*Stories should be between 1000-3000 words

*Submissions should be sent to Executive Editor Emily Smith-Miller at emilysm737@gmail.com no later than March 21st, subject heading ‘MARCH MADNESS CONTEST SUBMISSION’, word docs please.

*Winners will be announced March 31st

*The winner will receive a $30 Amazon gift card, and runners-up will have their stories featured on Carnage with personal promotion, second place might also get a little something . . .

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Watching Terminator and Robocop back-to-back a week later put him into a masturbatory frenzy. He came so often and so hard, he feared that the next thing dripping out of his cock might be his spine-fluid.

As internet research revealed to him, Simon was obviously a gay Technosexual with a thing for severely damaged robots.

“Well, talk about one fucking fringe fetish.” he thought.

Though generally speaking, gay wasn’t quite the exact term, for only his robots had to be male. There was no room for softness and curves; they had to be streamlined and hard; cold, steely missiles targeting his sex. The boy of his dreams was a distorted hunk of scrap metal. In real life, throughout the next few years Simon slept with some girls, fucked some guys in the ass, got fucked, ate pussy and sucked dicks and found it all quite unsatisfying. Sure, it relieved the tension and it felt nice being close to a human being every now and then, but the sex was stale, with orgasms passing casually as he watched himself, detached. Not that he was very active. Since his build and height were as average as his looks, so was the number of his sexual encounters. And afterwards he always went straight back to his video collection.

If a movie featured a humanoid robot, Simon had seen it, always waiting hopefully for it to get blown up, shot to pieces, molten or shredded. He had high hopes for Robocock and The XXX-Terminator, but the films didn’t deliver. Porn let him down, anyway: there was something for every perversion, from granny humping to preggo mounting; you were able to order “The Beginner’s Guide to Scatology” from Germany (“Scheisse am Schaft. Lecker.” read the ad ),  “Old Ma Donald Fucked The Farm” from Denmark, you’d find flicks for folks who had a hard-on for crack whores, fatties, dwarfs, amputees, drugged out fat dwarfs with one leg missing, but he had to wallow through Cyborg 1 to 5 for maybe two scant minutes of wriggling robotic remains.

Via amazon he ordered a book called “Robot Building Bonanza”, solely for the pictures, since he lacked the skills to perform any electronic tasks more elaborate than changing a light-bulb. Simon just loved the irony. He was born to work in special effects or robotics, but passion was all he had to offer.

So he took a job as an accountant in the firm where his father worked, fucked a bit, wanked a lot and settled for an unsatisfied and lonely life.

Until Japan presented The Fuckbot.

Actually, it was called Foxxxy, the Robot Doll. Anatomically correct, with highly defined physical features, moving private areas, Foxxxy, as the constructers stated, was way more than just a high-end sex doll. It was able to carry a conversation, it had moods that shifted throughout the day, and it had not one, not two, but five personalities, depending on your own personal and sexual preferences. It could be your slave or your master, a cute, eyelashes-fluttering innocent plaything in a public school skirt, a nymphomaniac slut, whose three high quality inputs were in constant need of filling and – your mum. Simon guessed the Mommy mode was probably bugged – the minute you switched it on, your local copper would receive a call. You were even able to mix these preferences to your individual liking. Due to a motor pumping heat through a tube that winded all the way through Foxxxy’s body, she was warm to the touch, made breathing noises and sported a heartbeat. Foxxxy came at a wholesome 8.500 quid and could also be ordered as Maxxx, whose most prominent feature was modelled from a cast made of Ron Jeremy’s pecker.

Simon almost had a heart attack.

If he took out his savings, sold his movie collection, fiddled a bit with the accountancy at work in creative ways, the money should be his in about a month. He filled out the pre-order.

Finally he needed six weeks to gather the money, three minutes to transfer it abroad, spent two weeks waiting until Maxxx was shipped from Japan in a solid wooden box and four hours driving to the port of Liverpool and back home to at long last become the proud owner of an automatic wiener with artificial intelligence attached.

Fidgety from excitement, Simon pried the box open and there, embedded in a plethora of polystyrene balls, wood shavings and crumpled silk paper in all its glory stood his new companion. The body looked finely shaped, with abdominal muscles to play xylophone on, a powerful breast, strong legs and an impressive bulge under some cheap white cotton briefs (and, hell,the queer little robot even wore white tennis socks). His face was a different matter.

“Jesus,” Simon muttered. “You’re one butt-ugly motherfucker.”

The Maxxx looked liked someone had tried to clubber the Elephant Man’s head back in shape with a croquet mallet. Not that it really bothered Simon. When he was done with it, conventional beauty rules would be redundant. Important to him was the thing hidden behind the shorts: the Ron Jeremy certified knob. He ripped off the briefs and almost saluted. On TV Ron’s schlong sure looked smaller. This one was likely to shove his prostate up his oesophagus before it was halfway in his bunghole.

“Welcome to your new home, love.” Simon said. “We’ve got to do some serious damage.” He grabbed the robot by its feet and dragged him into the basement. Over the last weeks Simon had bought quite an assembly of power tools for the cosmetic restyle. He heaved Maxxx upon the work-bench.

“I think we’ll start with the face. Pull out the ugly stick.” He picked up the pliers and pinched the first tooth. “And improve the quality of the blow-jobs along the way.”

Next in line was the steel saw. Simon felt so high-spirited, he started to sing.

“The head-bone connected to the neck-bone…”

The steel saw screeched, cutting through Maxxx’ right arm just above the elbow. Flying sparks hit Simon’s face, but he was too excited to notice. Purple, gray and dirty white wires hung from the severed arm, wriggling like fat worms.

“The neck-bone connected to the backbone…”

Simon fired up the Bunsen burner and melted the silicone nipples. The breast began to drip, plastic bubbles bunched up. Soon it looked like flesh pizza.

“The backbone connected to the thighbone…”

With a grinder he abraded the synthetic skin from the left half of the face and three quarters of the jaw down to the silvery skull.

“The thighbone connected to the knee-bone…”

He put the tip of a crosshead screwdriver on the right eye and drove it down with a hammer, smeared some molten plastic over the eye-socket and blow-dried it. Maxxx face now looked less than Robert Z’Dar with elephantiasis than The Six Billion Dollar Zombie. Simon had a boner to boot.

“The knee-bone connected to the leg bone…”

Why the heck would an android need a ballsack, Simon ruminated. He cut it off with a hedge clipper. Without testicles the wiener looked even larger.

“The leg bone connected to the foot bone…”

Simon skinned the right leg, parts of the torso, sprayed rusty colour on parts of the skeleton, flayed both buttocks, severed four fingers, ripped off one ear, set fire to the genuine hair wig and drilled some random holes with diameters in the approximate range of his dick.

“Oh hear … the word … of the … Looooord!”

By now he had come twice in his pants.

“We’re done here, auntie.” Simon said. “Now – wanna see my stamp collection?”

Dragging Maxxx up into the bedroom, Simon noticed some worrying rattling noises, some jingling and clattering and a constant flapping sound. He was pretty sure he had avoided vandalising all places he considered harbouring vital electronic devices. Of course, if they had put the main controller inside the scrotum he was pretty much arsed. Getting a refund would be difficult now.

Simon placed the robot up against the wall, tore the adhesive plaster from the infrared receiver under the hairline, sat down on his bed and pushed the ON button of his remote control.

And Maxxx sprung to life.

Truth be told, he more or less juddered to life with sounds that reminded Simon eerily of a ship scraping against the harbour walls. The limbs Simon had left intact twitched and shuddered, the damaged ones fluttered like epileptic hummingbirds. His remaining eye spun in the socket, and then the whole head jerked around violently. The flayed legs did a Charleston and the toes wiggled. Finally Maxxx thrusted out his pelvis like a sleazy Elvis impersonator and went rigid. Simon held his breath.

Maxxx adjusted his eye.

“Aww damn, you dirty bugger. I just thought you was busted.”

“Pleashe shelect pershonality.” Maxxx uttered, sounding like a lisping Dalek. Maybe breaking out the teeth had not been one of Simon’s better ideas. Whatever. He glanced over the quick guide and pressed five: strong and domineering.

“Get naked, shucker.” Maxxx demanded.

Something had to be done about the speech impediment. That lisp took the edge out of commands and dirty talk. “First things first, though.” Simon thought and stripped. Maxxx stroke his cock and started to get hard. It was astonishingly life-like. He teetered over to Simon, pushed him onto the pillows and went down on him.

“Aaaawwwwhh, fuuuck…” – A tidal wave of incredible sensation swept through Simon. The robot slowly deep-throated him a few times, then sucked on the tip of his cock while the tongue licked on his sulcus. And then he deep-throated him again. And sucked, all the while massaging Simon’s balls firmly with his hand. Simon wished he hadn’t cut off the other arm. A good, firm thumb-job would have been the icing on the cake. His dick was harder than Lenny McLean, his balls were pebbles, his spine tingled, all of his nerves seemed to sparkle, the muscles of his butt flinched and just a second before he came, Maxxx pressed two fingers around his pre-cum wetted peter, stopping the blood circulation and robbing Simon of his relief. With the better half of his lips gone, the robot looked like he was grinning mischievously.

“Now shuck me off.” demanded Maxxx.

“Yeah, sure.” Simon tried to control his breathing. “Chocking on that fucking totem-pole is exactly my idea of fun, tat-head.” He rummaged through the drawer and produced a tube of Durex lube. “But I’d sure like to be your brownie queen.”

“I will ram it up your cornhole sho hard, you’ll schream and beg, faggot.”

Simon eyed the robot quizzically. Even without the lisp, the speech program left a lot to be desired. But the glistering cock looked just too tasty to let himself be distracted by minor quibbles.

“I’ll shure dog you out and make you holler.”

“Just shut the fuck up and shove it in!” Simon screamed, pressed his hands against the wall and pushed his ass towards the robot’s gargantuan member. Maxxx smeared some lube on Simon’s anus, fingered him a bit and rammed his dick in at one go. White lightning hit Simon right between the eyes. The pain was so all consuming and yet so exquisite, every cell of his body turned into an erogenous zone.

“I’ll phottom you, phutt-phoy.  I’ll phang you shenshlesh. I’ll…”

“I’m not listening.” Simon muttered. “Not listening.”

“Yeah, I’m shure giwwin’ you one hard nigger-fuck.”

“Oi. Give it a break, will you?” With an audible ‘plop’ Simon freed himself, turned around and grabbed the robot by the throat. “Take a look at me cock, mate – you’ve talked it fucking limp.”

“I will make you my cum-dumpshter, pooph.”

Simon ripped down the robot’s jaw, grabbed the tongue and tore at it until he managed to jerk it off at its root. Looking at the fat, greyish, jelly-like thing he remembered the orgiastic pleasures it had provided and cursed himself. Maybe he should have looked for a mute button on the remote first? Shit, but he could try and super-glue it back on later. For now the strong, silent type was very much preferable. And it was an aesthetic improvement, he thought, as he watched a tiny stump wiggle in the back of the throat. Behind the stump flared some sparks. Then something exploded with a tinny sound, like a fire-cracker going off in a metal bucket. Maxxx’ head juddered as if it was going to skyrocket and a jet flame shot through the patch of silicone that Simon had smeared over the right eye. The acrid stench of burned plastic stung his nose. The next moment Maxxx grabbed Simon by the throat, threw him against the wall, back-slapped him into position and held him with two fingers around the neck. Blood ran over Simon’s cheek. He tried to struggle himself free, but to no avail – the robot had pinned him down like a numbed butterfly.

“Come on, guy.” Simon croaked. “Not that rough, eh? Skip that Bobby Blake shite.”

Maxxx pumped his silicone muscle up Simon’s ass and started to fuck him relentlessly. A long metal splinter from the robot’s hip punctuated Simon’s left buttock with every stroke, piercing him straight to the bone. Soon the lube had worn off, and Simon felt soft tissue tearing apart.  Searing, indescribable anguish flooded his body, inflamed every sinew. Blood ran down his thighs. His crotch exploded. Simon looked down and watched in agonizing horror a slim, sharp, silver tentacle sliding up his urethra, wriggling and winding, widening it for another, thicker tentacle.

“Please, please, no…” Simon muttered through snot and tears, while Maxxx frenetically fucked his ass and his cock simultaneously. Almost blinded from hurt, Simon felt more tentacles wriggling around his neck, pushing his face so hard against the concrete, his nose crushed. Slime and blood filled his respiratory tract, clogged the airwaves and he almost suffocated. Maxxx hand grabbed Simon’s testicles, rubbed them, hit them and pinched them until they squished with a sickening slurping sound. Simon puked spasmodically, all the time hoping he would just faint and die.  Razor-sharp cable ends wormed over his chest, slicing him. Finally one stiffened and shot straight down, cutting off his right nipple. He was thrown round like a sack of dry bones. The robot gazed at him. Simon half expected to see a vengeful glint or hatred in the ravaged face, but there was nothing, a dark blank stare that frightened him even more. Dozens of wires slithered out of the severed arm, some hissed of electrical arcing like attacking snakes. The fattest one, hot and red, slid around Simon’s hip and impaled him straight through the pelvic wall, while the robot started to jerk him off hard. The foreskin tore and the iron claw soon masturbated raw muscle. There was almost no pain anymore. Just numbness. Soon darkness. And before that came a moment of clarity, a moment when time seemed to slow down, and Simon saw with a perspicuity he had never known before, like everything was etched out before him. He saw the small table to his right and he saw the scissor on the table and he saw his hand picking it up and bringing it down with a violent blow and he saw the blades entering the robot’s eye socket, twisting and turning and he saw smoke coming out of Maxxx’ mouth and he saw him go rigid and collapse and then he collapsed himself.

“Fuck you, asshole”, he sputtered.

The tiredness was overwhelming. He just wanted to sleep.

“Don’t.” he told himself. “Try to get to the phone.”

Maybe he could make it. Survival instinct was one mighty mother, after all.

Or he could just lay here; bleed out into the carpet, this soft, cosy carpet…

“Move.” Simon started to crawl, bit by bit, clew his fingers into the fabric, slowly dragging himself forward, trying to push himself with his legs. When he hunched a bit too much, he spat out a foamy clod of blood. Every inch was agony and his phone was down in the living-room. A sharp ache ripped through his left calf. Simon turned his head and saw a ripped shred of metal protruding from his lateral sura. Damnit, there were pieces of the fucking robot just about everywhere. And he saw something else, too: himself, in the mirror. He gaped in disbelief. He looked like he had been chewed, spat out and trod upon by Godzilla. Pieces of bone were sticking through his arm, whip-marks covered his torso as if Jackson Pollock had body-painted him, his face was swollen beyond recognition, red and blue with lips like bicycle wheels. His right hand was missing the index finger.

“When the heck did that happen?” he wondered. He was mangled meat. He was…quite sexy, actually. Simon felt a very familiar tingle in his groin.

“No. Nonononononono.” he sputtered, but the androgens had already kicked in. The erection throbbed. His penis resembled something out of anatomy class, with the tendrils and muscles clearly visible. Simon spat blood into the palm of his hand and went to work.

He wondered how long he would be able to keep up his new fetish.

By TM Simmler

@NorthernTuck

That day I enthusiastically wasted on paper lanterns and the sharp wooden stares of sugar and flesh. She was pale with deceit, a product of meddling and worm-eaten explanations and grandstanding. “It meant nothing to me,” she said, and I sneezed the exhaust that was her from my lungs. She had perfumed hair. They all did, those who honored and obeyed, and those who couldn’t be bothered. The phone rang. She reached for it — clumsy — and it landed at my feet. “Telemarketer,” she claimed, and I felt my hand grow tighter around the handle. I was always wildly excited by the little things: the weight of tools in my hand, the gentle run of the wind against frozen eyelids in the moonlight, the crimson against dry lips and gritted teeth, and then the stiff drink after, tainted by lipstick at the rim. She was all sorry and so forth, keeping a casual distance, and then she bared her breasts at me, giggled, told me to take one for the wedding album before she threw her engagement ring into the heap of soiled clothes I’d left to soak in the sink with last night’s dirty dishes.

Valentine’s day. A Spring Slaughter.

I thrust some Kleenex into my pocket, grabbed a Coca Cola, and headed for the door. I’d called her my little spring lamb, and she called me “corny” just as my hand was reaching for the doorknob. I unlatched the deadbolt and pulled. The cold gusted in, and I cold hear it: a whispering, a crawling skittle of cockroach legs and eyes wide open, crying in the dark. They were always whispering, sometimes in cadence with the dripping rain, plink, plink, plinking off the tin roof some ways away in the distance, sometimes like a white kiss carried upon a thistle flower, swaying with ice and snow, but they were always whispering — demanding — almost in silence, to hear the voice of God over the melancholy braying of the other lambs.

 Sorry, buddy.

A sopping crimson and stubble-riddled lower jaw dangled from the dead man’s neck in a half-moon smile of chipped bottom teeth and a floppy tongue. Lucky I found him when I did. The rest of his head splattered the wall behind me creating a mural of sloppy blood blots and brain sprinkles, an abstract collage of gore.

“So long and farewell,” I said.

He had done himself in on the sofa. My one functioning eyeball twitched and I poked at the other, rubbed the glass pebble, set it back in place. It was a thinking tool, my ocular talisman. I readied the cut-throat razor, the one I pocketed from my once-upon-a-time neighbor Merv. I wedged the blade in the crevice between his wrinkled fingers and the pistol grip, began to wiggle open his fingers. Wasn’t working. Breathed in the stink.

The room reeked of innards, dried human filth and sweat, mostly my own. A burst of gas seeped from the corpse in bellowing puffs and sputters. I pulled the razor out from where I had wedged it and thought hard about this predicament until a simple solution reared its beastly head. I had been right all along:

Chop off the arm.

I paused, opening and closing the razor. No. Too messy. Too much spill. On the other hand, the hand that mattered, a few skin slices from his dead palm wouldn’t taint the decorum any more than it already was. I looked at the moldy orange peels on the table. Everything around me was either rotting or rotten. Thus, I began at once to saw through the wrinkled pink skin of the old man’s hand. Gobs of blood oozed as the skin peeled open. I made it through two of them stiff fingers before the .44 came free, plopped out towards me. I felt hours had elapsed. The sun sagged low. My hand ache from my damned carpal tunnel.

I admired the Magnum behemoth. It was mine. The Magnum had heft to it: a death-beast, stallion of ancient justice. Up until now, things had been primitive. My rucksack, littered with various kinds of cutlery, drooped open on the floor next to the table, lonesome and worn. I’d been using things easily stolen: garden shears, hunting knives, a hand-held chainsaw, crowbars, or hammers, things found in an abandoned garage, suburban kitchen, up in a barnyard shed. The storm left us all a little poor.

I sank my aching bones down on the sofa, forcefully slid the dead man’s rank old body over to the next cushion where it slouched, arms limp, fingers missing. The drunken horseman. Good old stubby. I let out a little tune:

     Good old stubby, with fingers so nubby, what’s wrong with your head my stubby old friend.

Blood ran deeper into the cushion, felt cold. My ass was wet and itchy. I chuckled a wheezy whine, tried to remember the tune, but it sunk back into the lazy murk of my shriveled skull.

This shack, I thought to myself, pulling one weary leg over the other, is just fine for the night. It was relaxing, despite the gore. Gore was doable. I had seen gore, dealt with it. In fact, this shack didn’t look much different from the camper trailer on the night of the shanty incident three years back with Fredricks and Lucy.

Stomach growled. I caught myself watering over his meaty legs, thought about beer-can chicken, Big Boy buffets, fountain pop and rhubarb pie…would have to wait for later.

Would those bastards find me out here? I doubted any of them things, whatever the hell they were, would make it this far before getting plucked off or derailed or put to rest in some way. There were desperate people out there with firepower.

Hit the river, son, is what my old man would have told me. The swamps called out to him. I had some of him in me.

I’ll get a canoe, string together some chairs or maybe just float away on this damn sofa. Take a freighter down river.

I wiped some blood from the .44 with the dead man’s flannel shirt sleeve and placed my lips around the barrel just to see how it felt to weigh the possibility of firing the sucker into my own mouth. I imagined a fleet of mares stamping up into the core of my face and out the other end with the snapping blare of a bloody tuba. Bullets were rockets. I pushed the barrel in deeper, could feel myself about to gag. Sitting there with the barrel pressed against the roof of my gums, I heard the moan of an old plank on the front porch, the sound of feet on grass.

The front door was still hanging open on cracked hinges. I sank down into the sofa cushion, slid from my back to the floor and poked my head around the edge of the sofa arm. My knees were jittery and ached like shit. I brought the gun out in front of me, set the grip down on the floor, using the loose floor plank for stability to aim. Unhinged a bit myself, I felt my gut rest against the blood-wet wood, stretched out my popping, achy legs behind me. I pointed the .44 right clean out the front door, out into the misty night. Through the black and the smoke, I stared hard with my good eye until things went a bit fuzzy, that is, until a blurry clump of pure white crystallized as the final gust of smoke sailed away. I almost pissed myself with fear. I think I did piss myself with piss.

It was a white wolf, the likes of which I had never seen in my life. She was sitting on her hind legs, gazing at me like an old Indian chief, majestic and wise. For all I knew she could have been there for hours. I sneezed, squeezed the trigger by accident, surprised myself and squeezed that sucker again. Opened my mouth to scream, a wet belch ripped. This was not good. The first bullet shot right out the door, disappeared. The second bullet veered wild, shattered the front window and out into the night. I was howling through all that broken glass and noise, scared myself, I did.

I lowered my head into my arms. My good ear, the right one, rang shrill, a needle scratched spine. Chills. I didn’t dare move, but I had to see if I shot that wolf. I uncovered my head with my hands and brought my head up, looked back out there and there she was. Her gaze pierced through the black, eyes that emanated a yellowish-green: beams of feral doom. The eyes though, didn’t seem to be looking at me anymore. They were looking upwards at the sofa, staring sullen at good old stubby. I couldn’t move, held as I was in the trance of those brilliant orbs, face-to-face with the devil dog herself. That was when the white wolf looked back down at me and, I shit you not, ever so slowly opened her mouth. Clenched between jagged incisors, centered between two blood-stained sword-like fangs was not just one, but both bullets from that .44 Magnum.

The stench in the room rose at that moment in a bouquet of spilled fear, my bowels. Carl, I said to myself. No, she did not just catch those bullets in her teeth. I had only seen one dog that could do a trick like that: Paul’s Maltese, Flap. He’d prance around the house on his hind legs for hours on end with a chewed-up paper plate held in his front paws like he was some kind of waiter at a fancy restaurant, little bow tie around his neck.

I pulled the trigger, this time on purpose, watched the golden bullet glide through my mind’s eye, knowing right where I wanted it to land, right between those headlight eyes. Sweaty hands tightened around the grip and I yelled, pulled in on the trigger again. In that zip of a second, I must have shut my eyes, damn near broke my jaw, teeth grit so hard. The gun clicked empty. Click. Click.

I hurled the stallion of justice straight at that white wolf’s head, watched it miss, hit the door frame, and fall back toward me on the floor. When that .44 Magnum touched wood, that piece of Wild West machinery exploded in a wrathful pop, bullet sank straight into my thigh, lodged in the leg bone. Silence. I almost didn’t scream right away, didn’t and then let that mournful wail ring out into the night. I spun out from my position and yanked on Stubby’s trousers to hoist myself up onto the sofa. Gallons of leg liquid leaked out of me.

That white wolf stolid, mouth shut, clenched those bullets tight. I lugged my body up onto the sofa and leaned down to dig into my bag for some back-up. I kept my good eye locked on that canine, reached right down into the bag, felt the sharp burn of thin steel slide across my wrist. Cut myself on my own tools. A thin stream of blood whizzed out from the vein.

The wolf let herself relax down onto her front paws and continued to stare at me. I didn’t give two hoots; sat there clenching my arm to stop the whizzing blood, while still trying to dig into the bag, get a blade to wield; couldn’t see straight. I peered into the dark insides of the rucksack. Heard my eye pebble drop to the ground and roll over wooden planks, rolled under the sofa. Felt something solid in the bag. I pulled the hand-held chainsaw up and out of the bag using every inch of power in my sloppy body, wheezing, grunting, and spurting red.

The white wolf’s ears were pricked up, tuning in signals from some damn thing. I smiled at her with my sly grin, drooled out and slurped back in a stream of stringy blood. Wrist gash drenched my arm in red. Thing was going numb. I gripped the saw’s handle and thrust my body back into the sofa cushion. Something felt wrong. Good old Stubby was gone. All that was left of him was a body-sized imprint of blood. The splotches of blood and brain were still there behind the sofa, but he wasn’t.

I spun my head around to get a look at the rest of the shack and there he was, outside, standing next to her, headless and proud. His nubby arm stroked her white fur. It was really something else. With his other hand, he had that .44 Magnum aimed right at my chest. Don’t know how he could even see me. I knew at that moment that the mist would come in again from off the fields. I would wait for it, hope for it to sweep them two away. At that moment, for once in my life, I didn’t understand anything. But, damn was that white wolf beautiful. The problem was that by the time I felt it coming on, the mist that is, Good old Stubby had already reached inside the wolf’s mouth with his one good hand and had pulled out the two bullets.

By Jamie Grefe

http://shreddedmaps.tumblr.com

A Werewolf Haikuette

It was a slow day
until the moment
a girl bit a wolf

Dread

“He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim.”

Jim sat there and looked at her for just a moment, a moment long enough to convey that he didn’t think she was serious but that he was thinking she possibly could be, that her facial expression in some ways gave her away, told the truth about it all, no holding back, no facetiousness intended.

“You’re serious.”

“Um, yeah. I am. You should ask for another shift. I don’t wanna see something on the news about you being dead and all.” She lifted her drink casually, as if she had just told him that she had decided not to go shopping due to unforeseen circumstances.

Jim looked down at his drink. He suddenly felt tired and wanted to go home. It had been a long night at the warehouse; all those orders he had pulled exhausted him more than usual. Maybe he was just getting old. But at 32? No way. He wasn’t close to that yet. He thought of who she was talking about, the new employee, Ronnie…. Jim couldn’t remember his last name. Not that he ever really knew it to begin with. He had heard the name when the boss of the place mentioned it but now it was in some nether world. Ronnie was enough to remember. And she really thought he was dangerous? Ronnie? The new dude who was as thin as the proverbial toothpick? He couldn’t kill anything, so what made her think he was some monster on the loose?

“Look,” she said, “I know these types. When I first saw him, I could tell. It was those eyes of his, Jim. Have you ever just looked into his eyes for a second? It only takes that long to notice.”

Jim looked up from his drink. “Notice what?”

She set her eyes on his. “That. Did you see what I did?”

Jim frowned but only slightly. “No.”

“Okay,” she sighed, “look at me.”

He took a longer moment than before, staring into her unblinking eyes, then exhaled a held breath. “Damn. You know, I think you’re right. He did seem to have this aura, or something.”

She blinked and said, “Jim, you don’t understand anything. It’s more than some aura he has. It’s something he has inside him.” She leaned closer, staring again. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

Jim nodded and took a long gulp of his drink, then another. “Yeah. Okay, I have to go in tonight but I’ll let the boss know by tomorrow I need another shift. He’ll probably balk but it’s worth a shot. And you better be telling me the truth, Jen.”

Jen smiled over her raised glass. “Oh, I am. Trust me.”

At just before ten p.m. Jim entered the warehouse. He swiped his time card and inserted it into his named slot: MARSDEN, JIM. Looking a few slots above his was Ronnie’s, thus providing Jim the man’s last name: BINKER, RONNIE. Binker? Really? Is that a real name? Jim shrugged and chuckled under his breath, then turned.

“Evening, James.”

Jim felt his heart suddenly race. “Oh, hi there. Didn’t see you behind me.”

Ronnie’s eyes set upon Jim’s. “Well of course not,” Ronnie said flatly. “I was behind you. I’m surprised my presence didn’t alert you, though. The mere presence of a person is many times enough to sense. All those shifting molecules in the air. It’s like a silent entry into some vacuum.” Ronnie released a tiny laugh. “But I’m no scientist.”

Jim chuckled in response, then said, “Yeah, we’re just, you know, warehousers.”

Ronnie’s smile faded, its abrupt absence causing Jim’s heart to race again. “That’s not a word.”

“You know what I mean.”

The two men made their silent way toward their respective stations – Jim’s less than twenty feet from Ronnie’s – and their work began. Orders to be pulled, sorted, boxed, placed on a conveyor belt to another location – it was the same thing over and over, hardly anything different from one night to the next, their hands and arms repeating motions for eight hours broken up by two fifteen-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch. But lunch at three a.m. certainly doesn’t feel like lunch at noon. Especially with a man like Ronnie Binker (is that really his name?) sharing it with you.
“So,” Jim said, poking his voice into a silent three a.m. “lunch”.
“Where did you work before you got here?”

Ronnie finished chewing what was part of a sandwich Jim couldn’t see the contents of. “I didn’t,” he said. “This is my first job.”

Jim frowned but also lifted his brow. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Is that a problem for you?”

“No, no. It’s just that—”

“What, James? It’s just that what?”

Jim looked down at his pre-prepared Styrofoam cup of soup he had
heated in the break room microwave. “Nothing,” he said, deflated but also irritated; this man was beating him up for no good reason. Maybe Jen was right after all. I should get out of this place fast.

The men finished their “lunches” and returned their personal items their named lockers. As Ronnie closed his locker door he stood and faced Jim head on.

“Do you think I’m strange?” Ronnie asked, his face a blank stare.

Jim swallowed, feeling again his racing heart. “No not at all, why?”

“You’re lying, James.”

“Please, call me Jim. I prefer Jim.”

Ronnie’s stare turned into a steady gaze. “Okay, Jim.  I’ve been wondering about you, you know.”

“Why?” Jim frowned, now more than slightly. This guy has to go. No, I have to go.

“Oh, I don’t know, it just seems you’ve been watching me all night…which now of course is morning. Have you noticed the moon? How perfectly full it is? Have you? JIM?”

Jim wanted to say Yes, I certainly have, Ronnie! but instead he shook his head and made his way nervously back to his named station. He could sense Ronnie walking behind him, even though he couldn’t hear his footsteps. Those molecules. Those damn molecules, all that shifting and—

Suddenly he did hear something and it wasn’t footsteps. Jim pivoted and looked at Ronnie, who now was no longer…Ronnie.

He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim.

By Jeff Callico

A Werewolf’s Justification

I had always believed in love
and forgiving people and grace —
but that wasn’t able to explain
away his inhuman hatred that
cut me into ribbons of sky, I
wanted so badly for him to explain
why he hated me, what I had done
wrong, but he wouldn’t; he just
liked to harass me with his words —

in another life this would have
been wrong, even if my beating
heart knew it was even now; still —
I had to save myself from insanity,
the only way to do that was destroy him;
so I loosed my wolf form, enjoyed the
feel of gravel beneath my paws —
saw him in the yard with another girl,
let out a bloodcurdling roar that terrified

the pair of them; saw nothing but
red, and didn’t stop slicing and snarling
until the yard ran red with blood —
you may call this evil, and maybe it was;
especially to her and her family, but
she was just a causality in my revenge —
I had to do it because it’s a dog eat dog
world and he would have shot the silver
if I hadn’t ripped out his precious throat.

By Linda M. Crate

All these years have passed and she’s a true believer in the monster.  They’re everywhere.  Sometimes you see them and don’t know because they just haven’t transformed themselves.  Sometimes you even marry one.

In the apartment, it happens while they make love.  It happens at night and in the morning, especially the mornings, even though the moon’s no more than a smear in the sky.  It happens when she brings him a steaming plate of food and he says, “What’re you trying to do, Bitch, scald me?”

He gets in, gets on top.  He says, “You’re going to like this.”  Then he asks, “Are you ready?”

She is.  She is.  Her arms come out from under the sides of her pillow in a whoosh.  The stake and the gavel are aimed perfectly.  So is her swing.  So is the beast’s scream–the first, second and last.

By Len Kuntz

A Black Milk Moonlight

A Friday evening for a melancholy baby

(i wait for a night

i wait for a night

i wait for a night

repeat it 1000 times

a change of person

i’m whole in the night

i’m not hurt anymore

repeat it 1000 times

i’m a big girl now forced out

play the jukebox

flesh forest memories in between shadows

in between caught black and white and bongos

go-go blood naked to the night alive in the painhouse)

Projected on the back so far

inside a translucent skull slit stained glass

she knows it’s there

she changes.

She faces the dark

the mist

a rain

no more sleep

He kneels before her

He hates quickly.

Hates her guttural noise.

He hates

The urge that summoned him to her

Her animal sweat smell and

A ricochet of Lycanthropic lust

He tastes iron in his mouth

A mingling with her juice.

Tied together lashed with leather.

Birth of a nation

a strain

a heart emerged from her womb.

He desires her as her eyes turn yellow

As her Mouth extends

As mucous drips from her lips

As her tongue removes his retinas

He’s a tasty treat.

Smiles started in between her legs

she felt the beast rise

the shape shift climax

the hair sprout

the teeth grow long.

she fondled her breasts as they evolved

into milk-laden teats under a mattress of

ebony hair.

Downtown

the moon

cried for her

leather-bound eyes

pissing with pain.

she begged for it

while waiting on the abandoned couch

in the burning church

in the distant woods

between 2 dead trees

A lunar baptism

that she begged for

this change made her complete.

She was only real now in her wolfen orgasm.

the silent rain ran down in reverse

the window’s glass bent breathed slightly

A brief panic she didn’t know

a sweat under her skin

between the air

only as a the beast

did she feel normal.

a musky smell that aroused him as

the black light fluorescent tube hum was caught in his ears

burning flesh smell plasma crash down

the crunching bone

as she slowly fed

felt her real self

born into anger and anguish

she loved it

snakeyes

roll’em,

snakeyes

Razor nails soliloquy

the man cried as she ripped flesh

from muscle

muscle from bone

maroon pleasure fluids

her lips stretched around his entrails

drenched gore plasma delightful smell

she howled

he moaned

as she entered him furiously

twisted caress of his organs

they both enjoyed pain somewhat pleasure

she collapsed on top of him

sweet annihilation

tongued his sex organs

licked his entrails

a moon is gone forever

genetic disturbances disappeared.

her skin was ripped and sore,

the rough fur had vanished

her stare was, as always, vacant with lust

clocks are burning

she hummed as she

hung up his skin tacked to the wall

“bitten multiple times for a strap-on fuck”

Face without eyes next to the other one

next to an old woman

next to mommy

next to daddy

moist trophy skins arranged in a sequence

“let them dry.

political piggies. I’m a big girl now. I love cartilage.”

Taxidermy dance lessons

they’d never come back she detested competition

she walked slowly from one to the other

tongued the flaccid lips

the floppy breasts

thanked them then moved on down the line.

another customer

another taste

another loss

count the

fatalities of consequences

watch what they say

hear what they do

as we’re thrown into the fuckwall

drinking from a trickle in the gutter

ravaged by kisses

left broken naked

parched lips kissing the mirror

she moves forward

stepping over carcasses

beeding like a crazy horse

Another Friday evening for a melancholy baby

By Peter Marra

www.angelferox.com

Madame Malicious and The Most Unlikely of Peers

Madame wouldn’t release him until the autumn.

the moon shown it’s face,
making him rear his uglier
mask the one he didn’t like
to expose to the world; the
monster that rippled beneath
‘daddy’, ‘husband’, ‘brother’ —
the wolf that tore into the
flesh of lovers, mothers, sisters,
brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles;
he could not think about all
that, not now, it was too overwhelming —
remorse was better left to the dead,
it only haunted the living until
they were bereft of sanity; these
were the last conscious thoughts
before the man flowed into the wolf —
a transition easy as water rippling,
but far more painful; his howls
pierced into the night, the blood
spilled upon the thirsty ground of white
grasses, the thrill and adrenaline ran
wild in the animal’s veins; it had begun.

Doggy Style

The worst thing about sharing a flat with her is the hair.  From someone who shaves her legs with every bath or shower, plucks the happy trail rising like a Christmas tree to her navel, and has nothing but smears of kohl for eyebrows, it’s a bit of a shock.

She told me when I met her that she had problems once a month, blushing coyly into her margarita as she licked the salt ringing the glass with her long pink tongue and leaving me to presume it was some God-awful woman stuff she was on about.

I wish.

Picking the long, coarse grey hairs from the soap block in its scummy plastic shower dish, I can’t help cursing her.  Loudly.

But she’s still sleeping it off in the bedroom next door.

And another thing – when she’s like this she snores like an elephant farting.  That’s not counting the flatulence either.  Red meat does that to her.  She’s vegetarian the rest of the time, and I’m glad of it.  No guy wants his girlfriend producing odours like that.  Well, I’ve seen some sites, tipsy-typing, y’know?, but it’s not something me or my mates would go for.  Her incense sticks don’t cover much, but it’s a start.

Now for the really fun bit to begin…

Hunt the leftovers.

Sometimes they’re still alive and semi-conscious, which helps.  I just follow the bloody pawprints from the bathroom to whatever cupboard or closet she’s stashed them in for later.  Or if it’s been a big night, out the back door – then I listen.

If they’re moaning, I can get to them quicker.  If not, I check for tufts of hair on the wild roses fringing the field at the back of the communal garden.  Sometimes she leaves tarry black turds midway between the roses and the leftovers.  Then I just keep straight, and follow my nose.  They all shit themselves when she gets them.  I don’t know how she can bear to eat them like that.  But she does.

If the sky is dense with clouds and the leftovers are silent, sometimes I step in them.  It isn’t pretty.  I learnt the hard way not to wear suede out there.

Tonight, however, there’s a whining in the wardrobe, high pitched and annoying.  For fuck’s sake, I just want PEACE!

The door’s not quite closed, there’s a leg in the way.  A shapely one.  And it’s moving.

My pulse quickens and my palms grow moist and sticky.

I’ve always wanted a keeper.

There’s a hammer or baseball bat in every room of the house, for folk breaking in or remains I need to get out.  I don’t want to disturb the neighbours.  It’s a nice area, with decent people and low-enough rents for a slacker like me.

But I don’t need a hammer if I’m right, and Mary’s not got her too bad.  I can watch her turn, help her through… then have a turn, hopefully.  If Hairy Mary lets me.  Sometimes I wonder if, despite her easy going attitude, she’s really as jealous as the rest of them.  It’s always the gorgeous girls that get bit.

Wiping my hands on my pyjamas, I pull the door open and retch.

She might have been a looker once, but now she’s dog-food.  Literally.  Champ from next door is wrestling with something inside her chest cavity.  But why the whining?  Oh, right, I see.  His collar’s caught on the end of a rib.  Fucksake, stupid dog.

Setting him free, I hook my hand under the gory leather strap and huckle him through to the bathroom for a quick rinse.  Nothing fragrant, I don’t want his owners getting suspicious.

A quick rubdown with Mary’s towel – not mine – and he’s good to go.

I turn my back and take a piss, washing a pube into the water with my golden stream.  I yawn, stretch, and let it go hands free.  Who cares about a dribble when there’s blood and hair all over the place?  I’ll get the special mop and some bleach out soon.

I’m tired, and forget about Chump for a minute when I find more coarse grey hair in clumps by the tub.  Yuck.  Picking them up with toilet paper, I hear the bed squeaking rhythmically next door.  Like when we… what the fuck?

Nine weeks later, she’s out the door.  Six puppies that look fuck all like me in the box under her arm.  Chump’s long gone to the great dog pound in the sky.  I log onto the ‘Ah Luv Alopecia Angels’ website for the princely sum of ten pounds an hour, and think of the non-shed wigs on those honeys.

I’m having at it with hand cream and the Dyson’s hose attachment when the police roll up with sniffer dogs.  Uh-oh.

I come, then I go.

Handcuffs aren’t much fun from someone with balls.

By Gill Hoffs

Corpse of Moon Child Bright

when the howling stopped, the
jaws stopped snapping, the zephyr
stopped circulating the strands of
hair wafting through the land there
was silence reverberating off the moon —

laying in a silver stream was a
corpse; her blonde hair looked silver
like a unicorn of the wood, but her
body was mangled worse than surgeries
gone wrong; the wolves tore every

visage of beauty from her face; she
was forever staring at the sky as if it
were something that terrified her, a
haunting that would linger past her
ill-deserved death and into the afterlife.

By Linda M. Crate

Slip This Skin

“Detective Whitmare, do you have any comment on the brutality of the–”
“Was the assailant just one individ–”
“This is the most violent rape that Flagstaff–”
“Will the victim have any permanent brain–”
“Whitmare, is there a public danger of further rapes within the–”Jake let out a scoff at the scene playing on the TV. His leg bouncing a hundred miles a minute, beads of sweat thicker than pus squeezing out of his skin. His thumb impulsively went to his nose.
“There’s no way, no way they’ll find out.”
He shook his head and stretched back on the bed he was sitting on. He looked up at his trailer’s window directly above the pillow and felt a smile twist his face despite of his worries. The window was just a small rectangular slit, and around it his buddy had airbrushed the shape of a woman’s butt, her head peeking around her own hips as if she was bending over. It reminded him of what the Coppertone girl would have looked like if cartoons could grow up and get addicted to coke.It was her fault, Jake thought to himself. She started laughing when he screamed. While she was struggling he had felt a stinging burn in his neck, and then when his hand flinched towards it he felt a raised lump bulging from his skin. It felt like something hard was inside. Then two more hit, one on his hand and one on his thigh. They were still there now–he was too afraid to go to the hospital. Stepping out of the trailer into the isolated Arizona afternoon he unzipped his pants and aimed for some animal hole in the ground. Maybe a snake’s. Maybe a tarantuala’s.
“I used a condom, got an alibi, they got nothing” Jake spoke out loud.
His toilet had been busted since yesterday. When he got home from Jameson’s Charhouse the bowl was filled with rocks and dissolving clumps of dirt, each with strands of red hair wound and tied tightly around it. Curly hair. His hair. Probably some ex’s idea of a joke. Unless the Indian chick had a brother. But nah, the lock wasn’t jimmied. Plus last night, he was woken up by someone banging on the roof of the trailer and from what he heard on the news she couldn’t talk yet by then to tell anyone. Yeah, definitely the ex’s new tool or something. No biggie, just needed to change the locks.”Screw it.”
With a yawn he went inside and flopped on the bed, setting the alarm for midnight. He was going to get some action tonight. The girl at the bar asked to meet him at the graveyard. Kinky. And what a hottie, too. His hand cupped his dick through his sweatpants as he fell asleep. That night, Jake dreamed of a wolf with green eyes, staring at him from the inside of woman’s vagina. He was so small, the woman so large.###Detective Whitmare and Deputy Craigs walked over the crime scene. The Navajo victim had been completely unresponsive when the ambulance took her away–not so much unable to talk as unwilling. She’d just kept repeating “yee naaldlooshii” over and over again.”Noodle sushi, what in the hell does that even mean?” Craigs said, “if you ask me it’s nuthin’ but nonsense.”
“I hope so,” Whitmare responded.
“Hope so, now why would you hope the poor girl was talking nonsense?”
“Because if she said what I thought I was hearing, we may be the wrong people to solve this case.”
“One of those Indian things your mammy taught you again, huh?”
“Yep, one of those.”
“Detective, deputy.”
“What is it sergeant?” Whitmare asked.
“Evidence, sir, condom wrapper.”
“Fingerprints?”
“None.”
“Trace the brand, and then go check Charleston’s pharmacy and see if they can’t give us any help.”###

Cold air and a cold smirk defined the night as Jake pulled his rusty pickup truck into the vacant lot across from the graveyard, out of sight of any passing cars in case things got out of hand again. Did she walk here? He didn’t see her car. That was probably for the best. An open grave lay to his right, the small CAT digger frozen next to a massive mound of dirt.

She wasn’t hard for Jake to spot. He saw pale skin and paler hair in a fluorescent pink tank-top and denim short shorts. Tied around her waist was some type of fur coat, dusky and colored like the desert. She looked like a facsimile of herself, like she dressed how she imagined a girl behaving like this should dress.
“You’re late,” she said in a cracking voice.
“Yeah, sorry Stephanie. Had to stop and get some condoms.” A different brand than last time, just to be safe.
“It’s Stacey.”
“Stacey. Hey, aren’t you cold like that?”
His hand went right for her neck, her skin hot and sweaty to the touch.
“Kiss me” she said, so contrived it could have been in a movie.
The jewlery around her neck looked old and dirty, even muddy. Was that grass in the chain? With their lips pressed his hand crept down to her breast. He pushed in, twisted. Something was wrong. It felt too saggy. He looked down–it looked nice, why did it feel so loose?
“Just kiss me.”
He closed his eyes and just went with it, hands taking off her shirt, going through her dry hair, groping all over in his best porn imitation. His hand back on her naked breast. Squeeze, twist, pull–his eyes snapped open.
“You’ll regret it,” she said through his mouth. He could feel her smile on his lips.
He didn’t stop pulling, the skin around her face stretched. It stretched right off her body. His arm was nearly fully extended and her skin was separating, separating off her body with a tug like coagulated glue. Where her eyes and her mouth should be, instead it looked just like holes punched in latex. He could see a bulbous nose and liver-spotted skin through the gaps. A rancid smell made him choke back vomit.
“What the fuck!”
He dropped the deflated breast, unbelieving. She pulled off the rest; let it fall in a clump on the ground. The inside of the skin was sticky and red, and so was she, standing in front of him.
“She” wasn’t quite right.
A bloated pregnant belly–large sagging breasts, but there was no mistaking what was hanging between Stacey’s, between its legs.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
It laughed, a bald and furrowed laugh just like its head. Man-eyes and pouty woman-lips stretching across rotting mucus teeth. It bent over abruptly, the sagging wrinkly stomach swinging as it grabbed the fur coat, and in a crouch he watched as it put the wolf head over its face.

If Jake would have stayed and watched, he would have seen the ancient’s skin boil and pop, would have seen the hide of the wolf-pelt respond in the same way, the bubbles exploding and reaching out, magnetic, towards one another like so many sniffing snakes–twisting around each other, twisting the wolf-hide into the aged yellow skin.
But Jake didn’t see any of that.
Jake had already turned and ran.

###

The burrow was unlike anything either officer had ever seen–too organized for an animal and too foul for a human. The night was damp, the grass lime green, and if the smell from the hole was any stronger it would have been visible. Under the police spotlight they could see the clay soil piled around the entrance, it covered them as they slid into it.

The earth inside was damp and looked fresh and unbroken–like it was a natural phenomenon. There were no signs of moving life, of trampling life; pale fleshy sprouts poked and looped in the dirt. It felt like they were walking on the moon.
The skeletons still with pieces of meat on it and the crude table told a different story.

“Grinding the bones up, why the hell?” Craigs asked.
“It’s believed that bones have mystical properties” Whitmare said.
“Mystical? Like what?”
“Like bone-dust having the ability to temporarily paralyze.”
“Or maybe it’s just easier to hide the evidence like that” Craigs said, but put the pestle down all the same. “So what other kinds of things can these Skinwalkers of yours do?”
“They sometimes shoot bone darts from blowguns–they’re said to implant in the skin without leaving any mark of entry.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Also, it’s said that Skinwalkers don’t leave footprints.”
Craigs froze, noticing the ground for the first time.
“Take a look at this, deputy.” Along the side of the burrow, above the table with the pestle, there were photographs stabbed into the wall of dirt with squirrel bones. They were of a young white male, hat turned sideways with a flat brim and long, curly red-hair sticking out underneath. Dozens of them lined the wall, greasy from a lard candle beneath and all taken from odd angles. Pictures of Jake driving. Pictures of Jake eating at the diner. Pictures of Jake taking a leak in the afternoon sun. Pictures of Jake raping a Navajo woman. Pictures of Jake raping other women.
“Jake Vetton, that little prick.”
“Deputy, do we still have any gas left in the emergency tank?”
Craigs didn’t say anything, just shoved his way out of the hole.

The next morning a small brush fire was reported on the news in a small unincorporated area outside of Flagstaff. No one was hurt, and the fire was quickly controlled by two officers who arrived on the scene promptly.

###

When Jake woke he couldn’t feel a thing, couldn’t move a thing either. His body frozen on the night ground, his back over some sort of rocky protrusion–forcing his head to hang upside down, staring at the wheels of his truck. He had almost made it. No, he couldn’t feel. But judging by the way his body was shaking, he could tell his legs were being pulled in jerky movements, and by moving his eyes to the side he could see a pack of animals, were those dogs?, scurrying back and forth around him. A howl broke the movements and then all the dogs followed. Jake began to cry. Not dogs–wolves.

Suddenly an old, dusky wolf head slammed in front of his face. It just stared at him, tongue lolling. It let out a sharp bark–it was laughing, laughing just like that Indian girl! The arms of the Skinwalker–they were arms, there was no mistaking them for legs–pushed down heavily on his chest. So heavily his breathing got harder. It dipped its head and started licking his face, his neck. Its tongue found the bump in his neck from the night before. The Skinwalker bit at the lump. He couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything but the same sort of tugging he felt on his legs–it was the same, Christ it was the same! The Skinwalker’s ripped the lump out, and throwing its head back he gnawed and cracked at it leisurely, like it was a sunflower seed, smacking its black lips.

Jake’s cries were sobs now. With a tremendous force of will he pushed with his neck–a spasm of neon pain–but it did the trick, he propped his head upright on the rock, looking down at his body. He wished he hadn’t. Three wolves were gnawing at his legs; they were almost stripped to the bone. His blood was soaking the mud. He began to feel woozy. The Skinwalker circled around and joined the wolves. Its strong jaws locked below his kneecap, yanking hard at his tibia the sinews connecting it were stretching, stretching, and then–a snap.

The aerial werewolf

killing team blasted

away as the monster

fur flashed to cave, so

the group rappelled,

but were slow afoot

like zombie skincare

collection scavengers,

soon ripped-n-running

bloody and no bone bit

extractors, rib spreader,

retractors or prosthetic

facial implants would

ever pass through the

shredded meat cave

curtains to serve or

suture the undead

Masturbating in the corner booth, she held her left leg high as she wriggled and squirmed in front of two dirty old truckers. Ice cubes were shaking inside the tea glasses as she finished. He asked the man running the counter if she was a regular at the diner to which he spit on a glass and rubbed it with a cloth.
As most diners he had been in don’t encourage indecent behavior, this one had to have been the exception. And as far as he was concerned there need not be another.
He probably would not have stopped, but his balls were sticking to his thighs prompting him to get out somewhere and dry them out. Besides, no one was the wiser to the heist he had just bagged.
And with all professions, a cat burglar usually has a mighty few friends.
Among thieves, the word on the street is that traveling through Texas is the worst place to get caught. Personally, he just didn’t give a damn.
“What will it be sugar?”
Candy was the name stamped on the crooked pin that hung lopsided just about nipple down on her otherwise uneventful grout. And wouldn’t it be Candy that every louse would want?
Thinking he was cute, “So which will it be–sugar or candy, babe?” He turned his head to watch as the masturbating temptress went for the gold with her ankle crooked with an angle providing a wide crotch shot.
“You can catch a handful of crabs,” she paused to point at the ejaculation booth, “or take your chances with the menu. Either way, I couldn’t give a fuck less.”
There have been a few times in my career that I have been taken by surprise and once was my own fault. But it seemed just and right to let this one go. “Whatever you say babe but can I have a coffee to start.”
As she shifted and tilted her head a bit soon, I realized there was craziness there in her reaction. It was something just downright odd. The only way he could describe it now is just supernatural or space quid queer. It wasn’t anything that he could see, smell, taste or hear. It was the manner in which his guts gave way on him a deafening fear.
“Drink up, we close at one.”
Dragging his cup from the edge, he placed both hands on it as if to blow on it. But the cup was cold. He started to call after Candy, but he noticed the clock showed a quarter ‘til one. No point in asking he figured. He got what he got.
A troublesome group of bikers were sitting in a far booth to his right. They had been eyeing him and cutting the padding on the booth since he had arrived. The diner floor had fluffs of cotton reamed out. And it did not occur to him that there wasn’t any decent folk about.
At the end of the bar, where he firmly sat, two scrawny chicks ate greedily at what looked like canned dog food with eggs and smelled a little worse. He figured they were junkies and anyway who really gives a crap.
There was a smiling man sitting in a chair behind the register. The proprietor, as it were, had been there since he came in. Above his head there was a plaque on the smokey-yellow wall that read: Get what you came for and get the Hell out!
“Not much for business, are you?”
When the proprietor stood up from his chair, he could see how big he really was. “You got five minutes, before we close do you want anything else?”
The proprietor was staring down at his coffee which he had barely touched. “Nope, nope, this here coffee is about as good as it gets. I think I will just finish up here and be on down the road.”
The strain of his laughter was deep and disturbingly crass. “Bet your ass you wish you could.”
Now, he had taken an ass beatin’ in his day, but he was about to try and stiff the guy on a cup of coffee that had given swamp resin a good name.
“How much do I owe you pal?” I tried to be real cool.
“That depends on what you got to trade?”
“Well, I have a nice Jackson in my pocket that should do the trick.”
The jugular in his throat bulged out with each deep-chested laugh. “Perhaps, you didn’t hear me…” he saw Candy laughing it up too, “I asked you what you have to Trade?”
His particular interest in payment struck me odd. Was this a scam or was he damn sleep deprived and going half mad?
“Not sure what you want me to offer.”
AIWEOOO!
The bikers were jumping up and down in the corner booth howling at him like some sick dog that just got run over by a Mack Truck.
There taunts were louder and crazier. “What ya got? What ya got? What can you trade for what you got?”
Bam!
He slammed his coffee cup on the counter. The hoots and howls slowed to a stop.
“Here’s a damn twenty keep the fucking change.” He had meant it too.
But the proprietor’s big arm grabbed him under the cuff, and he had never been one to have another man lay hands on him without there being some bad scuff. “Look fellar, I am done.” But his hand did not release at first. “Let me go on my way, here take the money and we are square.”
He gritted his teeth and his jaw drew gravel. “WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO TRADE?”
No one in the joint let out even a whisper. Everyone was waiting to see what he would offer.
“I am not sure really. If money isn’t what you want, then what else can I offer?”
Hysterical laughter filled the otherwise quiet diner.
“What can he offer, he says?” The big man’s mocking tone made him mad, and he wanted to hit him in his glass jaw or kick him in his square ass.
“Look fucker, there is no need for this. Just tell me what you want to trade, and I will tell you if I got it?” At this point, it did not matter how ridiculous this whole scene was becoming because he was ready to go.
“What do I want?”
The bikers in the corner had been twisting and curling their way towards the counter, and now two of them were sitting on top of it.
“Oh, no son, you have it all wrong. It is not what I want but it is more of what you must trade.”
The singing chorus of bikers began, “what you must trade!”
“There ain’t gonna be no dick blowin’ or ass smashing if you know what I mean?” I flicked out my little pocket blade.
Oooohhh! Hahhahahah. Laughter broke out at the end of the bar.
“Now, now. Let’s keep this civil.” The smiling man kept smiling as he pointed at the coffee pot. “Someone had to make your coffee, now someone has to make the hamburger for tomorrow that’s all.”
Now at this point, he was watching the bikers looming over the junkie chicks still sitting at the end of the bar. It was obvious that the two were stoned beyond the stars.
“Why don’t you do it then, I mean this is your diner?” I figured it was the most logical thing I could say given the circumstances.
The smiling man stopped smiling.
The bikers stopped the wolf howling and all stared at him. Even the masturbating chick in the corner booth with the two dirty truckers stopped mid cum.
“Because I am the owner, and that is just how it has been done.”
Looking around, there weren’t that many options. He could fight his way out of the diner, or he could make the hamburger. The way he had it figured was that the hamburger would hurt less.
“Ok. Pal how much hamburger are we talking about?”
The smiling man started to laugh looking down the bar. “Oh, I would say there is about a hundred fifty pounds of it without the bones more or less.”
The bikers began a chorus, “a hundred fifty pounds…more or less!” Their shrieking laughter was at a decibel reaching his ear drums that ached.
“Fine!”
“You heard him boys, we’ll have hamburger meat tonight!”
Amidst the merriment, the bikers, the smiling man, and the masturbation station all began to dance and sing crazily about the diner floor. He thought once to make a run for the door, but he knew it would be a battle or worse if he didn’t make it out.
So, he watched, along with the junkie chicks staring wide-eyed and unblinking, as they all slapped each other and gaggled to bit.
“Enough, already!” He was an impatient man. “Let’s get to this making of hamburgers so I can be on my way.”
“You heard him boys, let’s make some hamburger!” The bikers grabbed up both of the junkie chicks dragging them stoned and screaming by the hair of their heads towards the steel swinging doors.
“Hold on a minute, you want me to make them into hamburger meat? That is just insane, not to mention illegal!” He was about to commit a crime that he had no stomach, excuse the pun, to make.
The smiling man sat down at the counter next to him and spoke, “You said you wanted to leave right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, here is your way out. Make our hamburger meat for tomorrow and your trade will be complete.”
“But…” He knew there was nothing logical he could argue that would possibly make sense, “I can’t just kill them and chop them up. Someone will miss them or worse I will be convicted of killing two innocent women no less. And for what? A cup of coffee costs at most a buck thirty-five.”
“Listen, I have seen your type before,” the smiling man paused, “you waltz in the diner here and order something that costs.” His face was still smiling but the creases around his eyes pinched tight. “It never occurs to anyone that someone has to make the stuff!”
“Why can’t you make it or one of your goons?”
“Because our job is to serve it to you,” he smiled a wide toothy grin, “it is the lonely stragglers job to make the food in one given respect. You see, your actually pretty lucky, I mean given the time you arrived. Had you gotten here earlier, then you would have been the one served.”
From the back he could hear the two junkies crying and begging for their very lives.
“Well, I guess you have a point there pal, I am a lucky dude.”
The smiling man led him back to the kitchen where a blood stained mess was about to occur. He held out a butcher knife to him saying, “Cut their throat first.”

By LaVa Payne

By Cheryl Anne Gardner

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

He released a seven inch record. Instead of artwork printed by traditional means, he used strands of black woven hair, glued in thick clumps by an unknown grey substance. The record is “Formaldehyde Drip, Charred: for Manami.” The limited run record, all fifty copies, sold quickly to his European fans. He still lives in town, has a few private copies not for sale. I’ve heard it. He shared.

For the second performance, he dumped a bucket of leeches into a sliced open severed arm. It was not his own arm, but a larger arm, muscular and pink, veins highlighted by black marker. Steel strings had been attached to the leeches, strings that, with every movement and slurp of leech to flesh, produced a different tone. The strings were routed to a box of effects pedals, distortion and delay, fed into a small mixer and manipulated by hand to the delight of the audience. Someone lit one of the club’s sofas on fire, the crowd let it burn.

We sat in his studio and listened to his newest piece, “The Broken Anatomy of  Man’s Interior Sloth.” He turned off the lights, passed me a lit cigarette. We smoked in silence.

The piece begins with what sounds like a chair being scraped over wood complimented by a muffled moan (female, I presume). Then, an abrupt crack of skin or leather striking flesh. He keeps a black rod by the stereo, woven horse hair. The crack is followed by a series of tape loops, pitch-shifted growls like groaning wolves underwater. The cracks escalate. I can feel him smile through the black. A voice, his own, is chanting through a low-pass filter, but not in his native language. The growls, the cracks, and the chant pan to the left. A wall of static, more brown than pink, and certainly not white, fills the right speaker. The two sides rise, meet in the middle of the room. He moves, cigarette in mouth, and asks me to stand in the center of the room, says the album demands willing participation. My help would be invaluable.

His third show was a private venue. I was fortunate enough to be in attendance. His assistants, three foreign women in black gowns, stood hidden and unmoving behind strung up carcasses, affixed to the ceiling by meat hooks, blood dripping into wooden buckets. A shrill tone, the smell of vinegar. There were waterproof microphones inside the buckets. The drips were amplified, fed into a sampler, where he proceeded to edit the drips in real time, chopping them up, delay, filter, layer, and loop. With the snap of his fingers, the women raised right hands, brandished cleavers, and tore into the meat, jab upon jab, the sound of ripping flesh. No one noticed the wireless microphones glued to the women’s teeth. Every chop, a distorted and breathy grunt. The spattered blood dried on the floor, some on my shirt. The wooden buckets were in the studio, near the black rod.

I stood in the center of the room. He told me to wait, came back with a plank of wood, sharpened at the tip. A stake. The scraping and chanting, moans melded into shrieks. The static, deep like cars crashing in slow majesty.

The snapping sharpness of the plank slamming into my stomach, the noise felt from inside, and his fists to my teeth, the pliers and the glass shards he used to poke holes in my thighs to make fountains of red. I was leaking. Liquid in my ear and his boot stepping down cracking finger bones—each crack a compliment of aural perfection. “The plank, “he said, “when inserted into the prostrate, bursts the sac, an exploding squish, shattering any preconceptions of the real meaning of intimacy.” It will not be recorded.

Blood gushed from my ears in that moment of contact, the startling revelation of pure artistic genius.

By Jamie Grefe

Jamie Grefe currently lives and works in Beijing, China. His work appears or is forthcoming in Emprise Review, Bartleby Snopes, Untoward Magazine, Mud Luscious Press and elsewhere. Please, give him black coffee or read more at: http://shreddedmaps.tumblr.com

Rick backed the car up into the garage. He pulled the key and the machine shuddered, falling still. He reached into the back seat to pull out his blazer and briefcase, settling the latter on his lap. He ran his fingers across the smooth top, along the crevice where the halves met. He waited for a moment, rubbing the tips of his fingers together and staring at them.
 
The sound of the porch door closing on the other side of the house. A dog barks. Breathe, swallow, spit.
 
Rick checked the handle, the spinning lock still set to 1-2-3-4. He spun the tumblers, up and then down, running his thumbs across them left to right and bringing his fingers up his face again and inspecting them.
 
Opening the briefcase, he brought it up to his nose and inhaled deeply. He pressed the jacket out across his lap and ran his hands down each sleeve, into the pockets, behind the lapels, rubbing his palms into the fabric. He folded the jacket back up and placed it inside the briefcase, set both carefully down in the backseat.
 
He left the garage and opened up the side door in the fence, walking around the back of the house to the screened porch. As he walked, he watched the long, arrogant patches of yellow grasses growing around the foundations.
 
Rick opened the screen door and walked inside, the cool shadows inside the house touching the skin of his face, his palms. He ran his hands along his hips and walked into the living room, where he approached his wife from behind, the iron-tinted highlights in her blonde hair looking prickly, abusive.
 
“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in,” Teresa turned on the couch and looked at him. “I was waiting for you.”
 
“I know. How was your day?”
 
She sighed, crossing and then uncrossing her legs, fighting with what to say. He watched the pale, purple-spotted skin of her ankles. I hate those damn short pants, Rick watched her dangle her flip-flops off of her toes. I fucking hate them.
 
“The office burnt down.”
 
“What?” She rose from the couch and came towards him. He couldn’t help but flinch. “What happened? Oh my God, is everyone okay?”
 
“I guess so. I wouldn’t know. I just… left.”
 
Teresa walked out of the room, where he knew she was dialing the phone to talk to Jack and his wife, to pool all the salacious details into one “made-for-TV” script to chew over. Rick felt his teeth crawl.
 
The office, all the large, airy rooms and cramped cubicles with the felt walls and the spreadsheets and the smiling picture of kids pinned up in those gaudy plastic frames with the balloons or worse: those haphazard, scrawled drawings with “I love you, Mommy,” and some mutilated figure drawn in purple and the sun in a corner with a shit-eating grin on its face…
 
She came back into the living room, “Oh my God, honey, they say the fire started in the basement and somebody set it with gasoline and could you imagine?”
 
“Did anyone die?”
 
“I forgot to ask.”
 
“Why don’t you call her back?”
 
She didn’t say anything, but got up and left. Rick grinned, pleased with himself. She yelled from the kitchen, “Oh my… Rick, there were three people in there!”
 
Rick shrugged, craning his neck around to watch as the front door opened, “Hey, Dad.”
 
“Ben.”
 
Ben peered around the living room sheepishly, “Is she in the kitchen?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Good, I don’t really want to hear about fighting the crab grass or what is it now?”
 
“Sciatica? Or is it eczema?”
 
“Alicia will be home in a minute. They cancelled practice. I saw your work burned down. I passed it on my way back.”
 
“It did.”
 
“What happened?”
 
“I don’t know. Something in the walls. The fire got in walls? In the insulation?”
 
Ben shrugged and dropped his backpack and leapt up the stairs, “Will you be here for dinner?” Rick asked.
 
“Yeah.”
 
“I’ll let your mom know.”
 
　
At around 2:00 A.M., Rick padded softly down the stairs into the living room. He parted the drapes with a few fingers and sat staring out into the deserted road: the cracked asphalt, the sidewalk planks, listened for suspicious sounds and heard thousands, though none of them made a direct threat.
 
He went out to the garage. As he unlocked the car, he felt a wave of horror; that this day and all the days before it must’ve belonged to someone else. Someone who had agreed to this: the solid, ranch-style house, the green shutters nailed in place, the holes in the storm windows.
 
Rick twisted the cap off one jug and began to soak the foundation of his house with the gasoline.
 
He soaked the front hallway, the floor of the living room, the kitchen with the porch door. He tore a match from the book, wrenching it free from the root, and held it in between his ring and little fingers.
 
In his hand, he held a tough stem with a bright red bloom that would hiss and tickle his ears like an insect’s dull hum. The seed, the firey bush waiting to be born, a vast red plain that would feed, spread outward and reach up into the sky with its long, spindly arms, killing everything it touched, curling and charring all those hard edges, all the lies and half-truths and lonelinesses; a vengeful, blood-red demon consuming his entire life, a million eyes of fire staring straight up into the moon.
 
That’s the best part about fire. It can save you from anything that’s flammable. And you know what’s flammable?
 
Everything.
 
“Five,” he laughed, giddy, moving the match in between his ring and middle finger.
 
“Four.” Rick whispered to himself, “Three.”
 
In between his middle and first finger, “Two.”
 
In between his pointer finger and thumb…
 
“One.” A shower of fireflies into the darkness; released now, go forth, go forth and multiply.

By Samantha Ducas

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