Heaven Mask by Pedro Proença (Random Title 23)

There are concepts so horrible, so unimaginable, that once we come in contact with them, our minds  become empty shells, the remains of melted ideas smudging our psyche's interior like an asshole after diarrhea, or rough anal sex. When exposed to these concepts, these viruses, our bodies shut down in such a way we can't process new information for quite some time.

I'm about to lay such a concept on you right now.

God is a huge Jim Carrey fan.

There was nothing else He'd rather do in His free time than to watch classic Jim Carrey movies. Needless to say, His favorite was “The Mask.”

Because “Fuck you,” that's why.

So, God (or as He's known: “The Boss”) is sitting at his desk, reading some Cracked.com articles on his PC, when His secretary walks in, and hands Him the news for the day.

“Sir, here are the latest developments. The clones are still attacking that American city and we don't know how much longer...”

The secretary didn't have a chance to finish, because The Boss stood up and yelled.

“JIM CARREY DIED?”

Offended by the interruption, the secretary held her tongue. Literally, she pinched her forked tongue with her insect-like claws. It was her was of displaying frustration, and The Boss often had her feeling this way.

“Yes, sir, it appears so.”

The Boss got up from his chair, sending it to the ground.

“Bring. Him. To. Me.”

You could actually see the punctuation on that line, floating in the air like little dust specks.

“Sir, there are problems for you to attend. The Backstreet Boys said they can't get Santa to learn their choreography, there's the Antichrist situation in the midst of the clone attacks...”

“I DON'T CARE! Bring him to me, NOW”

The secretary drew blood from her tongue, such was her frustration.

“Ok, Boss, I'll fetch him for you”.

“Thank you, unnamed secretary”.

She left.

The Boss looked at his desk and saw that His cockroach supply was thinning. He considered for a moment calling back the secretary and asking for some more, but He was too excited. Jim Carrey was His fucking idol! And now, they would be face to face.

The Boss straightened His chair, sat on it, folded His hands and placed them on the desktop.

Seconds turning into minutes, The Boss waited. He was very impatient for an immortal being.

What's her name, the secretary, entered the office. She was dragging a shapeless thing trapped in what looked like a burlap sack.

“What the fuck is this??” The Boss said.

“Jim Carrey, sir,” said the supporting character.

Dropping to the ground, The Boss watched the thing squirming inside the sack.

“And why is he on a fucking sack?”

“Well sir, funny story. Actually, on top of being an actor, Jim Carrey was also an alchemist. Since 1994 he's being trying to create the mask from 'The Mask.’ Apparently, when the mask was finished, he put it on his face, and it killed him. Now, in heaven, his soul took the form of a giant, mask-wearing, insect, with all of The Mask's powers. We thought it was wise to put him on the magickal burlap sack.”

Scratching the mole on His chin, The Boss considered all of this. This was a serious situation, He couldn't have an all powerful monster roaming heaven, fucking shit up.

Well, besides Him.

So, after several moments of quiet meditation, The Boss did the only reasonable, sensible thing to do, a well-thought act that would be the perfect way to handle this dire, strange situation.

He ripped the sack with a long, thin talon.

“Nooooooooooooo!” the secretary said. After her speech detailing basically the plot of this story, she earned her right to have a name. Let's say, “Johanna.”

The Mask emerged from the sack. He was a fucking big, dark green insect. The mask was a lighter shade of green than its hard skin.

“Are you God?” the masked thing said.

“Yes, I am,” answered The Boss.

“Not anymore! I'm more powerful than you ever were. I'm stronger, I'm faster, I can make my eyes pop out whenever I see a hot bitch. I'm the rightful ruler of heaven.”

Johanna looked at her boss. The motherfucking Boss. She just knew He would make this all go away.

“Ok.”

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” Johanna said.

“Ok. Take it. I'm tired of it anyway. You handle the fucking Drakyr, the Backstreet Boys, the fucking clones. I'm outta here.”

Johanna stayed on the floor, quivering. The Boss passed her on his way to the door.

“Just one last thing,” the former God said.

All the light returned to Johanna's face, and she smiled. The ol' sonofabitch would come through after all!

“Yes?” hissed The Mask.

The Boss reached to his back flesh-pocket and pulled out a little notebook, the kind journalists usually carry around.

“Can you give me your autograph?”

-----

Pedro Proença lives in Brazil, and tries to write. He’s also a musician, a gamer and,during the week, a public servant. You can find him on his blog “The Bizarro World of Pedro” and on Facebook.

Heist Job Wolf by Allen Taylor (Random Title 22)

W walked through the dark briskly, trying not to step on cracks. He'd only been a wolf for three days and was still trying to get used to the legs and their odd bone structure. His back was hurting. It felt weird walking on his toes. His claws scratched the surface of the sidewalk with every step and all he could think about was Randall Pepperkorn scratching his nails on the chalkboard in third grade. He wanted to puke.

Three a.m. was no time to be wandering the streets. Sure, it was a Monday night - or Tuesday morning to be exact - and most folks were in bed. He could see one living room light on up the block about three houses. Otherwise, everything was dark.

"Where ya at U?" he muttered under his breath.

The unicorn had disappeared four blocks back and W was pissed. They were supposed to be doing this job together and U was jacking off somewhere.

A voice cut through the dark from between two houses on W's right. It was a soft Pfffft. He stopped mid-step and peered through the dark toward where he heard the sound. There he was, a white steed with a solitaire horn on his head and a tufted beard that flowed from his chin like a white cloud. W turned and traipsed across somebody's lawn toward U.

"Where'd you go?"

"Ssssh!"

He hated to be shushed. Who the fuck did U think he was? They were supposed to be equal partners.

Partnership was a vague term. To W it sounded like a way of saying that he and U had no authority while K enjoyed calling all the shots. K had made it clear to the two of them that they were under his tutelage and they were not to call him Roo. They had to stick to the code: W for Wolf, U for Unicorn, and K for Kangaroo. They didn't know anyone else in this racket and it was probably just as well. W hated it as it was. He just wanted to go back to being a boring accountant.

 "I found a way in," U whispered. W stared blankly. "You know, the warehouse."

"I thought we were breaking into somebody's home."

"Uh-uh." U's voice came out gravelly. "Follow me."

"This job sucks."

"Chill out," U said over his shoulder. "You've only been doing it three days. It gets better after a week."

"So you say."

"You just need to think about what a great opportunity this is. I mean, most people stuck in a wolf's body would kill for a job like this."

"I liked crunching numbers."

"Shit. No one likes crunching numbers. This is far more exciting and far more rewarding."

"Well, I do make more money. But I miss my wife."

"Yeah, I know. My little kitten was the sweetest thing. I think about her every day."

"Hey, can't we just take a little side trip and peek in the windows, get a glimpse of our lovely ladies one more time? You know, like a fond memory, or something?"

"That's strictly forbidden. You know K covered that in orientation."

"Yeah. I just thought you'd be a bud and go along."

"Can't afford it, my friend. I need this job now that I'm on all fours. It was great being an attorney and all, but no one's going to hire a unicorn to sue their pharmaceutical company. Besides, technically, I should be reporting you. Consider it 'going along' that I don't."

"Fair enough."

U stopped. W suddenly realized they had maneuvered between two sets of houses, crossed a street, strolled through an alley, and ended up on a darker lane with a big warehouse staring him in the face. A fence around the warehouse made it look secure. He wondered how they'd get inside.

"Follow me," U ordered.

W felt like sinking his wolf fangs into U's ass. As an accountant for a large oil company, he'd enjoyed being the giver of orders. He was the department manager who answered only to three people above him. None of them ever said follow me. He followed U around the back of the warehouse where a black bag sat on the ground beside a gate locked shut with a chain and a padlock.

"Right where K said it would be," U chuckled. "Most reliable boss I've ever had."

"Whatever you say," W said, kneeling. He was about to stick his wolf paws on the bag's handle when U's voice cut in.

"Hold a minute. You're not wearing gloves."

"Gloves? I'm a wolf."

"You'll still leave paw prints. Allow me."

W smirked and rose to his feet again. He watched intently as U lowered his head and fumbled with the bag with his lips. Crossing his front legs across his chest, W watched in amazement as U unzipped the bag with his unicorn teeth. Then he nuzzled his nose into the bag and pulled out a pair of chain cutters.

"Bravo, bravo," W applauded. "I'm impressed."

"Thanks."

"But don't your lips leave prints?"

"When have you ever known a police department take somebody's lip prints?"

W thought about it. U had a point. That didn't usually happen. U dropped the chain cutters on the ground.

"I can only hold them for so long. Now it's your turn. Cut the chain."

"What about paw prints?"

"Look, I can't cut a chain with my mouth. It's not physically possible. Do you wanna get paid for this job or not?"

"Okay, okay," W said, frustrated. He grabbed the chain cutters and slid them on the chain, pushing the handles together until the chain snapped. U quickly pushed the gate open with his nose and trampled through.

"Hurry! We've got to move fast," U said, running toward the warehouse. W dropped the chain cutters and ran after him, tripping over his feet. Damn wolf legs, he said inside his head. He hated his new body. When U reached a wooden door on the side of the aluminum building he raised his front hoofs into the air and pushed them against the door, forcing it open. Without missing a step, he rushed into the door and ran into the warehouse. W stumbled after clumsily.

A few minutes later they ran from the warehouse with the loot they'd been sent in to steal. U clasped a bag of clanking tools between his teeth as he hoofed up the gravel in the parking lot while W hugged two similar bags between his arms. They carried as much as they could on their own. When they passed through the open gate where they had left the bag, W noticed the bag and the chain cutters were both gone. Someone had removed them. He followed U into a clop of trees outside the gate and they ran at least a hundred yards into a dark clearing somewhere in the middle of the woods. W stopped in the clearing and dropped his bags, out of breath.

"Geez, I need to quit smoking," he wheezed, his front paws on his knees.

U dropped his bag. It clanked. "Told ya," he said, laughing.

"What's funny?"

U lay on the ground and folded his legs up under his belly, resting his chin on his front forelegs.

"Wha- what, are, you doing?" W asked nervously. "Shouldn't we be running? I know I heard an alarm."

"Relax," U chuckled. "Now we wait."

"For what?"

"K."

W scratched his head and took a knee. After a minute of silence he got the courage to speak again.

"What happened to the bag?"

"Don't worry about that," U chided. "K has it taken care of. Let's get some sleep."


----

Allen Taylor is the publisher/owner of Garden Gnome Publications and editor of the Garden of Eden anthology, a digital-only anthology of speculative fiction set in the legendary garden. His fiction and poetry have appeared online and in print for more than 20 years.

For the Atlantis of the Hideous Big Bad Wolf By Sean Leonard (Random Title #21)

Every day, on my walk home from school, I would pass row after row of pig farrowing houses, until one day I didn’t. It wasn’t that I took a different way home; there is no other way home. It’s that one day, those houses just weren’t there anymore.

Some days, I’d find headless chickens along my path, corpses that fell out of the trucks on their way to the poultry plant, day-late jailbreaks. But that afternoon, there were chunks of pre-pork pig scattered all across the road; a legless hoof here, a faceless snout there, here a leg, there an ear, everywhere some dead pig. It was as if an insurgent hog had snuck in and set an IED to go off just after slop was served. Whatever the case, there was nothing left of my halfway point marker save for some scattered wood and the smell of dead breakfast.

That night, as my mom prepared dinner, I tried to pry my dad’s attention from his beer and his baseball to tell him about what I had seen. 

“Same thing happened over near the Hanson’s farm, couple a days ago,” he responded, still not looking at me. “Whole damn pig pen leveled into mud and blood. Prob’ly them animal activists tryin’ to prove a point.”

“T.J., watch yer language in front of the boy,” my mom called from the kitchen. I might have made more of his extended middle finger aimed in the direction of my mother’s bodiless voice if her brief opening of the door hadn’t wafted in the intense odor of pork chops, which instantly sent me back to my own Vietnam that I had experienced just hours before, in which I had found myself in “the shit.” My immediate projection of vomit knew no bounds, splashing the carpet, the coffee table, the last three days’ newspapers in their pile on said table, and my dad’s unscuffed cowboy boots. I probably lost three pounds with that barf; probably woulda lost three teeth, too, if my dad had noticed the chunks of puke that found their way into his beer. Instead, he took a deep, final swig; Milwaukee’s Best turned into Kentucky’s Worst, a la my own personal recipe.

***

My cousin Randy disappeared from his family’s farm two months later. Coincidentally, their modest pig pen was also leveled about the same time. My mom told us we should go visit my aunt and uncle, bring them a hot meal, as they had been taking their only son’s vanishing pretty hard. The three of us loaded in the car, my dad grumbling in the driver’s seat, my mom checking her “mourning look” in the mirror, and me charged with the task of keeping numerous pots, pans, bowls, and hot plates upright in the backseat.

Awkward hugs were shared, and all the adults stood on the front porch, wordless and hesitant. My dad made me carry the food in, having to again and again excuse myself past their encumbering and unhelpful bodies each time as I opened the front screen door, carefully balancing the night’s meal under my chin. After placing the last bowl on the kitchen counter, I came back outside just in time to watch everyone make their way inside.

Food was barely touched that night, but everyone seemed thirsty enough for three. My dad and his brother swore non-stop, and for once my mom didn’t scold or raise an eyebrow. Their words became louder as the night went on, more liquefied, more pronounced and slowed. Once the cans were traded for bottles, I stopped stabbing my fork into the remnants of a slice of pecan pie and snuck outside, hoping the headache that was building would be pacified by the crickets and junebugs of dusk.

Me and Randy used to play ball down the hill, over by the lake. Me and Randy used to call it “Lake Stinkowski” because it smelled like a place dirty diapers got washed out in. Me and Randy would go down there, tie cattails into mini-grenades, and throw them at each other while safely reciting all the swear words we knew out of ear’s reach of our parents. Me and Randy used to have a lot of fun together around these parts.

There was no more me and Randy. But there, under the gum tree halfway down the hill, was part of Randy.

“Mom,” I called out, probably much quieter in reality than in my head, as I nudged the fleshy chunk of Randy Dayton with my Chuck Taylor. There was no doubt it was an arm, and the McGruff Crime Dog watch around the chewed up wrist made me fairly certain it was Randy’s arm. Which probably meant that bit of red tinting on the tree above the severed limb was probably not a result of the setting sun’s light; it was probably blood.

Before I could shout for another family member who wouldn’t hear me, I heard a rustling near the water behind me. I ducked around the tree and peaked back. At first, it was just shadows and figures and silhouettes of monsters that I wished my brain would stop tricking me with. But as my eyes adjusted, and I realized my brain and my eyes were on the same page, I’m embarrassed to say I peed a little.

There were multiple figures moving toward the lake, their fuzzy silhouettes wading into the water before submerging completely. Some carried lumpy piles in their arms, others dragged sleds of larger piles behind them. If it wasn’t for the full moon making its way into the night sky, I wouldn’t have seen them clearly. Then again, if it wasn’t for the full moon that was making its way into the night sky, they would not have existed.

I rubbed my eyes, I slapped my head, I squinted and I stared, but no matter what, I still saw the same thing. Man-sized wolves, an army of them (or would it be a pack?), carrying armfuls of something to an underwater destination. They were huge. They were amphibious. They were wearing people clothes. And they were ugly.

I focused on one to gain some perspective. He had a large, hooked nose, like a proboscis monkey, and a huge gap between his front teeth. One of his canines was broken, the other had a bit of black gunk on it (it was hard to miss, what with what big teeth they were and all), and his tongue hung a bit to the side. The wolf-man/werewolf/lycanthrope creature had the complexion of a teenaged pizza-face and the hunched back of, well, a werewolf. And then I noticed a familiar smell. And then I got a better look at what they were carrying. And then I started putting the pieces together.

Some carried wood; long, broken pieces of matching colored wood. But the rest, they carried meat. Well, chunks of pig to me or you, but ready-to-devour meat to them. And there was a lot. Enough to fill a small building. Enough to fill my aunt and uncle’s small pig pen, in fact. If my math skills had been better, I might have added it up already, but when one of them sneezed and it uprooted a bush and caused an inward current from the lakefront, enough to reveal descending stairs, it became all but obvious.

I pictured my poor cousin Randy, always the butt of the jokes at school. Porky Pig. Fatso. Suey! And I remembered my eighth grade science teacher, Mr. Bleeker, telling us that while it’s believed that wolves have great eyesight, in actuality they are probably near-sighted due to how their eyes are shaped. How horrible it must have been, poor fat Randy, bringing slop to the pen on a hot summer day, probably shirtless due to the heat, sweating, as they say, like a pig.

I left the piece of Randy there by the tree as I ran the uphill distance back to the house. About halfway there I got scared that no one would believe me, but by the time I reached the slurring, drunken adults, I was positive my voice would go unheard. My telling of the story and the subsequent whipping I’d receive wouldn’t bring my cousin back, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.

My aunt and uncle moved away soon after, but that hasn’t stopped me from finding my way back to the lake behind that house. Never under a full moon, mind you. But many a sneaked-beer drunken night has been spent there, staring at the rippled surface, remembering that night, safe on the shore, looking for the Atlantis of the hideous big bad wolf.

 ----

In 1987, after hearing Poison’s “Look What the Cat Dragged In” for the first time, Sean decided he wanted to play drums. After realizing all rock stars wore leather pants, he traded in those dreams of fortune and fame for 80’s sitcoms, horror movies (which he reviews at HorrorNews.net), and punk rock. Sean's short stories can be found in Solarcide’s “Flash Me! The Sinthology,” Bizarro Pulp Press's "Bizarro Bizarro: An Anthology," and online at Cease, Cows. www.seanofthedead.net

The Mountain of the Frozen Bus by John Ledger (Random Title #20)

They saw the bus coming up the mountain road from deep within the woods that they called home, not that they understood what it was they were seeing. Their kind was just as afraid of planes, trains and automobiles as the operators of those machines would be afraid of them. The large yellow object had stopped in place, remaining there for quite some time. A man got out and checked on several parts of the machine, waving his arms around in the air and making unintelligible noises out loud. This attracted more of them; the children were disturbed by his yelling and screaming. This upset mommy and daddy as they didn’t appreciate their baby’s sleep being interrupted by anything. They approached the bus.

    George didn’t have a clue why the bus had stopped running, nothing was working and he had no way to call for help. He was stuck in the freezing cold with a bus full of elementary school students on the side of a mountain. George was lost without an answer, two weeks away from retirement. The children were scared and cold, huddled together tightly inside the bus as George stood in the falling snow smoking his last Marlboro. This night can’t get any worse he thought as he saw them. George was an old man and he’d heard all the legends about Bigfoot and he’d read plenty of stories and watched plenty of movies but none of them prepared him for this. George ran quickly around to the other side of the bus and jumped inside, closing the door behind him. The children were screaming and yelling, some of them crying for their parents as George yelled at them to shut up. George went to the driver’s seat and took his place, watching the monstrosities and waiting to see what would happen. As fate would have it they turned out to have more patience than George.

    As they got closer they smelled the man’s fear before he even noticed them. The scent only intensified as he took them into his vision and scurried away like a rodent. They got fairly close to the machine and stood there waiting. Staring and waiting. After hours the pair of them approached the machine and circled it, looking inside. They realized enough to know that the beings inside other than the man were young like their young. They didn’t know or understand words like ‘children’ or ‘young’ but they understood things on their own level. They tried to get into the bus and this frightened the beings inside, the smell of fear was now overwhelming. They didn’t realize the children were scared to death of them; they only wanted to save the young. They weren’t concerned about the man, they wouldn’t save him. They wanted to eat him. The pair of them backed away a bit and sat in wait for what may have been hours or days, time was irrelevant to the beasts. They began to worry when the young had stopped moving around. No one except the man looked out at them and at one point they saw him eating ravenously as if he was one of their kind. It wasn’t until they saw many bright lights from other machines making their way up the mountain that they ran back into the woods.

30 years later…

    “So what’s this ridiculous adventure going to be called?” Sarah asked her boyfriend in her usual mocking tone.

    “The Mountain of the Frozen Bus” Brad proudly announced in response and he continued rambling on before giving Sarah or the others a chance to interrupt him.

“The story is, about 30 years ago a bus driver went crazy and shit man, he was taking a bunch of kids on a field trip when the bus broke down on this mountain in the middle of a snowstorm. Instead of letting the kids go or going for help he held them hostage there on the bus. When the cops showed up they found all the kids frozen to death but that wasn’t all. The driver was still alive and he was crazy as hell, they found him covered in blood and his hands were both frostbit. George Sommers was his name. He was babbling about monsters and a family of Bigfoot’s, turns out he had started eating the kids on the bus, so needless to say his ass is locked up in some asylum somewhere.”

    “Great story, creepy shit, but what the fuck are we going there for dude?” Kyle inquired from the backseat of the old Chevy.

    “To check it out man, they claim if you’re there at night sometimes you can hear the children screaming and crying.”

    “That doesn’t even make any sense Brad.” Sarah argued with him as she looked out the window very uninterestedly. “How are we supposed to hear dead children screaming and crying and why the fuck would we want to?”

    “Yeah what are you, some kind of creep, Brad?” Leslie chimed in from the back as they all started laughing except for Brad.

    “Yes I am and you all already know that. Sarah did we just fucking meet today or something, do you not pay attention to anything I say? If we hear the children it’s their ghosts that we’re hearing and that’s the whole point of why I do what I do but you should already know that.”

    “Jesus Christ, Brad, settle the fuck down dude. We’re just messing with you man” Kyle added as he was used to having to calm his friend down. Brad was always on edge because of Sarah and her bitchy attitude. Kyle never did understand what Brad saw in her, she wasn’t even attractive? She looked like a rat as far as he was concerned.

    “Alright, this is the spot.” Brad proclaimed as he pulled over to the side of the mountain path and put the old Chevy in park.

    “So now what, we’re getting out or something? Fuck that, I’ll be right here in the car.” Sarah protested as she crossed her arms and stared at Brad.

    “Have fun waiting then.” Brad replied as he and the other two passengers got out and surveyed the land. Sarah didn’t like that one bit but she stuck to her word remaining planted in the passenger seat. Brad, Kyle and Leslie walked across the clearing towards the woods as Brad pointed and explained to them where the bus was parked, reliving his knowledge of the story once again for his companions. Then Sarah started honking the horn. The trio turned to look at the car and Brad figured Sarah was just being her usual annoying self until he heard Leslie scream behind him. Sarah was trying to warn them but it was too late. Brad turned around to see Leslie being lifted into the air by some animal? This wasn’t any animal he had ever seen or heard of before though as it stood on two legs like a human, shaking Leslie around above its gigantic head with its long arms. The beast had long scraggly, grey hair and the face of a baboon. Its hands had sharp, yellow claws and as it opened its mouth Brad noticed teeth that looked like that of a shark. It seemed as if the creature was trying to stuff Leslie into its mouth as Kyle ran at the beast, punching and kicking to no avail. The beast became irritated and tossed her into the snow, setting his sights on Kyle. The only thing making it apparent that it was indeed a he, was the frightening and oddly shaped, baseball bat sized penis hanging from between its legs. It let out a primal scream as it lunged at Kyle and he never stood a chance as the beast was on top of him, ripping him to shreds with its claws and teeth. Brad was helping Leslie up when he noticed more of them running towards him from the woods, another big one and at least a dozen smaller creatures. Mommy and her children joined the massacre and that’s exactly what it became. Brad and Leslie couldn’t run fast enough; the mother went straight for Brad, eviscerating him in quite the same fashion as Daddy did with Kyle. The young were all over Leslie like a pack of rabid wolves and Sarah sat in the car watching all of this.

    Sarah saw her boyfriend and her friends mutilated before her eyes as the only thought that crossed her mind was the fact that she was safe. At least that’s what she thought. Brad had the keys so she couldn’t go anywhere; she was stuck in the Chevy. She had to wait for them to go away and then try to get to the keys. Unfortunately for her, that never happened. They saw the car and Sarah now understood what truly happened to the kids on the bus.


-----

John Ledger lives in Central Pennsylvania with his queen Erica and their four children; Carson, Kaila, Logan and Layla. John likes punk rock, serial killers, dogs and Chinese food. You can find him on Facebook talking a bunch of nonsense.

The Parlor of the Uncommon Frozen God by Mari Mitchell (Random Title #19)

They licked and sucked the warm confit from the bone saucers and painted cups. Once tongues were dry from the sticky thistles of the confit. The bones were promptly placed under the cushions of the ottoman and Kintsukuroi began to bounce. “Crush, cry, crush, cry,” the ottoman did proclaim.

Peony, who sat neatly on the mantel of the fireplace that burned bright blue, stopped washing her mischievous paw, and said, “What a cornucopia of cadavers.”

The cook, who had been busy in the graveyard of the great black bees, slid on butter dishes, past the ice window-walls, waving at those who had worshiped the Frozen God - Kothar-wa-Khasis, or perhaps Urcuchillay – no one could quite recall.

Kint inquired as he snapped his spiny tail, “Do you think we shall have any visitors today?”

“None.”

He sighed.

Peony gave a false smile and said, “What a shame,” for she enjoyed the parlor in its now common form.

The great black bees of the graveyard hummed as they scraped the dark red dust of cayenne pepper off their back legs. Piles of hot spice gathered in front of the worshipers encased in ice.

 A bowl, with zigzags of shimmering gold liquor was carried by the cook; filled with her latest concoction of salsa, of Red Savina Habanero, red tomatoes, purple onions and red bell peppers; all grown in the sands of the Sahara Desert, all drank the waters of the Two Boats and the Sister Peak. All grown in a hot house that could melt the devil himself.

Kint slithered toward the hearth and grabbed the bowl greedily.  He used his claws as chopsticks to shovel the searing salsa to jagged lips, and past teeth of cracked pottery, formed from leftovers and replacing the absent.

The cook lifted the cushions of the weeping ottoman and gathered the crushed contents in her apron.

The great black bees hummed as they sat on the now quiet ottoman and put clotted cream on raw skin. The cook laid the crushed bones of saucers and painted cups upon the table.

Bee Bee, started sorting, finding sharp edges that almost fit, forming fractions into wholes.

Dees Dees stuck out his long tongue and filled in empty, rough space with golden liquor.

Peony leapt from the mantle, past Kint and landed with a soft tinkle. Her patchwork coat clinked as she walked. She picked up the renewed cup. “All that is broken can be.” She placed it on the sideboard. “Lovely.”

“No matter their forgotten ways.”

In a glaciered wall, the remains of shattered, uncommon god watched.

Kint considered the forgotten god. “In the keeping... came the silence of warm prayers.” His breath formed a ghost of a cloud.

-----

Mari Mitchell lives in the high deserts of California. Her backyard looks out to an airplane graveyard, tumble weeds, and the world's first space port. As is the rule, is kept by three cats. She is also married and has two boys. She has a strong dislike of wood chippers and noisy eaters, but has a fondness for cake and coffee. Cookies are very nice too as long as they have no raisins.

Terror at Lost Goblins by David Anderson (Random Title #18)

Frederick looked down at the letters, and the stories contained therein. He missed receiving them, even though he was sure old Tobias was crazy. Around the middle of every month he’d open an envelope containing a cordial letter along with the manuscript for a short story, and sometimes even poetry. Frederick was sure Tobias was mentally ill, or at least suffered from some kind of high stress or anxiety. Although, Frederick thought, anyone could go crazy out there at the Lost Goblins Motor Home Park in Death Valley. Of all the places to go in California, he certainly chose one of the worst.

It had been a few months since he had heard from Tobias, and Frederick was getting worried. The old man was near eighty years old, and drank plenty enough for a twenty year old, let alone someone his age. He should have been dead a long time ago, but something worried Frederick. The last letter contained only a blank piece of paper with I’VE DISCOVERED SOMETHING BIG scrawled on it in pencil.

The fiction that Tobias wrote was unusual, and even for a well-read man like Frederick, it came off as incredibly odd. Frederick read Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeffrey Thomas, and other authors of the weird. Still, the strange world of the undead battling each other with laser guns and horses that were also called cheetahs, it baffled Frederick. The prose was only okay, and a lot of the ideas had been used before, but there was something oozing from it, a creepy feeling that invaded the author’s mind while consuming the subpar text of the story.

He missed those shitty manuscripts, with the bad titles. Sometimes he thought old Tobias just mixed random words around in a hat and came up with a story based on whatever nonsensical title he came up with. Frederick guessed the old coot didn’t have anything better to do, and that wasn’t so bad because the old man seemed happy. Still, he felt the urge to try and investigate the old man’s fate.

***

The road to the mobile home area was incredibly rough, even by desert standards. Once Frederick was off the highway, it was nothing but bumpy dirt stretches with giant, cat sized rocks, in random placement, and nothing that resembled a traversable stretch of sane road.

Finally, he came to a dirty white sign, made of long wooden boards that read LOST GOLBINS, YOU’RE HOME! The text was painted on with green and pink paint, and it looked like, by the style of font, it had been created in the 1950’s.

As Frederick drove into the park, a sick knot formed in his stomach. The place had been abandoned for at least a decade, probably around the time Frederick had first met the old man. Tobias was a friend of Frederick’s late father, in fact his dying wish was that Frederick look after the old man. His father had passed ten years prior, and Tobias had been living in the guest house on his Dad’s estate.

Tobias supposedly moved to Lost Goblins after his father passed and the estate was sold, and Frederick kept up with him via letters. He had never actually met the old coot in person, but he still felt like he knew the crazy son of a bitch. In the age of technology it was strange to not at least see what someone looks like when exchanging over social media or some other platform, but it added a bit of mystery to Tobias that Frederick liked. It was endearing that the letters were hand-written, a nice touch.

Unit 6 was Tobias’ mobile home number, and he pulled in the makeshift driveway that was really just a car sized clearing amongst the trash and debris of the mobile home park. There weren’t any fresh tire tracks, so it probably hadn’t been used in a long time, the two foot weeds growing around sporadically in the clearing confirming that story.

Clumps of dust and small twigs caked the screen door of the unit, which sent a bolt of rage through Frederick. He had come all this way for nothing, no one had opened that door for years. Still, he needed a peek inside to search for any kind of clue as to what was going on. He opened the screen door, which was practically glued to the frame form years of grime. Frederick decided he should get a flashlight, as the sun was setting, so he grabbed one from his car. He ran back to the entrance, the screen door now hanging open, and tried the main door. It was unlocked, so he let himself in.

All the windows were boarded up, and Frederick had his confirmation that no one was living there, and had not for a long time. The letters still had this address on them, and they had to be coming from somewhere. But they could have been mailed from anywhere in Death Valley and still have the right post mark. A fake return address was hardly a new thing.

Frederick was about to consider the mystery solved, or at least partially solved, when he heard a curious noise emanating from the back room. It sounded like a ribbed vacuum hose being pulled across the floor, along with what he could only describe as ‘something wet’. The sun was fully set now, and the inside of the unit was pitch black. He shined his flashlight down the narrow corridor of the mobile home hallway, and the light splashed against a cheap faux wood door. As Frederick crept forward, the intensity of the noise increased.

Frederick, feeling a surge of courage rush through him, turned the knob and flung the door open. Sitting in a chair, placed in front of a worn down bed, was the old man. He had been dead for many years, now a cobwebbed adorned, withered corpse. A pile of paper along with pencils and envelopes, including a stack of recently purchased stamps, resided in front of Tobias. Something stirred from beneath the bed, but instead of aim the light beneath to see what was there, Frederick ran with a speed he thought was only capable for Olympic athletes and dove into his car, shooting rocks around the mobile home park as he peeled out, motoring away from the horrible place as fast as he could.

Finally, Frederick made it home to his apartment in Los Angeles, relaxed that he was finally on familiar turf. On the way to his apartment room he decided to stop by the mailbox, unlocking the small metal door and pulling out the mail, which consisted of only one item. It was a new letter from Tobias.

-----

DAVID ANDERSON lives and writes in Mesa, Arizona. His work has appeared in Surreal Grotesque's online magazine, and other ezines like Bizarro Central, Garden Gnome Pulbications, and The Rot Gut County Blog. He can be found in print in 50 Secret Tales of the Whispering Gash: A Queefrotica and Witch!, an anthology from Dynatox Ministries.

The Living Moon of Edible Glass by Ross Baxter (Random Title #17)

Running a floating brothel had never been easy, but the profits had always been worth the effort. As Bruce Valmont pored over the figures one more time on the adding machine he knew what the answer would be before he pulled the handle: the business was definitely making a loss. There had been lean times before, but the seemingly new predilection of every two-bit major in every one-horse town to demand a cut of earnings for using their airspace was costing him dearly. He reached into his desk drawer for a nip of whiskey but found his hip flask empty. With a sigh he rose and headed towards the bar in the public area to replenish it.

“What can I get you, Colonel?” smiled the barman, putting down the glass he was diligently polishing.

 “Either a new way of making money, or a whiskey,” Valmont muttered.

“I can give you both,” answered the barman with confidence.

Valmont looked at him sceptically. “Better start with the whiskey.”

The barman carefully filled the proffered flask without spilling a drop, and then handed it back to his employer.

Valmont nodded his thanks. “So, what about a new way of making money?”

“Religion,” announced the barman.

“It’s already been done,” Valmont replied flatly.

“But can you give me an example of a poor religion?” the barman challenged.

“Probably not,” Valmont conceded, “but I don’t think I’m going to be made a saint anytime soon.”

“I’d say not!” laughed the barman.

After serving together throughout the whole of the war and having spent the last four years in the airborne brothel, Valmont knew he had a point.

“So,” asked Valmont, “how can religion fill our coffers?”

“When our steam-driven dirigible appears in the sky above a town it always creates a great deal of amazement, wonder and speculation. And we work the towns of the most industrialized country in the world, full of smoke belching factories, airships, and steam wagons. Imagine what the reaction would be in places that haven’t seen modern technology; this flying bordello would be a thing of worship. They’d see us as supernatural beings. All we’d need to do is accept their precious offerings, then fly onto the next settlement and repeat the process,” explained the barman.

“So where in the world do you suggest we start?” said Valmont, trying not to sound too disparaging.

“We need to go to places off the beaten track, with superstitious inhabitants who’ve never seen anything like us before and would worship us as gods. Places like the Sahara desert, central Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, or even places nearer home like Sykesville, Maryland!”

“I’m not sure if I could stomach Maryland,” Valmont mused, “but I follow your thinking.”

“We bamboozle them with the horseshit of our glittering technology, and maybe even introduce the village elders to the delights of our sporting girls. There’s a fortune waiting to be made out there.”

“It sounds like a fun type of religion,” said Valmont, taking a nip from his hip flask. “I’ll give it some thought.”

“Always happy to help, sir,” smiled the barman.

Valmont nodded and left the barman to his glass polishing. He strolled out of the quite bar and climbed up to the starboard viewing platform to get some air. The barman’s scheme was starting to grow on him, and with profits at an all time low he knew they had very little to lose. He needed to start working on the idea, and getting the name right would be a good start.

“The Church of...” he mused out loud to himself, gripping the platform’s railings he looked around for inspiration.

The dirigible resembled an ancient living creature bathed in the light of the full moon. Below he could see a client eagerly licking the pudenda of two of his girls like they were the last edible things on earth, clearly visible through the glass roof of their room. Valmont considered the vista for a few moments before nodding sagely to himself.

“The Church of the Living Moon of Edible Glass,” he mused to himself, liking the name straight away.

With a smile he picked up the voice communication tube to the bridge.

“Helmsman!” he shouted. “Plot me a course to Sykesville, Maryland!”


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After thirty years at sea, Ross Baxter was made Professor of Disposable Culture at the University of Hard Knocks. The work not classified as subversive by the government can be found listed on his Amazon author page.