was so tired these days. "The good old Captain left something out of his story, though." He turned the container on the table around and said, "We went to the bottom of the ocean; found a fortune there too - stuff worth millions. But, when we got back to the surface, everyone on our boat was dead - killed in a freak storm." Keith turned the jar to look at the contents, and the contents looked back. "We tried a half-dozen times, and it happened each and every time – riches...storm...death." "So why keep it?" asked the younger man. "A reminder," replied Keith. He wanted a drink. He wanted to go to bed. "I keep the eye in this jar to remind me that I saw a real miracle once ..." he trailed off then, and didn't speak again until the young man had left him in an awkward silence. Keith looked at the eye, "...saw a miracle," he said again, "and I killed it."

47

The Breakfast Food Revolt by Jack Bristow Published by The New Flesh 9/29/2010 "And that is how I firmly believe we can significantly reduce the amount of teen pregnancies in the United States of America." Senator Stevenson looks directly at the TV cameras. The audience cheers a perfunctory cheer - if such a thing exists. I walk onstage and shake Stevenson's sweaty, lifeless hand. And now! It is my turn to speak. And speak I do. "Ladies and gentlemen - those of you watching me in the audience, and those of you fine people watching me at home. I Senator Walter Brigman have made an extraordinary discovery." I tell them earnestly. "And do you have any idea what that discovery is?" I ask rhetorically. Stumped. They don't know. Except: Cough, sneeze, snort, burp. But no answers. "Think about it." I tell them. "The answer to it all is right under most of your noses in the morning. It is what will kill all our Country's ills finally. And effectively. Once and for all." Further silence. Still. "Still no idea"? I look upon their contrite, ignorant little faces. The question is no longer one of rhetoric. I am now truly angry. 48

"What has the power to quash all the cancers of society?" They are stupid. Yet engrossed. Maybe there is still some hope for them. "Aids. Influenza. Colds. Chancers. Cancers of all shapes and forms. Teen pregnancies. Terrorism. Globing Warming. Pestilences. Smallpox. The measles. Genital warts of all stripes. Wars. Drug addiction. Extortion. Rape. Child molestation. Assault and battery, assault with no battery. C'mon people! For the love of God has it not yet dawned on you?" I puff on my pipe, containing medicinal marijuana. Panama Red. Exasperated, I continue. "See. Unlike my esteemed colleague, Senator Stevens, my answer doesn't just reduce teen pregnancy - as well as all the other issues I noted, that are plaguing humankind but EXTERMINATE it. Once and for all. Haven't you imbeciles caught on yet? Don't you moronic people see the cure-all? It is right in front of you!" I scream into the mic. Hostily they shout "WHAT?" I have struck a nerve. And, breaking the tension, I give them the answer: "Pancakes." Now. Truly engrossed. They listen attentively. "Pancakes don't stab. Don't kill. Nor steal. Nor rape." Now. Engrossed ever more by my brilliant words. "They will not get your teenage daughter pregnant! They will not give it to your wife while you're out working. They do not start wars illegally. They are neither jealous nor puffed up with pride!" 49

A busty blonde newswoman leaps to the stage and shoves her tongue down my throat. It's hard to talk as she's doing it. But I manage. Until a security officer escorts her away. I warn him to be gentle with her. "They do not carry venereal disease. Or give you crabs. Or, after twenty- five years or marriage they do not run off with another pancake of the same gender, making you question your own sexuality in the process!" The auditorium bursts out in joyful acclamation. Like a preacher empowered by some holy ghost. I continue. Empowered by the Holy Pancake. "Pancakes are not meat! They do not entail bloody, vicious murder! And they cannot murder you...can't give you Mad Cow Disease. Or freckles. Or or." I try talking over their massive applause. "They don't hire a lawyer and ask for child support!" "Pancakes didn't neglect capturing Osama bin Laden at Torra Borra. Nor did they squirt their maple syrup all over an intern pancake named Monica's blue dress!" More wild applause. And all of them - the audience, you understand simultaneously glancing their heads toward Senator Stevenson, who in the corner is pissing himself a river of shame. "Pancakes don't piss themselves!" I exclaim, pointing my giant, god-sized pancake fist at Senator Stevenson's. He cries. The crowd mocks him. "You know what else pancakes don't do?" "WHAT?" The crowd pleads to know. "They don't belittle Senator Stevenson." I chide. "Or anyone else for that matter. They have 50

more class than that." I momentarily turn my nose up at them. "Damn right!" The crowd agrees with my counsel. And by now the same busty blonde who kissed me breaks free of the security officer's grip and jumps over to the side of the stage where Senator Stevenson sits sulking and whimpering, and gives him a lapdance. Senator Stevenson regains faith. And beams "I love you all - I love my country." "Pancakes neither endorse nor condone Senator Stevenson's personal conduct!" I halfscream at the joyfully exuberant crowd. I go on: "Pancakes aren't partisan! They have no slush funds! And they do not vote in favor of political expediency over what they know to be right!" CHEERS. APPLAUSE. MORE DEAFENING, INTOXICATING CHEERS. INTOXICATED BY... "Pancakes vote right on abortion. Stem Cell research. And gay marriage every time!" The entire audience--men and women, boys and girls, Democrats and Republicans, young and old, gay and straight, pro-choicers and no-choicers-grab hands, howling enthusiastically. Binding together as one. America should... Therefore...therefore! I told them. Trying to scream over their whole one entire giant body of voice. "Ladies and gentlemen. My beloved countrymen and women, let us come together, as the nationalistic brothers and sisters we truly are. And be - once and for all - One Pancake Nation. Under God...for liberty, justice and a vast selection of multi-flavored, multi-colored pancake syrup for all!" 51

Play With Me by Jodi MacArthur Published by The New Flesh 10/16/2010 In the basement Down the hall I keep a door, a secret wall At the stroke of midnight, When the rats come out to play Its where I like to steal away In a pot Thick as steel I keep a healthy Delectable meal Tongue of hunchback Finger of girl Lock of hair Pig’s tail whirl All are magic All are fun I like them all Every one The most magic of all You may want to know Is not of earlobe nor of toe It is my eye Kept in a jar Pickled no less 52

I have no scar If you’re ever in town Late at night Swing your old limbs in I won’t bite We’ll drink some tea We’ll play a game of sneak You shall hide and I will seek Hide behind that secret hall, Down in the basement Behind the wall. Now shush... This won’t hurt much No not at all.

53

All the Same by Josh Myers Published by The New Flesh 10/22/2010 So, there we were. Camped out there in the middle of the goddamn desert, dog-tired after a full day of wandering around looking for the enemy in any cave or hole we were unlucky enough to come across. Dozens of fucking caves, a couple empty villages, not one goddamn spook in any one of ‘em. We were getting restless, cagey, we had all this built up energy and day after day there was no fucking release. Just wandering in the desert, getting more and more disparate and godfuckingly tired every minute. See, we’d been trained from day one to find the enemy and eliminate the enemy. Seek and destroy, get out that anger. We knew what they did and it was our job to make ‘em pay. And for a while there, we did. We had a few months of good and proper seek and fuckin’ destroy. We were taught the philosophy that there are no innocents in a warzone. And brother, this whole fuckin’ country was a warzone. Basically, we thought we had it made. It looked like endless days of finding nests of these fuckers, shakin’ ‘em up, mowin’ ‘em down, lettin’ the world know that we will not be fucked with. It was good to have an outlet. But times changed. It looked like the enemy dried up some. We did our job a little too well. And then we got the call from up top that me and a couple of my boys were being sent out into the 54

fuckin’ wastelands to look for any rogue factions or recruiting areas or some such shit. Fuck, we were basically just looking for targets. Doing what we were trained to. Find the enemy. Destroy the enemy. We were good at that. Real fuckin’ good. There’s a couple of villages back there in the warzone who’d tell you that if they were still capable of pushing the fuckin’ breath out to make the words. And that was that. Day after day of not one fuckin’ glimpse of the enemy and our blood was fuckin’ boiling. It’s like breaking an addiction, going that long without killing after having it pounded into your fuckin’ head ‘til it’s like a second-fuckin’-nature. When you’re that good at killing, you start to feel like it’s your obligation to yourself and your creator. Shit... So there we were, camped out there in the middle of the goddamn desert, exhausted and going crazy from that goddamn urge in our bloodstreams. No sounds around us for miles and miles, no caves, no tunnels, no holes in the ground. We figured it was ad good a place as any to set up camp and get some rest for the first time in a few days. I’ll tell you though, it almost felt like being back home before wartime. Me and the boys all laying out under the stars in our standardissue sleeping bags, talking shit and passing around one of the bottles we took from some town back in the thick of it. We talked about the battles, we talked about home, we talked about our respective girls. Really, we just talked about stupid shit that held no honest meaning or consequence for any of us since, and we all knew this, at that 55

point there weren’t many real emotions left in us. That’s when we heard it. We were all having a fake laugh about something no longer relevant, and when we stopped laughing we still heard someone makin’ noise. I don’t think we had ever been that fast to grab our weapons and face whatever the fuck was out there. But we waited, and we watched. We might’ve been killers, but stupid mistakes had been made before that resulted in the death of some of our own. So we waited for this babbling fucker to show himself. And out of the dark, here comes this sandnigger with his arms outstretched, wearing a white robe that I could swear was shining and some kind of glowing headdress, babbling a milea-minute in Arabic or somethin’. We figured the fucker had a bomb strapped to him under that robe, and we didn’t even want to think about what made that headdress glow. Shit, we didn’t really have the opportunity to think about it. As soon as we saw that it was a sandnigger comin’ at us, instinct kicked in and we did as we were trained. I would be a fucking liar if I was to say that after all that time waiting it didn’t feel great. We emptied our goddamn weapons into that fucker and he stopped glowing real quick. After he fell, we went and checked out the body and we had ourselves a good laugh when we saw that we had somehow put a single bullet through the center of each hand and foot. He had a real peaceful look on his face though, what was left of it. Kind of like he’d been here before... Goddamn... 56

And we were slappin’ each other on the back, riding the adrenaline, and the sky fuckin’ opened up. Like a huge white crack across the night. We saw that and we fuckin’ took off to a good vantage point. Four horsemen came riding out. Four tired looking figures, riding tired looking horses. And pulled behind them in a funerary chariot was a beautiful Anti-Christ in an impeccable suit. He left the chariot and looked down on the guy we’d killed. The Anti-Christ shook his sweet head and gathered the corpse up into the chariot’s elongated back. They took off back into the white. The sky sealed up piss-yellow and faded back to the dark and the stars. A voice like a chorus of burning pipe-organs said, “There is nothing left to try.” Things haven’t been the same since.

57

1985 by Jack Bristow Published by The New Flesh 10/27/2010 Always learn to question your realities, for many they contain dual meanings. This was the message I'd found carved in my beloved wife's stomach in the year of 1985. I woke up early that morning to take a hot, tranquil piss and I was in extraordinarily high spirits until I noticed a man - a goddamn Frenchman, of all people! - with this malnourished looking pencil-thin mustache of his and Victorian-era sideburns carving words into my wife Beth's stomach. I cursed the sonofabitch like any good, straight shooting American would and took a swing for the frog bastard's throat but he'd been too quick for me - dodging, then kicking me in the nuts and then diving off the goddamn balcony on to this weird little pink-colored communist-style moe pad vehicle he had semi-hidden in the halfshaded alley of my soul/heart/mind. "Goddamn Frenchman!" I yelled indignantly out the window, shaking my right-hand fist. Beth did not die outright. She asked me How could you? I said "Dear - how could I what?" She said you must really be going crazy honey - you used my stomach as a goddamn flesh-chalkboard. "'Flesh Chalkboard,'" I repeated her. And then I laughed at her whimsy. "Hahaha - babe, you're all right!" 58

And then she gurgled some - it was a funny noise, like similar to what you might hear gargling Listerine in the morning or at night. And then she died. "Hey kids, come in here!" I yelled merrily toward Trish ad Robbie's rooms. "Your mother has just expired - bring me the goddamn polaroid!" In walked Trish. "Dad," she says, eyeing her mother's corpse, the dark crimson writing deep in her flesh. Unimpressed. She said, "That's cool, really." I was hurt. She stabbed me, figuratively speaking, deeper than that deranged Frenchman had carved Beth. But at least he had been kind enough to have stabbed her fatally, and have her put out of her misery... My daughter's words will haunt me the rest of my life. "You really dislike it, Trish? T-R-I-S-H." I show her my pearly-whites as I verbally spell out her name. "That's not very nice! The Frenchman had gone through an awful lot of goddamn trouble for you!" Trish stared at me mundanely, uninterested. I was going to rebuke her some more for her terrible, barnlike manners when I heard a moe pad outside. I was thoroughly well-prepared for the Frenchman. But it was not he. No. This time around it was the goddamn Matthews boy. Trish said, while dabbing makeup on to her face "It's okay - daddy. It is only my date." "Date?" I said. "Why, it's morning time! On my day we'd go on dates at nigh-" "Sorry, daddy, gotta run." Trish had cut me off, kissing my cheek. Again, you have got to understand: this was 1985. Not 2010. My heart was beginning to sink like the goddamn Titanic, boy, let me tell you! And all those unfortunate victims - you see, like Beth, 59

they were put out of their miseries. So it wasn't as cruel. The glacier, just like the Frenchman, was no killer. Merely the catalyst. Trish was by no means a stupid girl. She knew I had intended this gruesome scene to be a heart-warming family moment. (When life gives you tomatoes, make pizza.) But she did not appreciate it. Arrogant bitch... I'd started to slink away toward Robbie's room. But after only a few steps Trish said something to me. The second she said "Daddy" I had started to feel important again. "Yes, honey?" "Don't you think you should call the coroner and the police? Mom's gonna start to stink and decay before we know it. And the Frenchman is still at large. Don't you think he should be stopped before perpetrating more evil like this on our country and society?" "Yes, Kitten, of course," I assured her as I kissed her sweet-smelling forehead. "Go anywhere you want. Just be back before midnight." I peered out the balcony window. And I saw my beautiful fourteen-year-old daughter mount the purple moe pad, her hands tightly clutching the Matthews boy's stomach. Off they sped. They reminded me of Beth and I. Two decades ago. I dialed 9-11 and told the operator the whole story - about the Frenchman killing the wife, then kicking me in the balls, and then leaping out my balcony window and landing deftly on to his little communist contraption. Before the police's arrival I had myself a good cry... And a damn good martini. For good measure, I put some of Beth's blood in it. "For 60

old time's sake," I'd said out loud. I then sagged to the carpet-floor. What is the meaning to this, I thought - the Frenchman was trying to tell me something. His methods were a bit drastic, yes, but at least we were communicating. Or at least trying to. At least the Frenchman tried to communicate with me, unlike my children. But. What. Was. The. Meaning? Dear God - I can still hear Robbie snoring. After all that commotion. That boy could sleep through a trainwreck if he wanted to, I thought bitterly. I hope to hell he doesn't, after waking and seeing the Frenchman's handiwork feel the need to criticize it. The Frenchman hates criticism. The sister, I suspect, has bruised his ego severely enough today. But the boy better not follow suit. If he does, the Frenchman might have a twelve-gauge waiting for him as a response... The cops' arrival was ten minutes later. I offered them each a cup of coffee but they declined, saying, "No thank you, Mr. Brakenridge. We have enough energy. Really, we do." Those words hit me like music. And I thought we'd get along fine. For years. Sergeant Martinez and his deputy pushed me to the floor. Martinez had this goddamn shiny thirty-eight pistol trained at my head. His face: really red. And pale. Irish or Scottish extraction, definitely. But not Mexican. Not even remotely Spanish... I asked him, as they were handcuffing me if he had been adopted. That question was the only thing that mattered to me, at the time. "Sergeant Martinez - Sergeant Martinez!" But he acted like he couldn't hear me. Or worse, like the bastard wouldn't even dignify my question with an acknowledgement. 61

"Mr. Brakenridge. You are under arrest... You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be-" "For what," I talked over his voice, repeating the question three times in a row. But he kept reading me the goddamn Miranda. Until he finally answered my question. "For pretending to be a goddamn Frenchman."

62

Crumble by Edmund Colell Published by The New Flesh 10/31/2010 Until now, I didn’t know how good I was with massages. I was half an hour into it, scrubbing the pads of my fingers around my boyfriend’s ribs and spine, squeezing his shoulder muscles, and rubbing up the sides of his neck with my hands about to give out. Then as I worked back down his ribs and spine he dragged on a moan and passedout beneath me with a smile. When his head snapped to the other side, I didn’t expect his bones to crumble in my fingers. The eagle tattooed on his back then rolled its eyes and let its tongue limp to one side of its beak. I didn’t know what to do, so I scratched the eagle behind its ear and felt jiggling fragments of spine as I continued to work the other hand around the jellied meat of his left lower back. At this point I noticed his fingers curling into his palms and blanching the skin before finally drawing blood. I didn’t think the worst of it until I worked my way back up. The back of his neck unzipped to the top of his head and his skull started to split, at which point I dismounted and grabbed for the phone. He snapped his head back before I could dial any numbers and his neck sewed itself shut while bone and flesh took the time to return to form. Facing me with a lazy frown, he asked, “Why did you stop?" 63

Fledgling by Sean Monaghan Published by The New Flesh 11/05/2010 I hold my sister's mottled and battered baby. There is a smear of blood on the tiny girl's forehead, her fists crumpled up like boxing gloves. Sandra jostles me, trying to get a clamp to Kate's surgeon. The baby gasps. Someone in the corridor screams as security tries to manage the sudden flow of injured, and the surge of arriving families. Again I'm startled by how quickly after a wreck parents and husbands can make it to the ER. Sandra grabs my shoulder. "Incubator," she says through her mask. "Deborah?" I look, but I don't see it for a moment. I'm not used to these plastic bubbles in theater. "Please Deborah," Sandra says, putting her hand on my arm. "Sutures, quickly," Dr Ravi says. "Let me have her," Sandra says, adjusting Kate’s respirator and passing the sutures. "Don't make me pry her from you." She begins prying at my arms anyway. "What are you even doing in here, Debs? Go home." I turn to the incubator, see the big lid, the tubes and tank below. I reach out and put the baby girl onto the mattress. "Where's the cart?" Ravi shouts. 64

Sandra tapes monitors to the child's chest, wipes away some of the blood, then closes the lid. "Go home," she says. "You're not any use here." "What would I do at home?" "Fine, wait in the hall." I look at the maelstrom of people beyond the window. A truck crushed four cars in the tunnel. Half the city has come out. Nobody can separate those who can be reassured from the others. I'm not stepping into a mob. I have all the reassurance I need here. "She's twenty-nine weeks," I say. I stare at the baby. So miniscule, so nearly formed. I look again at Kate. Her face is torn and taped. They work on her chest. I had bandaged her arm, but I think she'll lose it. One of her legs will be lost too. When she came in I saw the shin strung on at the knee by a few white ligaments. "Deborah," Sandra says. "Out." She's in charge here. She's handing Ravi instruments. They're not interested in legs or arms, they just need to stem the flow of blood in her abdomen. Fumbling, I screw the oxygen to the incubator, but the girl is too early, I know. "Dammit, Debs, you're not helping," Sandra says. I can see Ravi slowing his work. "Security," Sandra shouts. Dr Miller darts in. He leans over my sister's body, discusses things with Ravi, who continues to work with Sandra. I barely hear anything, but the tone is enough. Miller turns to the incubator. "Security," Sandra shouts again. She swabs for Ravi. Miller lifts the incubator lid and puts his stethoscope on Kate's child's chest. 65

A security man slips in and grabs my arm. I don't move. Miller listens for a moment and his head drops. *** When I was twelve and Kate fifteen, blackbirds nested in the branches of the tall oak outside her attic room. She'd convinced Mom and Dad to let her convert the tiny space into a bedroom so that she no longer had to share with me. Kate watched the birds hatch their brood. One day Kate's six-month old cat, Shambles, leapt across to the branch while the adult birds were out hunting. The cat took a hatchling, but slipped when Kate screamed. Bird and cat tumbled to the ground. From the kitchen I heard the thump, out on the front walk. I was there before Kate. I didn't know how a cat could land wrong, but Shambles lay bleeding and dying there on the concrete. The hatchling flapped, struggling, with just the last whispers of life in it. Shambles mewled, his eyes glassy, and I had to sniff back tears. I heard Kate pounding down the stairs, still screaming. Then Shambles shivered and died, his body softening. The adult blackbirds clucked in the branches above. "Deborah," Kate yelled from the steps. I picked up the fledgling and put my hand on Shambles, stroking his soft grey fur. I was crying. Kate squealed beside me, falling to her knees. I know what I did, though I didn't know I could. I took the last puff of life from the dying bird and passed it to Shambles. It was a 66

little bit of magic, like something from one of my library books. The fledgling died in my hand and Shambles lifted his head. Kate gathered him up, and Mom drove them to the vet, while I sat on the porch step with the dead chick in my hand listening to the birds chirrup and tweet in the tree, feeding their surviving babies. I sat on the step until long after dark. *** "Call it," Miller says. Then he turns to Ravi. "Can I assist?" I pull away from the security man. "We've got others," Ravi says. "There's too much bleeding." "Okay," Miller says. The incubator lid is still open. I step over and lift my sister's child. "Clear the theater," Sandra says. "We've got others." She pulls her mask down and comes to me. "I'll give you a minute," she says. She reaches up with a clean sponge and wipes my eyes. "Wait," I say. This baby girl is still clinging, and though she is very early I know she can make it. "It's been called," Sandra says. "Make him check again," I say. How can I do this to my sister? How can I chose between them? I put my hand on Kate's whole but bloody arm and I know what she wants, and she gives it freely, lets me pass it to the child. "Come on," Sandra says. The girl's thin heart lurches, once, then again and I hand her to Sandra. "Please," I say, not able to look away from Kate's damaged face. "Please just check again." 67

I hand the baby over and hear Sandra say "Oh my," then, "Doctor!" Kate's face is serene.

68

Damn, Fucking Aliens by Chad Case Published by The New Flesh 11/06/2010

What’s that ya say, Mr. Case? Ya wanna know how I lost my left eye? Well, plop ya ass in that seat and I’ll tell ya! It seemed like it was just yesterday, Mr. Case, I remember it well. It happened four, maybe five years ago. No. Wait. It was eight years ago. I remember it now because that’s the year I lost my Jezebel. Oh, don’t be sorry, Mr. Case. Jezebel was just my ol’ smell hound. And the bitch would still be alive today if she’d listened to me. I told her not to get into my neighbor’s stash of weed. That he’d do sumthing ‘bout it and he did. But that’s another story for another day, Mr. Case. You wanted to know what happened to my left eye. I was staggering through the meadow over there, Mr. Case, when I heard a sharp whistling noise. The kinda noise that a jet makes when it’s cutting through the sky. I looked up quickly and seen a silver, circular object that looked like a saucer plate. That’s right, Mr. Case. A UFO. A U fucking F O! I couldn’t believe it. I damn near dropped my bottle of Turkey. Wild Turkey whiskey that is, Mr. Case. I want ya to be clear on that. I don’t want your readers thinking I was out there that day with a bottle shoved up a Turkey’s ass! Hell, 69

they’d think I was one crazy son-of-a-smellhound. Anyfuckingway, this damn UFO landed right in front of me, crushing all of my apple trees and tearing the shit out of my field. It seemed like forever, Mr. Case, but the thing finally opened up and out walked these two gray figures. Ugliest mothers, I’d ever seen! They approached me slowly and my asshole tightened! Don’t laugh, Mr. Case, I never understood why aliens traveled zillions of miles just to stick sumthing up our asses! But that’s not what they wanted anyfuckingway. One of ‘em introduced himself as CJ452. Bastard even shook my hand, and I’ll tell ya this, Mr. Case: it was like shaking hands with spaghetti. I offered him a drink and he took a little swig, but I don’t think he cared for it. Then CJ452 told me that he, and his cohort, were from the planet Orjay and was in search of human eyeballs … brown human eyeballs. CJ452 said that they were a delicacy on their home planet. Kinda like fish eggs here on Earth. Caviar! Yea, that’s what they’re called, Mr. Case. Ever eat any? Eh, me neither. Anyfuckingway, old CJ452, and his silent friend, leered at me, and I almost pissed myself. I stood there frozen as CJ452’s finger twisted like a corkscrew and then that… that… that damn, fucking alien jammed it in my left eye and yanked it out. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, Mr. Case. It hurt more than I could’ve ever imagined! What’s that ya say, Mr. Case? My right eye is blue. Yea, I know that, been looking at it in the mirror for sum seventy-five years now. Oh, you don’t believe my story, do you? But what if I told ya I had that disease that makes one eye a different color from the other. Heterochromia, I 70

think it’s called. Oh, ya still have doubts, Mr. Case. Well, why don’t ya turn those brown eyes of yours around? Because CJ452 and his silent friend are right behind ya and they look like they’re hungry.

71

Grocery List by David Massengill Published by The New Flesh 11/08/2010 Mushrooms — the item that first made Bridget suspicious of her stepmother’s list, for edible mushrooms grew all about their house in the forest. Cigarettes (Marlboro Reds), which triggered Bridget’s comment to her stepmother, “Why should I pick these up for you when my father once asked you not to smoke around me?” Chocolate milk. This Bridget’s stepmother added to the list with the remark, “Maybe if I let you get your little girl drink you’ll let me buy my cigarettes.” Tampons, which could also be of use to Bridget, who was a tall, crimson-haired beauty at the age of 19. Large heavy duty garbage bags (preferably black). These caused Bridget to wonder as she started from the house into a shadowy autumn forest colored in yellows, oranges, and reds. Tomato sauce—something Bridget’s deceased mother would have made instead of bought, and something Bridget considered making only to remind her father that her stepmother was a terrible substitute for the woman they’d lost to cancer. Garlic. Bridget wished she already possessed some cloves—or even a necklace of them—when she saw the shadowy, hooded figure lumbering toward her on the leafy path. 72

Salt. Bridget spotted the word as she glanced down at the list to avoid eye contact with the stranger, who passed her and continued in the direction of the house. Red wine, which caused Bridget to think of her zealous boyfriend, and his pleading with her at the local tavern the night before: “Why live with that witch of a stepmom and your delusional old dad when you can move to a university town with me?” Drano. This Bridget thought of at the edge of the village, where she passed the little scummy pond in which her stepmother often swam naked. Oysters. Bridget was going to stop by her father’s butcher shop and ask him about the necessity of these when she noticed a CLOSED sign hanging from the front window. Carrots, which Bridget was depositing into a plastic bag as the grocer neared and said, “I seem to remember your mother wearing that same flower print dress when she was alive.” A can of cooking spray. Bridget bagged this item herself rather than respond to the comment from the grocer’s wife: “Live with your father too long, sweetie, and you’ll go stale.” Dark chocolate Kisses, some of which Bridget ate as she hurried back to the house, worrying about the whereabouts of her father. Two onions. Chopping these always brought on tears for Bridget, but today she cried after seeing that the hooded man at the kitchen table was her father, and that he was missing both of his eyeballs. A can of mixed nuts, which rattled when Bridget dropped the grocery bags and screamed at her sneering stepmother, “What have you done with his eyes?” 73

A bottle of bleach. This Bridget tripped over after her father picked up his butcher knife from the kitchen table and stomped toward her. Flour. The bag burst open as Bridget fell shrieking to the floor, and her blood soon mixed with the white powder. Apples (any color). Bridget’s stepmother looked from her obedient husband to the oven, which contained a tray full of Bridget’s cooking remains, and said, “I don’t understand how that girl could forget the apples."

74

The Man with No Past by Rick McQuiston Published by The New Flesh 11/13/2010 I have a story to tell. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to listen. In a way, it’s all that I have left, my story that is, and all I could ask for is someone to hear it. So please, light a candle, pour a cup of tea, and open your mind because what I’m going to tell you will be difficult to believe. I wouldn’t believe it myself if it weren’t happening to me. Oh you caught that didn’t you? Happening to me, as in present tense, as in I’m currently enduring my unfortunate situation as opposed to my telling about it in retrospect. So here’s my tale. I promise to keep it short, since I don’t have much time left. I am a writer, of sorts, wallowing in the dense purgatory others of my creative ilk are generally stuck in. I used to muse to myself (and others when the mood suited me) that it was my curse, my affliction, to assign my thoughts and dreams (and nightmares) to paper. It is a hollow occupation fraught with critical barbs from both editors and readers alike. Believe me when I tell you how disheartening it can be when something that you had poured your heart and soul into is dismissed as merely another fragment of poor writing technique or lackluster character development. Anyway, I am a writer. Speculative fiction is my forte, particularly dark fiction with heavy 75

slants towards horror and science fiction. I suppose I gravitated towards my literary idols so to speak: Lovecraft, Bierce, Derleth, etc. Approximately six months ago I started to pen a rather unique tale concerning a young man who accidentally stumbles upon a dusty old book while rummaging through the attic space of his newly acquired house. He uncovers a curious looking box, and when he opens it he discovers the tome. And after safely procuring the item, he delves into its contents with relish. But he could hardly make heads or toes of the frayed, yellowed pages within, nor glean any useful information from them. It seemed the book was written in some bizarre, nearly indecipherable language, slightly similar to Latin, but much more primitive. Certain passages seemed to be penned by something other than human hands. The dark implications that the book presented were not lost on the young man, so he decided to abolish it to where he had originally uncovered it from. And when the book was resting back in its long-forgotten space the young man tired mightily to move on with his life. Pardon me for a moment. I had a nagging thought that the door was not properly bolted. I can hear them outside the room you know. They grunt and scrape up against the door, their foul odor seeping through the cracks and into the room, tainting my senses with their loathsomeness. Again I am distracted. I apologize. I must hurry however or my most unfortunate tale will never be heard. So, as I was saying, the young man goes about his life, putting his unusual discovery behind him. But the book would not be denied. It 76

did not want to be forgotten. It lodged itself firmly within the young man’s mind, refusing to be cast aside, demanding to be acknowledged. I fear my time is nearly up. The barrier between myself and the frightening impossibility pursuing me is approaching its breaking point. The hinges bend within their notches. The frame splinters. The door bulges from unnatural pressure. Something is trying mightily to gain entry and I, like the door itself, am powerless to stop it. I know the book is behind it somehow, which is why I suppose I chose to write a story about it. It was a fascinating subject, (although a very dangerous one), and I just couldn’t resist using it. But the price was very high indeed. With each passing minute I can actually sense another piece of my past slipping away, being extracted from me by the book. Soon I fear what is left of my past shall catch up with me and then... There are other versions of myself outside the door. Each dark moment in my life, my past, has somehow been ensnared by the book and distorted to monstrous proportions, obvious in intent and determined to find me. The book is using my past to reach me. Exactly why I cannot answer, but what I am fairly certain of is that when it does catch up to me I will simply be no more. After all, what is a man other than the sum of his experiences, his memories, his past? The door is buckling. The hinges coming apart. I can hear the...the things growing violently impatient. The book is commanding their movements. You see, as you may well have guessed by now, I was the young man in my story. I was the one who made that terrible discovery. I wrote a 77

non-fiction piece and laced it with fiction, I suppose to cushion those bad memories I had from that experience. I imagine I also wrote it so my ordeal could be heard, understood by someone, anyone, who would listen to it. I do not wish to be remembered as a lunatic. And now that you’ve heard it you can see the predicament I’m in. Surely you’ll understand, and I hope, believe. Have I mentioned that you look strangely familiar to me? I know! Approximately six months ago. The pen and paper in your...your hand are dead giveaways. I should have guessed. I didn’t recognize you at first due to those fangs. They must be quite a nuisance, jutting out of your mouth as they do. And those eyes. Red does become me somewhat I must admit. How appropriate for one to meet their fate at the hands, or should I say the claws, of oneself.

78

An Awakening by Josh Myers Published by The New Flesh 11/17/2010 Part I (with love and regards to the late Bill Hicks) Kevin walked deep into the woods with the baggie of mushrooms his friends had given him in hopes of experiencing a spiritual awakening like so many others had. He’d heard the stories and he wanted in on the fun. He picked a good spot where he felt he could be one with nature, sat down, and commenced to what he believed would be a profound spiritual experience. Kevin shut his eyes and let the effect take hold. When he opened his eyes, the woods around him had vanished and from the sky came a huge, indescribable object. Seven beams of light emanated from what must have been the center of the craft, and a calming voice began to speak from within Kevin’s head. “Do not be afraid,” the voice said, “there is nothing to fear. There is never anything to fear. All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. And we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death. What we think of as life is merely a dream. And we are but the imaginations of ourselves.” 79

Kevin’s eyes grew wide, and he was filled with a feeling of joy, knowing he was hearing an incredibly advanced being who knew the secrets of existence. The voice in his head continued: “We are all God, and we are all children of God. And God’s love is unconditional. There is never any reason to be afraid or to worry. Ever." Tears ran from Kevin’s face. “Is this all true, O great one?” Kevin asked, “Am I simply a vibration in the collective consciousness of God?" The craft shifted in the air. The voice in Kevin’s head said, “Nah, just fucking with you.” A hole appeared on the huge craft. A mass of tentacles launched out, grabbed Kevin, and pulled him inside. The hole sealed up, and the object vanished into the sky. Part II A group of friends was sitting around in a forest clearing, discussing the different experiences they’d had on psychedelic drugs. “I looked into the loving eye of God and saw my true self reflected,” said one. “I danced on beams of pure energy with Buddha and Jesus.” “The earth opened up and I felt Mother Nature at the core, Her eternal love emanating within and without everyone and everything on the planet,” said another. “I was kidnapped by extra-dimensional beings and impregnated with the spawn of Cthulhu,” said Kevin.

80

Homophobic Socks by Matthew Revert Published by The New Flesh 11/22/2010 I discovered I was gay on my 13th Birthday. The strippers my father kindly hired did very little for me. It was the short, sweaty balding man (employed to protect the strippers) that set my loins aflame. The instant I experienced those feelings of same-sex desire, my socks constricted around my feet. My toenails shattered and my bones grew compromised. My confused mother had to cut them off with an arrowhead. The weeks that followed were spent in bed, lost in fantasy, while my feet healed. The intoxicating visage of the short balding man danced in my dreams, arousing me in myriad new ways. Experiments with masturbation to this point had only skirted around the edges of possibility. Now, with an erection the size of Oprah, I was ready to dive into the deep end of masturbation. I was familiar with the concept of semen and, not wanting to sully my porcelain chest, sought a receptacle. Lifelessly by my bed laid a limp sports sock. I slid it over my member like a furry condom and conjured the sweaty balding man in all his erotic grandeur. Upon first plaintive tug, the sock constricted around me, choking my penis harder than any masturbatory hand ever could. I squealed in abject pain, trying my best to remove the sock. The sensation of a thousand fire ants bit into my shaft and refused to let go. The screams summoned my panicked mother into 81

the bedroom. My screams were soon matched my hers as we both watched the sock soak with penile blood. With my mind occupied solely by pain, the sweaty balding man eventually left my thoughts. At that moment, the sock released its grip, leaving my skinned member bloody and weeping in its wake. It was now apparent that socks disliked me, and I knew why. For whatever reason, socks weren’t made to accept homosexuality. I discussed the problem with my parents, both of whom were very supportive. My mother helped me find some support groups, which resulted in some of the best friends a person could ask for. Buoyed by a mutual desire to eradicate sock homophobia, we took to the streets, with the eventual aim of targeting the sock manufacturers themselves. The swell of support we received was heartening. We carried grisly placards wherever we went that showed the grim reality of pulped feet and stripped genitals. We used shock as strategy without shame. This was a reality we were forced to endure and the world needed to know. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, no matter how morally suspect they are. This freedom of belief shouldn’t extend to life’s inanimate necessities. After many years of campaigning, several leading members of our group, myself included, were eventually granted audience with a man called The Sock Wizard. The Sock Wizard was the man ultimately responsible for every sock in existence. He was responsible for the homophobia. He was responsible for the pain wrought. The Sock Wizard was clearly riddled with anxiety as he sat to face us. We were expecting a tyrant only to be presented with a scared, snivelling, admittedly arousing, man. Our group 82

exhaled with collective relief before commencing our discussion. Within minutes, The Sock Wizard was in apologetic tears. Over a warm cup of cocoa, we comforted him, allowing him to unload his obvious burden. Yes, it was true... Socks were made with an innate homophobia, he eventually admitted. It turns out this homophobia was the result of an error. The Sock Wizard had filled out a vital piece of paperwork incorrectly, resulting in the mess we were in now. When asked if the error could be fixed, he muttered something about his pride before showing us his naked, damaged feet.

83

The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Talking to Himself by Jack Bristow Published by The New Flesh 12/02/2010 Rick Rossi is a good-looking man. But not conventionally so. With dark eyes, hair so naturally jet-black it almost looks dark-blue and a light, olive complexion. At first glance most superficial men would have killed to be in his shoes - as well as how, at first glance, most superficial women would kill to be in his bed. But the women who'd mustered the courage to approach him - at stores, in churches and bars would invariably notice something strange. That Rick has conversations with himself. The first voice, always deep and authoritative-sounding. Second voice. A weak falsetto. The only way a man can cheaply sound like a women. Or a child... Adult's voice now speaking, Rick's own, natural voice: "Today we have to go and visit Ma." Then falsetto comes voice, sharply protesting "No. Please. I just can't bear seeing her like that - wasting away in a goddamn noisy iron lung. "Arnie," the adult voice had counseled. "She's our mother. And she needs company. Also, watch your language - that's no way for a kid brother to speak." Awkward silence. Then: "Oh. Have I told you yet?" 84

"What," the falsetto voice asks. "Sue's finally getting married - to Cliff." Sue is Rick's only daughter. With the exception of talk of his daughter's marital engagement, today's routine is no different than every other for Rick Rossi. At 8 o'clock, every day, Rick rises to Elvis's voice on the alarm clock. Showers. Has a bowl of oatmeal, toast, and walks for hours and hours, and miles and miles the streets of New York City. Public reactions to Rick's self-conversing varies. Some men ignore him. Others, ones more insecure about their own masculinity sometimes try to provoke him to violence. "Aye, Fuck-O. You makin' fun of me? How's about I break your fuckin' nose?" Women are generally nicer. Generally. Psychiatrists are baffled by Rick - being unable to categorize his disorder/affliction as any specific illness. They could not get to the root of his illness because they never found out about Arnie. Arnold Rossi: Rick Rossi's barely younger twin brother. Best friends to his last day - the day a hit-and-run rammed into Arnie and his scooter. Arnie wasn't to blame. Blame, if it need be placed anywhere twenty-five years later, should be placed on the unknown driver's shoulders for running a stop sign. His mother ran outside, screeching "Oh Jesus why?" her screaming this, again and again. Rick never forgave himself for being, in his eyes, even as a twelve-year-old boy, a "coward" - too afraid to even go outside and help his little brother when he really needed him. He remembers: Sounds. The sounds of commotion outside. Shuffling footfalls, the 85

blares of sirens, and blasphemous shrieks coming from his mother's mouth only. A brother's horrific realization: Arnie was dying. But Rick couldn't lose Arnie if he could hear him. He reassured himself, in Arnie's voice, "I'm fine, big bro. Don't you worry about me. I'll be home - soon. Then we'll have fun like we always do." Twenty-five years later, in his mind, Rick Rossi still believes he talks to Arnie. In Rick's warped mind, Arnie complements his entire personality, making Rick, as a person, more palatable. "Before visiting Ma today we gotta go see and congratulate Sue. I'm so happy for her." Falsetto voice speaking. "Yeah, big brother. No problem. But," he sighs, "for some reason today, my legs are tired. Could we hail a cab to Sue's - I know you don't usually like doing it." "Not usually, you're right. But for you, little bro. I will make an exception." Rick raises his right arm. And a taxi comes almost crashing into Rick. The driver up front is dark - Middle Eastern, maybe. He seems impatient. "Yes, you want ride," he asks hurriedly, cigar dangling over the side of his mouth. "Excuse us a second," Rick turns his back to the driver. "'Us'? Ishab waits long for no one!" the cabby shouts. "Little bro," Rick says. "I don't think we oughta go with this driver - his driving seems a bit careless to me." Falsetto voice replying. "Ricky, my legs are killing me. I can't wait for the time it takes to hail another cab." Onward the go. Rick in the backseat feeling nausea set in from the abrupt halts, turns and 86

swerves. The cabby yelling, almost screaming obscenities out the window. "You American sons of whores! - in my country you would not act in such a way!" A mile from Sue's apartment complex the yellow-and-white taxi cab side-swipes an old Mack 18-wheeler. The taxi driver lay in the front, gurgling blood, his final utterance of verbal sarcasm. Rick in the backseat. Shards of broken glass stuck in his face and chest. Pain. Inordinate pain. Coughing blood. Blood everywhere. And – and – numbness. And that same morbid intuition Rick had had twenty-five years before. The day Arnie was hit and killed. "Oh God. I'm dying. Oh, God! If you're up there. If you exist. Why? Why...?" "Don't worry about it," the falsetto voice said, panting and getting weaker. "You'll be just fine."

87

Labour Pains by Eugene Gramelis Published by The New Flesh 12/16/2010 ‘A little harder, darling,’ Dr Frederick Gottschalk encouraged. ‘One more thrust and I should start to see the cranium.’ He was trying his hardest to remain composed, but he could hardly contain his excitement. ‘Oh, Margaret: our bundle of joy has black curls!’ Like the eye of a voyeur peeping through a key-hole, a tuft of slick fuzz peered at him from inside her. ‘Like his ... father.’ His wife’s voice was soft, far-away, uneasy; her words punctuated by a sharp moan; then a fit of silly laughter; then childlike whimpering. The laughing gas he’d borrowed from the clinic was starting to wear off. He had to be careful: not enough gas and she’d scream the walls down; too much and she’d be totally incapable of feeling the contractions. The former could be quelled with a stern word or two and—if necessary—a firm hand (not that it really mattered: their closest neighbours lived on the far side of the lake). The latter, however, would necessitate a caesarian section—something he desperately wished to avoid. Although a qualified surgeon, Gottschalk’s expertise was in nip ’n’ tucks, not obstetrics; he couldn’t risk botching it up. Plus, their summer home was old, unhygienic, contaminated with creepy-crawlies and festering with household bacteria. 88

‘Uuuuunggghhh!’ A slow, agonising groan. Somewhere by the lake a loon answered her distress call with a concerned fluting. ‘You’re doing exceptionally well, darling.’ Gottschalk made a slight adjustment to the gas feed, and placing his hands on the inside of her thighs, applied gentle, outward pressure. ‘Open wide; make as much room for junior as you can.’ They’d been trying for years: shortly after they were married Margaret had undergone an operation to remove several ovarian tumors, and while the procedure had saved her life, it had left her practically sterile. They tried to adopt, but were promptly turned down because of Margaret’s indiscretion during her adolescence (she had been young and stupid and very drunk, but some things are never swept away by the tide of time – least of all a conviction for dangerous driving). IVF had also been a colossal waste of time and money. At least Margaret had gotten something positive out of the experience: she’d struck up a friendship of sorts with another patient. Jodi was a gritty, single white female who’d had enough of waiting for Mr Right, and was sick of being kept up all night by the ticking of her maternal clock; Jodi was someone Margaret could relate to, someone with whom she could share and lament the anguish of being childless. Gottschalk had abandoned all hope of becoming a father. Then nine months ago, he was given the good news: he would finally have his bundle of joy! It was Margaret’s idea to have a home-birth; Gottschalk’s to deliver the baby at the lake. He had to take a crash course in obstetrics and neonatal care of course, but that was the easy part. The hard part was sneaking the equipment out of 89

the clinic without being noticed. Gone were the days of hot water and steamed towels. A knife-like scream tore through the stuffy room and she parted, giving the baby up to the swirling dust motes and slats of sepia-toned light. Gottschalk clamped the umbilical cord above the newborn’s naval—just as the midwives had done in the birthing DVD he’d watched a few hundred times—then hacked it off with surgical scissors. Ignoring the quivering placental sack between his feet, he held up his prize—still bloody and glistening wet—in the cradle of both palms. Thank God, he thought. No, thank Gott! For in the old tongue Gottschalk’s family name meant Servant of God. But in this day and age, he thought of himself more as a silent partner than a mere attendant. After all, he did heal the sick—or at least re-arranged their faces and enlarged their breasts. Now, after years of doubt and despair, the Big Guy upstairs had finally recognised his worth with this reward. Nor did Gottschalk fail to notice the significance of the gift: like God, he had been given a son. He slapped the infant’s rosy cheeks once on each side, and the echo of a shrieking baby filled the musty corridors of the lake house. This was not in the DVD, but he did it for effect anyway. ‘Look Margaret.’ Gottschalk swaddled the infant in a pastel-coloured towel and cradled it in the nook of his elbow. ‘Say hello to little Archie.’ Had it been a girl, they’d agreed to name her Isabella, after Gottschalk’s greatgrandmother (a pleasant lady by most accounts, who’d served as a nurse during World War I, and 90

had spent her final days eating roaches in a Dusseldorf lunatic asylum). Margaret gently took the baby from Gottschalk’s arms and tickled it under the chin. She smiled wanly at her husband. ‘He might have your hair,’ she boasted, ‘but his eyes are blue like mine.’ ‘Oh stop it, Marge.’ Gottschalk waved a hand dismissively. ‘All babies have blue eyes when they’re born. They’ll change, you’ll see.' A sorrowful moan drifted up from the doublebed behind them, which trailed off into a delirious giggle. A woman who looked like she could be in her mid-thirties lay spread-eagled on the bed, naked except for the blood-soaked sheets bunched about her waist. Her hands and feet were cuffed to the bedposts and a gas inhaler covered her face. In her drug-induced stupor, she mumbled something incoherent from behind the mask, her words sounding both amplified and muffled: ‘Wheeere aaam I?’ ‘There, there, darling,’ Gottschalk soothed. ‘Don’t talk; you’ll only make yourself upset.’ He turned to Margaret and gestured with his thumb at Jodi. ‘What do we do with her?’ Margaret peered over at the woman on the bed, a distasteful snarl thinning her collagenfilled lips. ‘Dump her in the lake,’ she said, and resumed making exaggerated faces at Archie.

91

Funtime, USA by Jordan Krall Published by The New Flesh 12/17/2010 Whenever I watch Night Court, I feel demonic. I don’t know if it’s Judge Stone’s obsession with Harry Houdini or Dan Fielding’s oversexed antics, but I feel satanic during the whole viewing process. It’s as if I’m going to burst full blast into a black mass during the first commercial break. I might just desecrate a bible and sacrifice a virgin while someone tries to sell me a new deodorant or soft drink. But I always resist the urges. I was 26 when it started or maybe it started earlier and I never realized it. Who knows, right? Despite having a college education, I was living hand to mouth as a gas station attendant, barely scrapping by. It wasn’t the life I imagined myself having. My days were spent inhaling the sweet aroma of gasoline while trying to catch glimpses of the high heels of women who stopped to fill their cars. I longed to see their shoes on the pedal. At times I believed I could smell their feet through the gasoline smell. Many days I had to stop my mouth from confessing my desire: I imagined myself saying, “Can I help you?” The woman would say, “Fill it, regular.” I’d reply, “Sure. Can I smell your shoes?” She’d say, “Fucking pervert.” 92

Oh, but I resisted the urges. I needed my job and didn’t have the slightest interest in going to jail. I wouldn’t last there as I’m too delicate and bladder shy. So I spent my days at the station and my nights in my one room apartment, surrounded by paperback books and old magazines. It was cramped, but comfortable. I always liked wrapping myself in blankets and lounging on pillows while I watched television. In the winter it was a necessity because I had no heat. I ate soup out of the can and watched rerun after rerun of classic television. That’s where Night Court came in. Some people my age would have found my life depressing. It was quite the contrary. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every second of warmth in my comfortable chair (the only one I had in my apartment). I occasionally went to the bar down the street to have a few drinks and sometimes brought home a bottle or two. Then I’d get drunk and reread issues of True Detective. I’d end up watching an episode of Perfect Strangers. Larry pisses me off. Like when he took a sledgehammer to the wall, ruining the mural Balki had painted. I ended up throwing a bottle at the television but luckily I missed. So okay, back to Night Court. As I sat and watched Dan Fielding again try to get Christine into bed, I kept tracing pentagrams on my blanket. What now? Ants crawled onto my chair, getting comfortable in the pentagram I was tracing. They worshipped Baphomet of Thee Unholy Church Ov Thee Old Blanket. Stupid little insects. They don’t know it’s all made up. They don’t realize it’s all because of that stupid, fucking Dan Fielding and the judge’s Houdini obsession. 93

The Colonel & The Major by Josh Myers Published by The New Flesh 12/21/2010 The Colonel woke up and placed his feet on the floor. When he stood, he found himself plummeting through the floor, through the ground below, through the many layers of the planet. The Colonel went careening straight through to the center of the Earth, passed it, and kept falling. As he approached the opposite side of the planet, which for cliché’s sake we’ll call ‘China’, the Colonel’s rate of descent dropped by the mile until he came to a brief complete stop. Then gravity kicked in and sent the Colonel falling back the way he came. And this sort of thing continued for quite some time, hurtling toward ‘China’ then back toward home then back toward ‘China’ then back home and so on and so forth. With every reversal of gravity, the Colonel’s trip grew a little shorter until he was falling in twenty-foot increments to-and-from the center of the Earth. After a good long while of flying back-andforth from the core, the Colonel, nearly bored with the process, came to a stop. And there, sitting in an armchair at the center of the world, was the Major, who had spent all night digging a Colonel-sized hole through the planet. “Gotcha motherfucker,” said the Major. “What is this?” asked the Colonel. The Major grinned and leaned in. “Take your fucking dog inside.” 94

The Colonel could do nothing more than gape at the Major, sitting like a smug demon in his leather armchair at the Earth’s core. It was enough to go through the whole ordeal of arriving there in the first place, not to mention the physical impossibility of the whole damn situation, but now this? This was why he fell through the fucking Earth? To be taught a lesson? “That’s it?” asked the Colonel. “That’s why I fell through the fucking Earth? To be taught a fucking lesson?” “It barks all day,” said the Major, “and it howls all night. I. Get. No. Peace.” “You’re nuts.” “You’re inconsiderate!” “I...” The Colonel stopped and considered this. Shit, maybe the Major was right. It was true, he did leave his dog outside all day and all night. And it was also true that it did bark and howl quite a bit. He could see how that would grate on someone’s nerves. Maybe he was being a tad inconsiderate to his neighbors. The Major was right, once he got home, the Colonel would take his dog inside, and maybe send each neighbor a small card offering his sincere apologies for any stress caused by the dog’s barking, and – Hang on. Hold the fuckin’ phone. The Major spent valuable time digging a perfectly Colonelsized hole through the earth. The Major just sent the Colonel flying through the fucking planet, and was now sitting in an armchair at the center of the earth. With no apparent means of escape. Something is not right. “How do we get out of here?” asked the Colonel. The Major’s grin dropped. He had failed to think that part through. 95

Zombie Love for Morons by Sean Monaghan Published by The New Flesh 12/25/2010 Zombie Love for Morons, edited by Paul Williams, Jr. and Barney Bryant, Decade Publishing, 158 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Sean Monaghan Lately the "... for Morons" series has been tackling bigger issues and this has quite rightly led to a lot of criticism about their increasing level of complexity. The whole concept of the series is to take a difficult subject and make it clear and easy for even the most challenged. Recent additions have strayed from that formula Daylight Vampiring for Morons stands out as one that really just proved too challenging (and deadly) for many of the readers. Fortunately this newest book is a return to the roots of the series. Basic, simple, straightforward. The editors have selected comments and articles from numerous informed sources and then thoroughly dumbed them down so that anyone - zombies included - will understand the concepts. The volume is filled with illustrations and diagrams, step-by-step exercises, sidebars and pull-out charts (my favorite is the cheat card to take on a zombie date). Never have things been easier in the arena of zombie love. The book begins with a clear introduction, which will reassure many zombies stuck for choice and feeling dejected by their plight (and truly, 96

we all know that being a zombie is not a cheerful time anyway, let alone if you're single and searching). Encouraging facts abound. Did you know that at any one time between 80 and 90% of zombies are not in a relationship - "You are not alone!" the book proclaims, perhaps missing the possible double-meaning of the statement. Clearly, though, out there someone is available and this book is the way to find them. The chapters progress logically, building from how to approach another zombie you're attracted to, right to the chapters on deeper longer-term relationships. Just like the living, zombies in long-term relationships do need to do work on maintaining their love. A two page set of bullet points on how to keep the pep present when you've been involved with a rotting corpse for more than a year is followed by similar spreads for five years, ten years and right on to the granite anniversary. Really it takes intentional action, rather than just cruising, and these pointers will tickle and inspire you. Feeling stale? Try out the matrix array of combination ideas for livening up your crumbling relationship, such as (1) go to a "based on the book by Nicholas Sparks" movie, then (2) a moonlight walk near water, (3) finish up with home-cooked brains, then (4) off to bed. My favorite chapter is number eighteen, specifically for lonely hearts who have tried again and again to establish a relationship without success. Remember the person you meet doesn't have to be a zombie already. If you find someone you think you might be attracted to, but they're still amongst the living, a couple of quick bites in the right spot and you might just have a new lover. 97

The book breaks everything down into a stepby-step process. The contents page is clear, the index abundant, and the price is just right. Recommended - ask your local bookstore now. Four and a half stars.

98

Sick Room Needs by Jordan Krall Published by The New Flesh 1/3/2011 The world begins and ends with an orgasm. Not mine, but yours. This, the dreams and desires of a syphilitic science fiction writer, is just about all you can stomach to read on your deathbed. It is depressing, I know. You tell me the nurse who takes care of you looks like an octopus with hair. When she walks in, I tell her you said that. After giggling, she cuts off your morphine and rips up the issue of True Detective I brought for you. It sort of makes me laugh because you always swore you wouldn’t let them put you on any sort of meds if you were in the hospital. Oh, but there you were, letting them drug you almost to death. You get pissed when Nurse Octopi cuts off the morphine. What happened to staying pure? Whatever, right? The angels don’t give a shit about what’s in your blood. Or what kind of sickness you had. It’s a sleeping sickness. I get cold when I am tired. My uncle also had this problem but only when he was drunk. When I sleep (and when I am drunk), my face turns blue and I tremble. Those who witness this for the first time have woken me up, threatening to call an ambulance. “I’m not getting in one of those machines!” I yell. 99

I was in an ambulance only once – the night my parents committed me. I had halfheartedly attempted suicide so they drove me a hospital. There I was confronted by an ugly, middle-aged hospital psychologist who tried to pry me open psychologically to find the source of my action, the source of the incident. To this day I’m not sure why I just didn’t make some shit up. You know, something like, “I’m so overwhelmed at the nothingness of life,” or something equally stupid. If I had done so, maybe I would’ve been sent home where I could have watched some Night Court instead of being sent to that place. But I wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t tell the bitch my insignificant reasons for taking the pills and so I was taken to that place, a special hospital where they took me to the empty kitchen and checked me for distinguishing marks, cuts, burns, etc. They didn’t notice the faint knife scars on my thighs. Stupid bastards. My first roommate in the hospital was a young boy who heard voices. We cleaned our room immaculately and earned an extra half hour past bed time. I watched television, not paying attention to it at all. My second roommate was a lazy fuck who reminded me of my uncle. He wouldn’t get out of a bed. There was no television in the room and he had no books that I could see. So what did he do all day? I don’t know. Masturbate? Maybe. One night he poured water on my pillow while I was in the bathroom. When he saw my only reaction was a bored shrug, he gave me one of his pillows. What was the point of the joke if he was just going to replace what he messed with? Stupid bastard. In that short time I managed to scribble down some documentation of my experiences. It was 100

mainly shit about insects and walls, or eyes in the walls or something. What I do remember is that everything kept changing from present tense to past tense as if I couldn’t help but drift off into the future. My arm is tired now, my brain crackles. I can hardly read what I have written. This isn’t a surprise; my handwriting is terrible but right now it is a long string of shit, covered in obscene ink smears: deep blue genitalia over ugly yellow pulp. I’m in bed, attempting to lull myself into vivid dreams. Random images/words and ghosts of scenes: names of household objects, names of childhood friends, celebrities, cities, situations, half-imagined placement of people and furniture (scenes of my life that probably never occurred though I wonder: if I imagine it enough times and develop emotional reactions to the scenes, how imaginary are they? Do they come any closer to becoming real? I think my ramblings about reality are useless anyway. While I am writing this, I am drinking vodka. That I can say for sure is real. The memory of vodka is real.) Something up there is a lie. I move my eyeballs from left to right in swift movements in order to jump start the dream process. I lay on my back in fear of being stabbed. If I lay on my stomach, someone might come in and shove a knife into me: violent bedtime sodomy. I’ve always had the fear of being stabbed in the back. Pissing at a urinal is a harrowing experience for me. I am here in my bed. The blanket will not protect me. Life is dangerous and I am in danger. The world begins and then it ends. It’s a sleeping sickness. 101

Death Do We Part by Jack Bristow Published by The New Flesh 1/10/2011 Dan Tanner lay awake in bed. He sleeps to the right of Beth. I love her. I love what she used to be, anyway, Dan thinks. Now she is nothing but a shell of her former self. Dead. Good as dead, anyway. Beth Tanner was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer five years ago. Then the doctor had told Dan she had six months; a year, with radiation treatment. But now it has been five years--five years of misery, Dan Tanner thinks. Five years of being a goddamn caregiver; five years of being off work; five years of her just laying there, wasting away... The dog, Mr. Bumps, a golden retriever, jumps on the bed, waking up Beth. "Who is this?" she asks. "It's just Mr. Bumps," Dan Tanner says. "Who?" Beth asks, feebly. "Mr. Bumps," Dan shouts over the boisterous respirator noises. Today is the tenth anniversary. Five good years, and five lousy ones, Dan thinks, bitterly, getting out of bed, slipping into his dog slippers. I have a good present for Beth today, and myself, for that matter, Dan thinks. The best present I could give anyone in our situation. Dan walks to the coffeepot, and presses its red button, Mr. Bumps following him. "Mr. Bumps," he says sadly, sentimentally. "I've found you a new owner. Mr. Drebson. Great fellow, he is. He has a full eight acres of land for you to have 102

fun on and a nice little bitch of your same breed for you to make babies with. In fact, that's the reason he wants you." Mr. Bumps wags his tail, ignorantly. Dan picks up the phone. Dials. "Hello. Mr. Drebson? Oh, you'll be here in an hour? Fantastic, Mr. Drebson. I can't wait; yes, of course. He has all his tags and shots." A pause. "Okay. See you then. Thanks." Dan hangs up then he calls his mother and father and tells them how much he loves them. "How is Beth doing?" the mother asks. "Bad, mom. But I have a feeling she'll start to do better..." The bell rings from the master bedroom. That goddamn miserable, incessant bell. I've been hearing you whine five years now. Five years of you. I'm not gonna miss you. No, sir. Dan walks to the master bedroom. "Yes honey. You rang?" "Could you make me some oatmeal?" her raspy voice asks. "Absolutely, hun. Do you know what day today is?" Silence, except for the respirator. "Our anniversary." Then: "Please just get me my oatmeal." He comes back with a steamy bowl of oatmeal. He takes off her respirator mask and feeds her with a spoon, like a baby. Her lips, once pouty and naturally bright red are now purple and whithered; her bald head looks so thin and feeble that Dan is afraid that if he kisses it too harshly it will crack and shatter like a cheap dollar store vase. After he feeds her her last spoonful Dan Tanner kisses gently her cold, clammy forehead. 103

"Happy anniversary, honey. I love you." He walks into the spare bedroom. The bedroom is bare except for his war decorations and a mahogany desk. He gazes up at the decorations a second. As if they are some kind of reaffirmation to him that his life hasn't been a complete and utter failure. He then opens the uppermost desk drawer and gets out the thirty eight and inspects the chamber. Two bullets. Dan grabs Mr. Bumpers by the collar and guides him into the living room and leashes him then knotting the leash around the dinner table. On top of the dinner table he leaves all the papers for Mr. Drebson. Dan then walks back to the bedroom, gun in hand. He slowly and coolly aims the pistol on the delicate form that breathes sporadically underneath the covers, then fires. He is sure she is dead but checks for a heartbeat anyway. There is none. He then puts the gun inside his mouth the way the Lieutenant had shown him to put it if the Vietcong had ever closed in on him; his hands now shaky. BANG. *** Mr. Drebson arrives an hour later. The front door is open but he knocks anyway. He sees the dog tied to the dinner table inside and goes in to pet him then calls the owner. "Hello." Silence. He walks farther into the corridor and then that is where he begins to see the terrible mess. Crimson walls, bedsheets, and carpeting... First he feels for a pulse on the mangled form on the bed. Nothing. Then he feels for the 104

gentleman's on the floor. A slight, weak beat. Mr. Drebson runs to the telephone and dials 9-11. The paramedics, with the assistance of Mr. Drebson, lift Mr. Tanner on to the gurney then rush him in the howling ambulance to the First Community Hospital. There Mr. Tanner spent the last five years of his life in a vegetative state.

105

Bartering in the Hood by Erin Cole Published by The New Flesh 1/14/2011 The army drones crawl from under my neighbor’s vine, trailing a slippery streak of silver towards the garden of mine. Camouflaged against the brick, the heedless foot gambles over the lot, a miss will squish crunchy goop, like a delicate vase full of snot. With bucket and glove, I pick, I pluck, and I plunk those little bastards like dirty love, but they have eager hearts and fight their way to the rim, feelers erect and squirming to live. “I brought at least forty,” I say, knowing they hide like dirty rats. “Forty snails,” I say again. “That gets me at least the Wright’s cat.” The hair on my arm bristles at the shake of nearby brush and faces emerge from the thistle, sneering with malice and such. Not like pastel fairies, aglow and shimmering, but muddy, wrinkled, and green-eyed with jolly beards so deceiving. 106

The gnomes are mean as evil sprites, unless I bring them something nice: snails, slugs, frogs, and moles or when I’m desperate, koi with tadpoles. “Cat is 100,” one of them snarls. “60,” I reply, receding from the yard. “90,” the red hat one says with a hop, as a snail crests and drops into his greasy chops. I lift the bucket over my head, as they encircle around me, heart beating dread. “Doggy, doggy, doggy,” I advise. “What a great idea for Scotty’s Christmas surprise.” “75,” one with a shovel says. “45,” I return. Never back down, the gypsy woman said. “Give us the bucket and we’ll scare the cat,” he tells me with putrid grin. “50 or I’ll promise you two Doberman.” The rowdy gang disappears into a thicket of mugwort. An hour later, a knock at the door reveals something in the dirt. It's the Wright’s cat, limp as a mink scarf, poor little Mitsy shouldn’t shit by my car. With bucket and glove, I scrape, scoop, and skip to the hill, thorny limbs slashing at my bare heel. “I brought to come. Then, like wings flap I drop the

a cat,” I say, waiting for the shadows eagles in the night sky, charcoaled and drum. bucket and back up, 107

for one touch of those stony talons would bring bad luck. “Male or female,” one gargoyle hisses at the pail. “Female of course — not even missing her tail.” “Which house?” Another asks, spinning a roll of toilet paper to string like rain. “The bright blue one down the block, still smelling of fresh paint.”

108

The Patient in Room Five by Kenneth James Crist Published by The New Flesh 1/28/2011 This has got to be Hell. White walls. White ceiling. TV on constantly. Ever since the wreck, lying here, alone. They've never even figured out who I am. They call me "unknown Karen", because I was the eleventh female trauma victim of the year. So I got the "K" name. No visitors. Nobody knows me. I'd even settle for my rotten ex-husband at this point. But I was alone, and the car burned. I was thrown clear, but everything I owned was in the car. They surely can trace the car. It's a rental. Someone has to find out who I am. I lie here and I cannot move. The doctors say my spinal column is okay and, in truth, I can feel everything they do, but I can only breathe, swallow and move my eyes. Nothing else. They feed me, bathe me, change my bedding and dump my pee out of the collection thing. I have a catheter. They seem very interested in my pee. Days aren't so bad. The doctors come and they tell me eventually I will be all right. They say something neurological is messed up in my head, and I have "little or no motor responses." Well, no shit! Nights are worse. I have been hearing things in the night. When the halls are dark and quiet and the visitors are all gone, and the staff are knitting or bullshitting or whatever they do, I hear noises. 109

First I heard breathing. I noticed I could hear someone else breathing in counterpoint to my own breath sounds. But I'm in a private room in the Medical Intensive Care Unit. There's no one here but me. I would stop breathing and listen, and he would stop, too. He wouldn't start until I did. Whoever he is, the fucker can hold his breath a long time. After I didn't breathe for a long time, my monitors would start going apeshit, and the nurses would rush in, then I'd have to breathe again. The shrink was in yesterday. Wanted to know why I was holding my breath. Thought I was attempting suicide, I guess. We did that stupid blink once for "yes", twice for "no" bullshit. Finally convinced him I was just listening. That I still had my will to live. Anyway, it started with the breathing. Then it progressed. Now, at night, I hear all kinds of sounds and they all seem to be coming from under my bed. I cannot imagine how dark it must be under there, at night. I hear shuffling sounds, sounds of something moving around. Stealthy, though. It knows I'm listening. I think it knows I'm terrified. Last night, it started giggling. Barely audible, but I heard it. And this morning there was a long, thin tear in my bottom sheet, down by the foot of the bed. Down on the underside, where it tucks in. A thin tear like a claw might make. The nurses were mystified as to how that tear got there, but I know. It's showing me that it's getting stronger. Each night now, I lie wide awake and petrified, as it snuffles and shuffles around in the dark, crooning and giggling to itself, like some idiot child. I sweat cold ice pellets into 110

my sheets, waiting for the hand, the clawed appendage that must soon come to grasp my ankle or arm. Then I will die. I know my heart will just seize up and stop. It would be different if I could scream. If I could push a call button. I can do neither, and it's getting darker by the moment. I have survived another night. At about four in the morning, I fell asleep, believe it or not. I guess I was just exhausted. I listened to him half the night, doing his thing under there, but now there's a new twist. He knows my name. Not "Unknown Karen." My real name. He said it last night. He called me Marcie. Not just once, either. He lurched and rolled and giggled and called me Marcie. At times he was so active I could feel the bed shake. He's gathering strength for when he can come out. Another night, and I am still here. Now he has a friend. I listened to them whispering and giggling all night. I didn't fall asleep this time. Not at all. I couldn't understand what they were whispering about, but they were having a good time. I think it won't be much longer now. I discovered this morning that I could move my thumb. Now, if I only could reach the call button. But, so far, I have been unable to make the nurses aware that my thumb will move. Ah, well. Almost time for Oprah. "What time did the patient code, Nurse?" "Three forty-five, Doctor." "Anybody start CPR?" "Yes, Doctor. And the Code Blue Team was here in less than two minutes with the crash cart." "These things always bother me. Last night, on rounds, I saw her and she seemed to be improving. Did they defibrillate her?" 111

"Yes, Doctor. Four times." "Okay, well, I'm gonna order an autopsy, just for my peace of mind. We'll make the time of death...four A.M." "Doctor, what do you make of these scratches?" "Where?" "Here, on her ankle." "Oh, well, I don't know. They appear to be superficial. Maybe she thrashed around or something." "She wasn't able to move, Doctor." "Well, I don't know then. They're certainly not lethal, though." "No, I suppose not." "I'll see ya later. I've got rounds..." "Okay, thanks, Doctor." "Yeah, have a nice day."

112

The Ocean Machine by Magen Toole Published by The New Flesh 2/10/2011 Every night Lorelei held a captive audience at The Ocean Machine, double-jointed, doll-slack in the embrace of her red octopus Gustav. Lorelei danced the main stage under neon flush and sweat. Gustav had hard eyes like yellow marbles, fat muscled arms snaking up her back and down her thighs to lure the viewer’s gaze between them. The sailors loved Lorelei, with wild orange flowers in her hair and black glitter on her eyes, amorous for the way she folded herself in two and held her breath beneath the skeletal jut of her diaphragm. Her arms were loose like tentacles reaching for the North Star, her belly rippling in ocean waves. On stage Lorelei was more octopus than woman, Gustav more lover than octopus. Moving across the stage as one, Lorelei never said which was truer than the other. Men came from across the port-city to watch Lorelei dance, and others further still. Henri with his sallow complexion and uneasy temperament claimed he had come from Paris. He had traveled on the murmurs of smitten boys and sailors to admire her, sitting in the front row to catch her smile or the touch of her hand. Each night Gustav made love to Lorelei for an audience of slaves before being put to bed in his tank with lipstick kisses against the glass, “Goodnight, my love.”

113

Where Lorelei ended and Gustav began, only the octopus could say, and he would say nothing of it. Henri always came backstage after Lorelei’s performances, making his way past sailors with elbows and stiff shoulders, telling all others “Step aside, step aside.” His coat pockets were burdened with diamond rings in velvet boxes, offering promises in rose blossoms. In her dressing room and gown, Lorelei always sighed and rolled her smiling eyes. From his tank Gustav changed color from red to black at the sight, but said nothing of that either. “Come away with me,” Henri would say, taking her hand with his bony fingers. “I will take you far from here.” “All men say such things.” At her vanity Lorelei would gently pat Henri’s thin cheek. “I’m flattered, but if I ran away with you, how would the men of this port amuse themselves?” “That is no concern to me. My father’s fortune awaits me in Paris. If you accompanied me home you would want for nothing again." "I want for nothing now.” From across the room Gustav’s marble-gaze would darken, his skin changing like a lightning flash. Things were said between them, the signals of lighthouses written across Lorelei’s eyes. It was a language of which Henri knew nothing. In his bed he slept restlessly, dreaming of Lorelei, her doll limbs and ribcage like splayed fingers when she danced. When he opened his eyes to visions of exotic flowers, he knew she could no longer deny him. For three nights Henri followed Lorelei home, down the spindly dirty alleys beginning outside The Ocean Machine and leading down lightspeckled avenues to the brownstone where she 114

slept. Gustav traveled with her, arms drawn tight as to fit inside the fishbowl that Lorelei carried, his fat eyes gold in the shadows stretching between street lamps. He never left her side. Each night Henri kept a discrete distance beneath the brim of his hat and the shield of his coat lapels, hiding as he strained over garbage cans and window-boxes to see inside her curtained windows. Lorelei and Gustav made silhouettes by candle-light, smoky through patterned red drapes and never betraying their secrets. They lived as lovers it seemed, Gustav’s arms around Lorelei’s shadow, wrapped tight around her like a husband to his wife in a sensuous tangle of limbs. It put fire in Henri’s belly, maddened by the thought. Lorelei had no right to deny him, especially not for the embrace of an animal. Some mindless thing found feeding on the bottom of the sea, brought to false heights on dry-land. For three nights Henri festered. On the fourth he went to the club to watch Lorelei, face hot and knobby fists in his coat pockets. Lorelei danced with Gustav, spine bent, boneless and indistinct like the octopus that cradled her. Henri watched, sickened by the sin of it. After the performance he stormed backstage and into her dressing room, shouting in his displeasure. “I’ll give you one last chance to save yourself. Come with me tonight or you'll pay for this disrespect.” Lorelei pushed Henri, beating a fist against his chest. “Get out, get out,” she screamed. In his tank Gustav changed colors like a spinning top. “And don’t you dare come back.” Henri slapped Lorelei twice, hard across her face, pushing her to the ground. He slapped her once more and tore at her robe, impatient to 115

undress her. She fought him; kicked him soundly and wrestled away, getting up to scoop Gustav from his tank. Lorelei fled out the back door of the club, down the crooked alleys that had led Henri to her door, her octopus clutched to her breast. Henri followed in hungry steps as she took them on dirty bare feet to the docks, running to the end of an empty landing. “You’ve trapped yourself here, you stupid girl,” Henri’s lips pulled back to sneer. “Come to me before I have to hurt you.” Lorelei set Gustav down at her feet. She slipped out of her tattered robe and under the spidery veins of moonlight her body changed. The skin blackened at her waist, a rough hide that combed down her legs to cleave them into eight limbs, thick-muscled and strong. Black flesh crawled up her back and over her shoulders to flank her in the octopus skin, making hard marbles of her eyes until she was at last transformed into the half-woman she was on stage. It was then, stricken in his silent horror, that Henri understood. Over the edge Lorelei slithered into the water. Gustav followed to disappear with her beneath the silent ripples, leaving Henri’s world behind.

116

Eleven by K. C. Callagy Published by The New Flesh 2/21/2011 Eleven creatures hover on the surface of the sun. Eleven philanthropists tossed into a ring of angry bulls. Eleven survivors were then killed by questionable motives that could not be resolved within eleven days. Eleven piranhas can eat through a three thousand pound prized cow in eleven hours. Ten men were admitted into a psychiatric ward in Manhattan this morning; the eleventh went on to burn down a bank downtown. Eleven is a baker’s dozen minus two for the pastry chef because he deserves his reward. That baker went on to eat fifty more doughnuts that very morning, thus causing him to gain eleven pounds, making him very fat and very full. He took the Eleven Train downtown to commit himself to a psych ward, only to be turned down. The baker burned down the bank on Eleventh Street. It took eleven men to extinguish the fire. Case closed.

117

On the Set with Dante and Beelzebub by Dustin Reade Published by The New Flesh 2/25/2011 Sam reaches in his mouth to find his teeth have fallen out...painless, but with the nightmare feeling of terror welling up in his chest as they hit the floor (tink! tink! tink!) ...stinking holes expose dangling, twitching nerve endings...a cascading waterfall of blood pushes out passed the tongue...animal panic. He rips at his lips and tongue, turning his lower jaw into a mass of eviscerated meat...his bottom jaw rips itself loose and joins his teeth on the floor, the tongue flopping madly around like a severed octopus limb...a death worthy of Hollywood. The Director runs around screaming, "More Blood! More Blood!" "But sir," a shrill voice screams, “if we add anymore blood, no one will believe it! It won't look real!" The director runs on camera and slits his wrists...has just enough time to carve three sixes into his chest before he dies...the whole thing has a sort of "end of the world" feel coupled with an old spaghetti western. A shrill voice screams, "Did you get that?! Did you get that?!" Someone offstage answers, "Yes, but it didn't move me...” "To hell with you! We're getting the Academy Award for that death scene!" 118

The gaffer climbs down from a lamp pole...all the lights dim...mood music floats across the room from out of nowhere. "Can someone clean this up?!" A tired janitor picks up the carcass of the pale Director and crams it into an oil drum filled with sulfuric acid. "Keep that pulp for the banquet scene!" "Yes, sir!" "And what are all these teeth everywhere? What are we, forgetful dentists? Someone push a broom around this place, for goodness sakes!" The dry whisk of a broom on the floor. "Action!" A door bangs open and closed offstage...Sam goes lurching around outside, bleeding on the sidewalk, mouth a miasma of gore. "Pleesh! Pleesh helf me! My teef! My teef!" "Cut!" The blockbuster hit of the summer.

119

Rejected by The New Flesh - or – Submissions by an Asshole by Jason Armstrong Published by The New Flesh 3/12/2011 Jason, Thank you for your submission to The New Flesh but I'm afraid we're going to pass on this one. Please feel free to submit again in the future. William Pauley III Editor THE NEW FLESH

Jason, Not only am I going to pass on this story but allow me to say a few things about it. First of all, simply writing a play by play of you taking a shit is not a story. It's not even acceptable as an entry in your diary. In addition I want to say that we here at The New Flesh have no room for writers who lower themselves to the level of using toilet humor. We are a strictly a classy operation and our readers expect only the most respectable material around. Finally, I would like to add that referring to yourself as the Jay-Z of Bizarro fiction in your bio only makes you look like a complete ass. Not only is that 120

absurd way for an artist to describe themself but, in your case, it is totally unfounded. William Pauley III Editor THE NEW FLESH

Jason, Normally I wouldn't even take the time to respond to this sort of submission but in your case I will make an exception. How the fuck did you think you would get away with simply resubmitting your poop story and using Jordan Krall as a pseudonym? You have been told before that this is not the kind of story that will be published here. And how did you think that we would be fooled by your pen name? IT CAME FROM YOUR EMAIL! Are you insane? I'm not sure if this is a new form plagiarism you have discovered but you should consider yourself lucky if this doesn't lead to some sort of legal action against you. William Pauley III Editor THE NEW FLESH

Jason, Please be advised that this e-mail is set aside solely for story submissions. I would be upset that you tried cast a spell on me via email if it hadn't been such a miserable failure. It seems that your lack of writing ability has been eclipsed by your inability to perform magick. And that's saying a lot! You clearly have 121

no powers of sorcery and this is illustrated, for one example, by your inability to even spell any of the names of the Elder Ones correctly. Also I would add that the sigils you attached show a crude understanding at best of The Necronomicon. I suggest that you not only take a break from writing and spellwork but from life in general and take a long, hard look at yourself before continuing with anything in your life. William Pauley III Editor THE NEW FLESH

Jason, Your recent idea for a story that is nothing but a series of rejection letters from TNF is a new low even for you. It's such a shoddy story. I refuse to subject my readers to such an obvious gimmick. Let me advise you that a story contains a narrative and this contains none. Well, unless you count this being a chronicling of your swift descent into madness as the narrative, in which case I would suggest you present this story to a psychiatrist rather than to any publisher. William Pauley III Editor THE NEW FLESH

Jason, Before you even consider submitting to The New Flesh again, please allow me to reject you in 122

advance. Nothing you have ever written or will ever write will be published by me, nor will it be published by anyone anywhere. You may even be the first person to be rejected by a selfpublisher. Please take my advice and give up on yourself. Respectfully, William Pauley III Editor THE NEW FLESH

123

Hey, Andy! by Jordan Krall Published by The New Flesh 3/14/2011 (A dialogue between Matthew Revert and Andersen Prunty)

“Hey Andy, can I ask you a question?” Matthew Revert said, farting silently into his wicker chair. Andy squinted through cigarette smoke. “I guess.” “You like me?” “What do you mean?” Andy puffed on his fag and squinted some more. “I mean, do you like me? As a fellow author...” “Uh, not sure. Haven’t given it much thought. I guess not.” Matthew farted again but this time it made a squeaking noise not unlike the crying out of a homesick mouse. “What about as a human being? Do you like me, respect me, as a human being?” Andy put out his cigarette, took a swig of his fancy imported beer, and said, “You’re Australian, right?” Matthew farted. “Yeah.” “And you’re asking me if I respect you, like you, as a human being?” "Yeah,” Matthew replied, farting. “Last time I checked, Australians weren’t human beings.” Matthew stood up from his wicker chair and farted. “I give up.” 124

Andy shrugged, took a sip of his beer, and lit another cigarette. “Me too,” Andy said as he farted into the bleak Ohio wind.

125

So Andy by Jordan Krall Published by The New Flesh 3/18/2011 (A dialogue between William Pauley III and Andersen Prunty)

“So, Andy,” William said. “Why do I have to take my pants off again?” “Just do it.” “Okay.” Andy puffed on his cigarette and stuck his hand between the couch cushions. “Then when you’re done pulling your pants down I want you to do me a favor.” “You mean this doesn’t count as the favor I owe you?” Andy laughed. “Are you kidding me? You owe me, like, a thousand favors.” William stood in front of the couch, naked from the waist down because he had refused to wear underwear since he had banged his kindergarten teacher way back in third grade. He looked at Andy’s face: that pallid mask of regret and lost hope. Then he said, “I kinda thought we were even since I did that other...thing for you.” Andy waved his hand. “That was small potatoes, Billy.” “No one calls me Billy. Not anymore." Another puff of the cigarette by Andy. “Bend over, Billy.” Four hours go by and the cigarette hangs in the air like a loser cloud. William watches sweat drip down the bridge of his nose, making him 126

cross-eyed and half-delirious due to his morbid fear of sweat. He cleared his throat. “So Andy,” he said. “You think we can wrap this up?” "Jesus Christ, Billy, I’ve never met someone so impatient." “Stop calling me Billy.” “I’ll stop calling you Billy when you start acting like a man.” William sighed. “But you know that’s impossible.” More cigarette smoke. “Nothing is impossible.” Andy leaned his head forward, getting a face full of sweat. “NOTHING.”

127

Immortality by Robert C. Eccles Published by The New Flesh 3/26/2011 Cheese-a-saurus Rex came to me in a dream. “Chuck,” Rex said, “You have been chosen to receive a wonderful gift.” “An X-Box 360?” Rex frowned. “No,” he said, “immortality.” “What good is immortality without video games?” I asked. Rex twiddled the fingers on the ends of his unusually short arms. “Didn't anyone ever tell you not to look a gift-a-saurus in the mouth?” “No,” I said. “But someone did tell me once that a life without video games is like an ocean without fish, a sky without birds, a...” “Enough of this nonsense!” Rex roared, baring his pointy, cheese-colored teeth. “Do you want this gift or not?” “I suppose I could buy my own X-Box 360,” I said. “Sure. What do I have to do?” “Eat one box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese a day,” Rex explained, “and you'll live forever.” “I have to eat the whole box myself?” “Yes.” “I can't share it with anyone?” “No,” Rex said, growing angry. “The gift is for you, not the macaroni and cheese-eating public at large!” “So if I share the mac and cheese, anyone who eats it will live forever, too?” 128

“No, only you,” Rex said. “The magical power of immortality is within you, not the macaroni and cheese.” “So why do I have to eat the macaroni and cheese at all?” In an instant, Rex's face was inches from my own. “I don't have time to explain every little nuance of how this works to you!” Rex's breath blew the hair back from my forehead as he screamed. The smell of macaroni and cheese filled my nostrils. Cheese sauce spattered my face. “You either accept the gift now, or I'm outta here!” I gave it a moment's thought. It was clear that Cheese-a-saurus Rex expected a more immediate response, but he waited, wringing his tiny hands. “Is there anything I'm required to do in exchange for the gift of immortality?” “One thing, and one thing only,” he said. “Many children mistake me for the dinosaur actor in the movie 'Toy Story'." “There is somewhat of a resemblance,” I said. Rex was not amused. “You must actively help me quash the misunderstanding that he and I are one in the same. If another child who says he loved me in 'Toy Story' asks me for my autograph, I may not be able to contain my rage.” “Have you thought about getting help for your anger issues?” The Cheese-a-saurus' eyes narrowed to slits. “Do we have a deal?" “Yes, we do.” Rex's face broke into a huge, toothy grin. “Excellent! You'll want to get started first thing tomorrow.” 129

The next thing I knew, I awoke in my bed. That was a little over five years, two additional “Toy Story” movies and countless boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ago. Kids still mistake Cheese-a-saurus Rex for the dinosaur in the movies (he hasn't killed any of them yet, as far as I know), and I'm still alive. I weigh 450 pounds now and my doctor says eating so much macaroni and cheese is going to kill me. But I know better.

130

Final Scene Before End Credits by Dustin Reade Published by The New Flesh 3/28/2011 A deer lifts its head...factories loom over the treetops, spewing gallons of black smoke into the sky...birds fall en masse...corpses line the highways...the deer falls dead, its stomach bloats, pops...a chemical spill of intestines and maggots and blood. A sudden explosion...all over the world smoke stacks sprout from the soil...they grow and swell like time-lapse mushrooms. Septic tanks erupt...shit rain...dysentery ...A vile black cloud stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. A man in military garb stands over a rotten moose carcass. “This isn’t your father’s pollution,” he says as he runs a steel-toed work boot through a mass of putrescence. Fish crawl from the black oceans trailing lungs...a new evolution...miasmas of gore...a man squats in the jungle shitting out a miles-long tapeworm...extreme chaos as Nuclear Reactors grow from the dirt, reaching for the sky like concrete tree trunks...chemical gardens filled to the brim with toxic death. Some of this is unnecessary...we call it “setting the scene”. The viewer is made to feel as if all of this is in some way their fault. Maggots make short work of our deer...face and personality are eaten away...an elongated skull is revealed to be the final product. A 131

smoke stack belches a toxic plume of purple-grey smoke...a cloud is ripped to shreds...blood rains down...people race from vehicles to fast-food chains holding red soaked newspapers over their heads. “What’s black-and-white-and-red all over?” Two nuns in a chainsaw fight. A dirty Jesus character with mud-caked beard slumps under the heaviness of a shovel-load of dirt and debris...slow pan...pull back...the world comes into view...bodies being thrown into mass graves...high-definition bead of sweat rolls down an emaciated cheek...maggots pouring from rotten wounds and ribcages. Now the camera is falling down the mouth of a fathomless cavern...hundreds of broken bodies slumped under shovels. Dirty Jesus looks off camera. A deer is grazing atop a mountain of garbage. Fade to black.

132

Cookie by James Steele Published by The New Flesh 4/20/2011 Jessica took the cookies out of the oven and set them on the counter to cool. Five special Valentine’s Day cookies, each six inches across, one for her and each of her friends to eat together. It was a of hers to bake elaborate cookies and have all her friends over for Valentine’s Day. They looked forward to it every year. It kept them all together no matter what circumstances tried to nudge them apart. A few hours later, the cookies were cool enough to decorate with icing and candy. Jessica picked up one of the five pans and turned to take it to where the toppings were. The pan slipped from her hand, flipped over in mid-air and landed facedown on the kitchen floor. The cookie shattered, chocolate chips flew everywhere, some rolled under the refrigerator never to be seen again. Jessica bent over and carefully picked up the tray. The cookie was upside down in a hundred jagged pieces. She knelt on the floor, crossed her arms and pouted like a little girl. All that time she spent on those cookies, making them just special for all of her friends, even resisting eating them herself. Her friends would be here in less than an hour and now she was a cookie short and she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by leaving them out. She had to kill one of her friends. 133

But which one? William? No, he had given her rides to work for a week when her car was broken. What about Alice? Jessica couldn’t remember anything Alice had done for her except watch movies and go to bars. She supposed that was enough to let her live. Then there was Andy. She liked him and wished for the love of God he’d make a move on her but he never had. Then again, he did like the same music as Jessica. That left Sally. Sally was the drama queen of the group, but that’s exactly why everyone liked her. Jessica sighed and sank deeper to the floor, staring at the broken cookie. It was going to be a difficult choice. All her friends were redeeming in some way. How could she choose just one? Then it occurred to Jessica: what about herself? There were still four cookies left. If she were dead, then no one would know what had happened and none of her friends would have to be left out! Perfect! Jessica swept up the mess and took the trash out so there’d be no evidence for her friends to discover later. She set the remaining four cookies on plates, iced and decorated them beautifully, took a step back and admired her work. She turned around and chose a knife from the wooden block next to the microwave. She decided to use one with a smooth edge so it wouldn’t grind against any bones. Then Jessica stood in the middle of the kitchen and shoved the knife through her heart. She dropped to her knees. Then to her face... She felt better now... Now there were enough cookies to go around... No one...would be...left out... She smiled and closed her eyes for the last time.

134

Bits and Pieces by Laura Eno Published by The New Flesh 4/22/2011 Ruth Mason walked into the dentist office fifteen minutes early, even though she dreaded the appointment. She was early for everything. Her husband joked that she’d be early for her own funeral, but Ruth liked to think that she was punctual. The bland beige office with its bland beige sofa did nothing to relax her tension. Neither did the two-month-old magazines she now flipped through without really seeing. Soft elevator music played in the background, but it annoyed rather than helped. When the assistant finally called her back, 20 minutes late, Ruth jumped at the sound of her name. She wouldn’t be here at all except her tooth had really been bothering her for the last several days. There was no getting around it. She needed it fixed. The assistant carried in a tray that the dentist would need, setting it on the small table beside her. The sunlight glinted off the metal array, making them look like dangerous weapons. Ruth’s hands began to sweat and she closed her eyes. “The doctor will be with you shortly,” the assistant said and left the room. Ruth was glad to be left alone. The girl was excessively cheerful, blending with the elevator music to create a nauseating experience. 135

Ms. Chirpy came back to take x-rays and left again. After what seemed like an eternity, the doctor arrived. “It’s a good thing you came in before the tooth became infected.” Dr. Jessop examined the upper molar in Ruth’s mouth, comparing it to the x-ray. It needed a root canal without any further delay. He injected the lidocaine in several spots. “The upper teeth are very close to the sinus cavity, which is a direct pathway to the brain. We wouldn’t want an infection to work its way in there, now would we?” Ruth grunted her assent, wondering why dentists always chose to ask questions when their patients couldn’t answer. Maybe they taught that in dental school. Still, overall he was a kind man. She’d been coming to him for years. Left alone in the chair while the anesthetic took effect, Ruth studied the same plaques on the wall that she’d seen a dozen times before. She never remembered to bring something to read in with her, although it’d be a blur since her nerves were always on edge here. A visit to the dentist wasn’t on her list of favorite outings. Dr. Jessop came back in with another tray, covered in a white cloth. He set it down on a table behind Ruth’s head. After inserting a bite block into her mouth, he asked if she was ready. Ruth gargled a response that made no sense and squeezed her eyes shut, just as she always did. That was why she missed the power drill with the 1/2” bit. “I’ve often wondered just how close the sinus cavity really is to the upper teeth so I brought my own tools in this morning to experiment.” 136

The doctor hummed along to the song of the drill, adjusting angles to compensate for the lolled head of his patient. “Thank you for being such a quiet patient, Ms. Mason. It makes the job so much more pleasant.”

137

The Self-Mutilation Blues by Jonathan Moon Published by The New Flesh 4/26/2011 ‘It’s a suicide note you can dance to, baby,’ I woke up this morning to fog drifting through my living room and a song stuck in my head. In a world where words hurt, these ones strangely soothed me and set my scars a tingle. My toes tapped air and I broke my own rule by getting up before noon. ‘It’s a suicide note you can dance to, baby, that pain that gets us through.’ A smile found its way onto my face, it was weird, but I decided to just go with it. The forward momentum of motivation jerked me into my morning routine. The smile itched and I almost lost the song to a random thought about blood stains-how they taste and fade. ‘It’s a suicide note you can dance to, baby, that pain that gets us through. When you’re bleeding, you’re never alo-oo-ne.’ I stood in front of the mirror naked so I could berate myself out loud. I keep track of my failures by carving X’s on myself; I look like I’m wearing a fleshy plaid bodysuit. I traced the heart-shaped scar on my chest with a trembling finger and pondered the future. ‘It’s a suicide note you can dance to, baby, that pain that gets us through. When you’re bleeding, you’re never alo-oo-ne. A pound of flesh will pay your dues,’ 138

Next I felt hope, I think, because my normally steady fingers were jittery as I removed my razor blade from my necklace. I dug the blade into the scar and dragged it along the heart shaped outline as I had so many times before. Maybe this time would be different, maybe this time I could feel. The unscarred flesh inside the heart turned red as the disfigurement burst open in the razor's wake. The cut was perfect and I felt my blood-warm and sticky-flowing down my stomach. I felt nothing inside. I failed, yet again, but I have no more room for X’s. My smile did nothing but mock me. Good thing I can sing without lips. ‘It’s a suicide note you can dance to, baby that pain that gets us through. When you’re bleeding, you’re never alo-oo-ne. A pound of flesh will pay your dues, Oh, yeah, baby, it’s the self-mutilation blues.’

139

Death by Limited Palette by Kirk Jones Published by The New Flesh 5/02/2011 Sitting on a park bench, he watched the faceless, two-dimensional people scramble past one another, moving thoughtlessly through the streets. His lunch break was almost over. It was time to join them. He placed his hands on the bench to lift himself, when he realized his legs were gone. Reaching down to confirm what his eyes told him, he noticed the lower half of his body on the ground. He grazed his underbelly to make sure all his vitals were in tact, expecting to feel the moist warmth of blood. Instead there was only a cool, smooth surface, what he thought a cauterized wound might feel like. Then he was gone. Miles away his eight year old son Billy carefully rendered a picture from black coloring pencil. He ran to his mother to show her his progress. "Mommy! Mommy!" he said, handing her the picture. "Look!" She held the picture at a distance, straightened her glasses. "What is it?" she asked, though she recognized the crude stick figure rendering of bifurcated and beheaded bodies. "It's a picture of daddy. He's dead." "Peter, why would you draw something like that?" 140

"I'm almost done with yours," he said, running back to the other room. "I just need to find the blue marker, for your dress." She looked up from the picture and towards the window. Faceless, two-dimensional figures walked aimlessly on the unlined pavement. She rolled up her blue sleeves and started for the water in the sink, when she realized she no longer had arms. She called to her son as she tried to think of a way to stop the bleeding. But there was no blood. Billy ran into the room with his new picture. "Mom?" he asked. "Have you seen my red crayon?"

141

Power by Dustin Reade Published by The New Flesh 5/14/2011 My neighbor stops screaming long enough to punch the Power Guy in the mouth. Watching from my living room window, even I am surprised by the sudden burst of violence. The Power Guy just sits there on the sidewalk, holding his clipboard to his chest, crying like a child. My neighbor is still angry. He jumps up and down, screaming his head off. When the Power Guy doesn’t respond, he runs into his tool shed and emerges a few moments later with a pair of gardening shears. The Power Guy climbs awkwardly to his feet and tries to run away. My neighbor chases him around the house a few times, brandishing the shears like a sword. His bathrobe flies open, exposing his beer belly which droops a bit over the elastic of his dirty white underpants. The Power Guy is screaming for help. I can see several of my other neighbors watching the chaotic scene from their living room windows. Most of them are smiling, except for Mrs. Bradley. There is a multi-colored parrot on her shoulder and she has a phone pressed up to her ear, talking excitedly to someone, probably the police. Way to ruin it for the rest of us, Mrs. Bradley.

142

The Keeper by Kurt Newton Published by The New Flesh 5/26/2011 God, it was just one date, and not a good one at that. A so-so dinner and a horrible movie...something with a train in it. At the end of the evening I gave her a kiss and said, "See you around." That night it began. Phone call after phone call. "I love you...I can't stop thinking about you..." She was like one of those annoying pullstring dolls that say the same thing over and over. She began showing up everywhere. Outside my apartment. In the parking lot where I work. At the bar where me and my buddies hang out. I told her to stop. Keep away or I'd call the police. But she didn't listen. The night I found her in my kitchen preparing our one-week anniversary dinner I just snapped. I carried her out into the garage, grabbed an ax, and chopped off her legs so she'd stop following me. But she dragged herself back into the kitchen like a trained seal, blood trailing in a wide smear. "Don't worry, I'll clean that up," she said with an adoring smile. She blew me a kiss, balancing on one hand. So I took a meat cleaver and hacked off her arms, but she merely wriggled about like one of those air-breathing fish that crosses dry land to get to the next pond. The smile remained. "Time for dinner!" she said. 143

At last, I lopped off her head and set it on the counter beside the tuna casserole she'd made. To my dismay she kept right on smiling and her vocal cords worked just fine. "I love you," she cooed, scrunching her nose. Now, I know what you're thinking. Cut out her tongue, poke out her eyes. But I got to tell you, she was beginning to grow on me. I think this one's a keeper.

144

Behind Every Successful Woman by Wol-vriey Published by The New Flesh 6/02/2011 [Author’s disclaimer: Ladies this is a sexist tale. It isn’t written for you, but for MEN, MEN, MEN. Stop reading right now or else...just don’t blame me afterward...ahem]

----------As the result of humanity’s losing the war with the Andromedans, all human women were stripped of their buttocks. Yes, those twin pads of fat which human men lust after were stolen by the alien fiends. Earth’s men woke up the next day feeling strangely cheated, and yet strangely at peace with themselves, as for the first time in their lives they found themselves able to stare at female members of their species without any lust whatsoever. Even more amazing, most men now began to view women as persons rather than sex objects. If men were pleased with this state of affairs however, the female of the species most definitely wasn’t. *** Fifty miles above the Earth’s surface, ruling committee of the Female Emancipation Domination of Man (FEm-DoM) society deliberating what to do about this latest crisis. 145

the and were sex

“This is a total disaster,” the goddess Electra growled, “it’s almost as bad as when the feminist lobbies got equal pay for women in the workplace.” “That was easier to resolve,” Athena interjected, “All we had to do to ensure we kept the upper hand was get the sexual harassment legislation passed through congress.” “We’re about to lose the ability to use sex as a weapon to disorient men for good ladies,” Hera said miserably. “Six thousand years of work is about flushing down the drain because some alien invaders...” “Er...mankind started the war...” “You KNOW what I mean!” “Girls,” Electra chided gently, “fighting will get us nowhere. This is way beyond any crisis we’ve ever faced. With the loss of buttocks, ass, tush - call it what you will, these damn Andromedans have unwittingly crippled femalekind. Of what use is it having sexes if sex can’t interfere with the smooth running of society, create endless unresolvable issues, perpetually fuck up the gears of the relationship machine?” “Yeah, all men love ass,” Hera said reflectively. “Gay men don’t.” “Yes they do; they just love a guy’s ass!" Hera’s two compatriots stared at her narrowly. “Try to be serious.” “What about trying to shift the focus from back to front, to the tits instead?” “Won’t work, it’s considered sleazy to look at a woman’s chest instead of her face when she’s facing you. When she isn’t facing you however...” “Damn, I forgot that!” 146

“Think, sisters think. There has to be something men like as much as ass; all we need is to give every woman a set of those instead and the status quo is restored, ergo, we’re in control again.” They deliberated on this awhile. “Guys love money.” “No, cash-butts will send inflation skyrocketing.” “Cars?” “Yes but...women won’t be able to get through doors anymore. I like the transport concept though - keep thinking along those lines. Finally they hit on the perfect solution. ----------[A brief explanation of what the FEm-DoM goddesses were so panicked about. Despite all their protestations to the contrary, women have ALWAYS dominated men. If you’ve any doubts as to this, remember accurately your mother’s relationship with your father, possibly before he left home never to return. The average man doesn’t abandon his girlfriend or wife, he flees for his life. It makes no difference however though, as whoever they end up with, they still end up in the same place.]

*** And so it came to pass that every Earthwoman now has a motorcycle in place of her stolen buttocks. Things are more or less back to normal now. It’s routine to hear guys ogling girls saying things like: 147

“Wow dudes, check out that babe’s Harley Davidson! Man those rear lights. And those tires - just incredible,” That girl’s a Grand Prix Honda man.” “Nooooooo, she’s a Confederate Hellcat.” “I’ll betcha five dollars.” “You guys talking bout Mary? Dude, save your money. She’s some low-cost Korean brand!” Cocktail party conversation: “You know personally I’m a 16-inch rim guy myself; give me too much tire and I’ve no idea what to do with it.” “I know exactly what you mean. My last girlfriend was a German three-wheeler, really heavy duty, she kept leaving tracks all over my...” And the ladies themselves? “So I asked him: Do you wanna go freewheelin’ sometime?” “No you didn’t girlfriend! That’s just nasty!” “Well you know me! He looked like the sort of guy who’d be able to get a good grip on my handlebars.” “Personally I prefer a guy who fits neatly on my seat...” “And you’re calling me dirty-minded...” And lawyers? “Your honor, I propose to show that Mr. Mackintosh here twice attempted to oil Miss Blakeley’s gears without her permission while she was working as his secretary, and also tampered with her starter-keys...” Fresh expressions have been coined: “Dave’s such a pain in the motorbike Kate.” “Yeah, I know. He’s a real exhaust pipe.”

148

Teenage girls now all have either BMX bike or skateboard behinds by the way; teenage boys are extremely content with those. *** So Earth’s women are happy again, no they’re overjoyed, no - ecstatic. The man-domination business is booming better than ever before. Earth’s men however, though happy as hell to have something to ogle and lust after and fight over again, still can’t help feeling screwed. It’s like they were let off the hook for a few days, and just when they’d gotten used to the sweet scent of freedom, bam! The hook’s been rammed down their throats again. Only much deeper this time. And they still don’t understand what went wrong. To find out I suggest they pick another fight with the Andromedans.

149

Moon Pie by Angel Zapata Published by The New Flesh 6/19/2011 Glen Horn believed his mother was a portal for interstellar travel. When she requested he remove his dirty socks from the rug or wash behind his ears in the tub, he could almost visualize the wormhole stretching from her tongue, threatening to crush him in her steadily collapsing words. He never argued with her. He feared she might accidentally transport him into a void of frigid space and dead stars. “Yes, ma’am,” he said politely, but always kept a careful eye fixed on her every move. On Saturday, he helped her make homemade chocolate moon pies. It was a weekly ritual they both enjoyed. “You’re like addicted to them,” he mumbled and voraciously licked the rubber spatula clean. “It’s the reason I stayed on this planet,” she confessed. “Our people love marshmallow.” “You do know you sound crazy, right?” Her red hair was layered in flour and cocoa powder. “Only on this side of Orion’s Belt,” she chuckled and slapped her hands together. As she was persistently peculiar, Glen attempted to switch gears. “Can I have twenty dollars for the movies, mom?” He wanted to meet his best friend, Carlos in front of the theater. 150

“Paper money won’t do you any good.” There was a flash of light and the kitchen seemed to momentarily ebb from existence. “It won’t?” He was perplexed and somewhat disoriented. “No, son. A second ago it would have, but not in this new galaxy.” She stared at him, tight-lipped, rapidly blinking her eyes. He scratched his chin and swallowed hard. “Well, I was really hoping to buy some popcorn and a soda while I was there.” “Here,” she replied and dropped white sugar cubes into his cupped hands. “This will provide you entrance into the cinema and sufficient funds for nourishment.” She turned her back to him and began to wash the dishes. He nervously slipped them into his jacket pocket and ran out the back door of the kitchen. At first, he thought she had finally gone off the deep end. But later, when Carlos pushed a plastic bag full of brown sugar under the ticket booth window and used it to pay admission for both of their movie tickets, he was unquestionably spooked. “Carlos?” He asked and took hold of the boy’s arm. “Have we always used sugar to pay for things?” Carlos balled up his face like a paper bag. “Nooooooooooooo,” he said sarcastically and pounded his chest. “We cavemen used to use rocks and dry twigs.” He flicked Glen’s ear. “Weirdo!” Maybe it’s not my mother after all, he thought. But it can’t be me, could it? The answer came to fruition on Monday morning when the family car wouldn’t start. His mother calmly sat behind the steering wheel and whistled. 151

“I guess it’s time for plan B,” she said happily. “Great! Now I’m going to be late for school.” Glen was stressed and didn’t know what she was talking about. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and slid his body down the length of the passenger seat. “And of course, mid-terms start today of all days.” “Relax, son.” She took hold of his face, parted her lips and pressed them above his eyebrows. “I’m going to make it all better.” The gentle framework of her cosmos dripped over his head like warm honey. In less than a nanosecond, he materialized before the entrance of his high school in a completely parallel universe. Up ahead, a group of blue-skinned adolescent girls giggled and waved hello with their glimmering white wings. He stood there dumbfounded, not realizing it was the chalky surface of the moon he wiped from his damp forehead, and not his mother’s parting kiss.

152

Tattered Title in a Different Time by Josh Myers Published by The New Flesh 6/25/2011 He come stepping through grass ever so slow as he does, passing over and granting indifference to a cluster of ants swarming in an ants’ nest. He look up with face smiling all glistening solitude. All shaky hands and spittle resolving and lining his quaky foundation. We hope on him to line his pockets. He keep go along and we do watch him in silence. We to observe him and see what to repeat. His actions all glorious, though we do hate him. This bastard oppressor, he suck at our doors. He do not know what we feel out toward him and likely he won’t never will. Our doors is all locked, we watch from out window. Him who does step through as slow as like snails, he so careful to never step and harm a small being. Him ever so careful, he is. We seeing his hands as they jibber and twitch about his cold body, check now his cufflinks, check now his buttons. He wipe down his brow, he scratch at his nose, him to never let fingers a-come to a rest. Though we may have mis-spake, for now once now or twice so he does stop his fiddling and bark out in sing-song syllables: “3. 1. 18. 4. 9. 1. 3. 19.” And we dare not to question it. 153

While in general we do as instructed and scrawl out scribblings about his behavior, in this we reject. It have gone now too far. We do not write it down, we do not dare translate. We been so mistaken. Him out there, he checking all cufflinks and snappy lapels, he turn head and he eye us, he spy through our window and give us a grin. It shake to our core as our day here is there and it lies out there with him. As we sits weeping he out there is dancing and blasting his grin up there onto the sky. Arms gone straight and fingers done twitching, he hold his face up and bark like a bad dog. It give us a scare and it give us a start. We to jump out our skin if we wasn’t sealed it. He dancing and singing like it say he would do. We consult we do our scribbly scrawls and we search for a purpose. We quiver in our sick discovery. And then here come Organ, down from heaven and up from hell. A blasting all screechy and beautiful noise it is, shaking our silence and to cheer a fainting mind. He make us all to wipe at our eyes, to stare out our window into the Whole World. Now living out there is our Organ resplendent. He live and he breathes all same air as we do. Everyone laughed we were all so happy. Jim came running down the hill.

154

The Overlord William Pauley III William Pauley III is the author of DOOM MAGNETIC!, DEMOLITION YA-YA, and THE BROTHERS CRUNK, which Fangoria called “A perfect example of Bizarro Fiction... every single line is filled with wild and imaginative ideas.” He is the editor of The New Flesh and BizarroCentral.com. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where he spends most of his time searching for his car keys.

Authors! Chris Allinotte Chris Allinotte lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. His other writing has appeared on Flashes in the Dark, The Oddville Press, Thrillers, Killers n' Chillers, and MicroHorror. Information on these and other stories can be found on his blog at chrisallinotte.blogspot.com.

Jason Armstrong Jason Armstrong considers himself to be Bizarro fiction. He spits out stories unlike any other. He runs the game like he's a Parker Brother.

the

Jay-Z

of

Brian Barnett Brian Barnett has written dozens of stories and poems that have been published both online and in print. He lives in Frankfort, Kentucky with his wife, Stephanie, and his children.

155

Jack Bristow Jack Bristow, an all-out weirdo from New Mexico, has written for several online magazines and even one print one. Follow him: @Jackbristo

Garrett Calcaterra Garrett Calcaterra is author of Umbral Visions, a horror collection forthcoming from Gypsy Shadow Publishing, and co-author of The Roads to Baldairn Motte, a historic fantasy novel forthcoming from L&L Dreamspell. In addition, he has published over twenty short stories, essays, and articles in various publications, including Writers' Journal, Wet Ink (Australia), Sex & Seduction (UK), Arkham Tales, M-Brane SF, and The Oregon Literary Review. He currently resides in California and is finishing work on a new dark fantasy novel. You can follow his writing at http://garrettcalcaterra.blogspot.com/

K. C. Callagy The Earth cracked open the day K. C. Callagy was born. He is a violent sleeper who admires mirrors with muddied reflections. He once stared at a pool of water for twenty straight minutes to induce a migraine. Firing squads have recruited him as the last cigarette lighter for death row inmates. At the age of thirty he’ll remove all of his shirt sleeves with dull scissors for the edge. Mr. Callagy can be very confrontational if he hasn’t eaten grapefruit, so take precaution in the early hours. Perhaps his unorthodox behavior should be institutionalized, but for the time being, he’s roaming with familiar wild beasts in the pack of bewilderment. In the grand pecking order, he sits near the bottom, passing bread with smudged fingertips, eager to climb the ladder. He wants to own the world but refuses to pay the brutal cost. At night, before drifting off, he lies on his back and scans the radio but all that comes out of his speakers is a tempestuous froth of jargon. After he falls into nightmare, owls sneak into his bedroom to watch him interact with his predecessors who never doubted him once for his aptitude and belligerence.

156

Chad Case Chad Case lives in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, with his wife, Melissa. He enjoys writing short horror fiction in his spare time. To date his works has been published, or are forthcoming, on MicroHorror.com, The New Flesh Blogzine, Flashes In The Dark, Flashshot, and in the anthologies: Toe Tags, Long Live The New Flesh: Year One and Daily Flash 2011 and Daily Bites of Flesh: 365 Days of Flash Fiction. You can also find out more about him at http://spookyfiction.wikia.com/wiki/Chad_Case

Lily Childs Lily Childs is a writer of dark fiction, horror and chilling mysteries. Published in anthologies such as Static Movement’s Caught By Darkness, many more of her short gothic horrors, ghost stories and nerve-janglers are currently touring the blogosphere. Lily is the author of forthcoming urban series ‘Magenta Shaman’ and has a novel or three on the way - all set in the south of England where she lives, a stone’s throw from the sea. She blogs at http://lilychildsfeardom.blogspot.com where you can read some of her work, reviews and interviews.

Erin Cole Erin Cole loves a good barbecue, but she hates pineapple cherry pie. Though she writes mystery and horror for fun, it also a good means to hide from three little monsters that follow her around. She's been published in Lame Goat Press: Howl, Sex and Murder Magazine, Outside Writers 1000th Monkey, and has upcoming work in Pill Hill Press: Daily Flash Fiction. She blogs regularly at Listen to the Voices.

Robert C. Eccles Robert C. Eccles is a radio news reporter and anchor who enjoys writing short horror and sci-fi stories.

157

Laura Eno Laura Eno lives in Florida with a very tolerant husband, three skulking cats and an absurdly happy dog. She has a pet from the Underworld named Jezebel and a skull called Mr. Fluffy who help her write novels late at night. Please visit her strange imagination at: http://lauraeno.blogspot.com

Eugene Gramelis Eugene Gramelis is a widely-published, award-winning author of suspense and dark fiction. When not writing he practises law as a barrister in Sydney, Australia, where he resides with his beautiful wife and three gorgeous children. He invites you to walk with him at: http://gramelis.blogspot.com

D. A. Hernandez David Alan Hernandez is a native-born Texan currently working on his bachelor’s degree in creative writing/ education. His work can be found published in various online horror and fantasy Ezines including, The Harrow, Sonar4, Flashes in The Dark, Sex and Murder, Microhorror and the college literary journal, The Rio Review. In addition to a number of other projects, he is currently keeping a blog at www.truthiscreation.blogspot.com showcasing a dark fantasy web novel, "Dividing Canaan: The Journals of Canaan Quintanilla".

Kirk Jones Kirk Jones is the author of Uncle Sam's Carnival of Copulating Inanimals, published by the New Bizarro Author Series, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. He reviews classic works that could, in retrospect, be considered bizarro on Retro Bizarro at www.bizarrojones.com. Forthcoming work will soon be published in Unicorn Knife Fight.

158

Michael A. Kechula Michael A. Kechula is a retired tech writer. His stories have been published by 129 magazines and 36 anthologies. He’s won first place in 10 contests and placed in 8 others. He’s authored three books of flash fiction, micro-fiction, and short stories: The Area 51 Option and 70 More Speculative Fiction Tales; A Full Deck of Zombies--61 Speculative Fiction Tales; I Never Kissed Judy Garland and Other Tales of Romance. eBook versions available at www.BooksForABuck.com and www.fictionwise.com Paperbacks available at www.amazon.com.

Michelle King Michelle King lives in England with her husband and stuffed penguin. She has written for fun all her life but only just started trying to publish. Her flash fiction has recently appeared online at MicroHorror.

Jordan Krall Jordan Krall is the author of Piecemeal June, Squid Pulp Blues, Fistful of Feet, King Scratch, Blow Up the Outside World (co-written with Ash Lomen), and Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys. His books can be found on Amazon.com.

Jodi MacArthur Jodi MacArthur has resorted to digging in the make believe cellar under her house. She thinks this is a good place to stow her eyeball collection. To learn where X marks the spot visit www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com

David Massengill David Massengill doesn't cook. His short stories and works of flash fiction have appeared in various literary

159

journals, including Word Riot, 3 A.M. Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Pulp Metal Magazine, Tainted Tea, Flashes in the Dark, and MicroHorror, among others. His Web site is: www.davidmassengillfiction.com.

Rick McQuiston Rick McQuiston is a forty-two year-old father of two who loves anything horror related. He's had over 200 publications so far and recently started his first novel, a zombie tale tentatively titled TO SEE AS A GOD SEES. He's written four anthology books and one book of novellas, which are available on Lulu and Amazon. He's also a guest author each year at Memphis Junior High School, and am editing and contributing to an anthology of Michigan authors called MICHIGAN MADMEN. His website is manymidnights.webs.com.

Robert Meade Robert Meade is a transplanted Bostonian now firmly rooted in Mohegan Lake, in Westchester County, NY, with his wife and three children. He teaches at Loyola School in Manhattan. He won the Wordweaving Award for Excellence for his book, Daily Bread: Seven Days to a Healthier Soul. A published author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, his recent work has appeared in Angels on Earth magazine and online at Guideposts and Apollo’s Lyre.

Sean Monaghan Sean Monaghan's book reviews have appeared in various publications. His stories have been published before in The New Flesh, as well as MicroHorror and Flashes in the Dark, amongst others. More information at his website, www.venusvulture.com

Jonathan Moon Jonathan Moon is the horrorcore author of Mr. Moon's Nightmares, the upcoming HEINOUS, and co-author of The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole with Tim Long. You can

160

keep one eye on him at all times by following his Monkey Faced Demon blog at http://www.mrmoonblogs.blogspot.com/.

Josh Myers Josh Myers is one of them humans living in them hideous states, particularly New Jersey, specifically Lambertville. He eats and sleeps mostly, and writes like a good fishy. He’s too fat and is going to die probably. He is not him, though could be if he has to, though does he? We think not. He is not, we repeat, NOT him. He appears here on gracious loan from the A.B.C., thank you. Please refer all complaints to the Consultant.

Dustin Reade Dustin Reade has been published a bunch online, and in dozens of anthologies. Washington. 'Nuff Said.

in He

magazines, lives in

Matthew Revert Matthew Revert is an Australian author of weird fiction. He is the author of the book A MILLION VERSIONS OF RIGHT.

James Steele James Steele is a writer in Ohio. He is often asked to sum up his life’s story in a single paragraph. James is very depressed by how easy this is. He has been published in the Magazine of Bizarro Fiction (issue 3), Roar v.3, Different Worlds Different Skins v.2, and Planet Magazine. His bizarre action/comedy novel, “Felix and the Sacred Thor,” is published through Eraserhead Press. His blog is http://daydreamingintext.blogspot.com

161

Magen Toole Magen Toole is an author from Fort Worth, Texas. She likes black holes, dinosaurs, Star Trek and writing stuff. More of her work can be found at http://www.eonism.net/

Wol-vriey Wol-vriey is Nigerian and quite tall. He currently resides in a state of uneasy stalemate with his threatening-to-thin-beyond-redemption hair, and believes there actually are things that go bump in the night. Wol-vriey recycles the ridiculous into reasonable reality for the reader. His WEIRRRD philosophy? WEIRRRD = Warp/Write Everything into Realistic Ridiculous Readable Distorted Dream Dimension Descriptions. A free PDF of his WEIRRRD book “Invasion Of The Ass Chickens” can be downloaded from his blog: http://oddityfarm.wordpress.com He’s also the agent provocateur behind the band Rocksurface (www.myspace.com/rock.ng).

Angel Zapata Angel Zapata was born on Earth. His horror short story collection, The Man of Shadows is available in paperback or eBook through Panic Press. Visit http://arageofangel.blogspot.com

162