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

Bizarro Bizarro Anthology and More! A Brief Update...

Yes, that's right. Here's a great anthology full of bizarro fiction by veterans and newcomers alike, from Bizarro Pulp Press. I've got a story in there called "The Pitfalls of Modern Gardening." It has nice neighbors, including pieces by RA Harris, Jeff Burk, Wol-Vriey, MP Johnson, Alan M. Clark, Bruce Taylor, PA Douglas, Andrew Wayne Adams, Edmund Colell, Daniel W. Gonzales, Gabino Iglesias, Tony Rauch, Dustin Reade, Michael Allen Rose and like a dozen more! It's pretty damn cool. Available in paperback and Kindle versions. BUY IT HERE.

Also in the not too distant future, you can expect my story "The Balancing Act" in the Vertigo Schisms anthology from Surreal Grotesque, and my story "Harbinger Master" in the Axes of Evil heavy metal horror anthology from Chupa Cabra House. Expect lots of other great names included in those anthos as well.

Every Which Way but Clyde by MP Johnson

Jackson had every reason to believe that an orangutan sidekick would improve his life dramatically. Of course, he didn’t have the money to buy an orangutan, not with his wages from the gas station, and he had little chance of winning one in a fight. He did, however, have a wife.

When he presented the costume in all its orange-furred glory to Tani, the look on her face upset him. She didn’t say a word, but her frown said everything. He wanted to rip her trembling lips off and poke her teary eyes out.

“Now you listen to me,” he said, tossing the ape costume on her lap. “I go to work every day to keep a roof over our heads and put food on our plates, and now I’m asking one thing from you and I don’t want no backtalk.”

“Do I have to wear it all the time, dear?” she asked, defeated.

Jackson sat on the couch next to her and wrapped his arm around her. “Not while you cook. I don’t want any fur in my dinner.” He winked and handed her a book – The World of Orangutans. “Now you know how I feel about buying books, but I bought this one and it cost good money, so I want you to study it, you hear, and do all the things orangy-tangs do.”

“Okay, dear,” she said.

That night, when he got home from his four-hour shift at the gas station, he found Tani-tan in costume, studying the book.

“Just what I was hoping to see,” Jackson said, pulling a package of Oreos out of his lunch pail. “I brought you a treat.”

“Oh,” she said.

He could see her confusion through the eyeholes of her ape mask. “What’s a matter? Didn’t you read in there about how much orangy-tangs love Oreos?”

“Well, no,” she replied. “It says they like fruits and leaves and bugs, and they’re strong enough to rip a human’s arms off.”

He raised his hand threateningly. “I told you no fucking backtalk, didn’t I?”

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, closing the book and setting it aside, ready to take what she had coming.

Jackson lowered his puncher. “Aw hell. Let’s go out and have us a good time.”

She hopped off the couch and walked toward the door like normal, which infuriated Jackson. She must have seen him angering up, because she quickly switched to a more ape-propriate stride.

“Yee haw!” he shouted.

They climbed into his pickup and he cranked up the classic country music. Driving around with the windows down, the wind in his hair, the moon shining on his little ape sidekick’s fiery fur, he felt good, real good. Fulfilled, in a way.

“I’m gonna call you Clyde,” he said, slapping an Oreo in her paw.

She made an “ooo ooo” noise and Jackson’s heart lit up.

Things got even better when he saw a pair of bikers stopped at a red light up ahead. He hit the gas so he could stop beside them.

“You know what to do,” he said to Clyde.

She looked out the window and “ooo ooo”-ed at the bikers, who laughed and peeled away when the light turned green.

“Now why did you go and do that?” Jackson asked, frustrated at the realization that she hadn’t read nearly enough of that damn book.

“What?” she asked, making things worse with her regular voice.

“You’re supposed to whip bikers the bird, damn it!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see that in the book.”

“You didn’t even read that book.”

“I did. I swear I did!”

Jackson pulled over and shouted, “Get out!”

“No, dear, what are you gonna do?”

“Just get out and stop talking. Orangy-tangs don’t talk.”

She “ooo ooo”-ed and jumped out of the truck. He met her at the curb where she cowered. There was one way to find out if she really had read the book, if she really respected him and followed his orders. Surely, she would know this ape trick. He raised his pointer finger and aimed it at her chest like a pistol.

“Bang!” he shouted.

He waited for Clyde to fall backward and play dead, but she didn’t. She just stood there, not doing a damn thing. He couldn’t tell if she was being resistant and disrespectful, or if she really was confused. As much as he wanted to put her in her place, he could see she was trying. She had the costume on. She was grunting just right. He had to give her one last chance.

“Okay,” he said. “Show me what an orangy-tang does.”

She scratched her furry head in thought. Then she charged him, hitting him in the chest with all her weight, which wasn’t much, but enough to knock him down, caught off guard.

“What are you doing?” he asked, as she sat on top of him, clubbing him with her fists. He tried to move, but she had him pinned against the concrete. She grabbed him by the wrists and pulled fast and hard, ripping his arms from his sockets.

Jackson screamed as Clyde “ooo ooo”-ed and hopped off down the road, clutching the severed appendages as they sprayed blood in her wake.



-----

MP Johnson's short stories have appeared in more than 25 underground books and magazines, including Bare Bone and Cthulhu Sex. His debut book, The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone, was recently released by Bizarro Pulp Press. He is the creator of Freak Tension zine, a B-movie extra and an obsessive music fan currently based in Minneapolis. Learn more at www.freaktension.com.

Copyright MP Johson
Artwork Remedios Varo

The Green Room: 3rd Iteration of The Meta-fictional Juggling Troupe by R.A. Harris

The thing about virtuality is that it really isn't that different to normaluality. Oh sure, there's the dizzying array of lime green processes that have no meaning, and cut and slice and mate with and engulf one another in an attempt at, what they call, “affection”, but to any normalized observer it is clearly the murder and appropriation of energies that look a little tasty or might go well with the furniture in an alternative home. But aside from that slight divergence in superficial appearance, there really isn't much between the virtual processes that produce phenomena and the phenomena themselves, which is considerably less exciting news than many speculative theories on the nature of being and everything put forward in the past few centuries, but such is the nature of existence.

Tomlinson kicked a stone, only to discover it was a frog, and what's more, it was a frog that when placed just where it was prior to his kicking it, provided key structural support to the entirety of being. Red lights swam through murky water and yellow tape criss-crossed over every surface.

After a moment or two everything simply vanished.

Then it re-appeared as it was, with just a subtle difference, everything was now a slightly lighter green, even bordering on yellow in parts.

The parasitic logicians were gorging themselves on the logical foundation of the virtual reality support system. Beeps from hidden speakers and oscillators showing a fading heartbeat signaled that the world's heart was still kicking, or punching - it couldn't be certain given that it only had ghost limbs, and wasn't sure which way its up was. To what end, and exactly what kind of fluid, this heart still pumped was up for debate.

Tomlinson and the troupe must've twisted and folded into at least twelve thousand different species of Ideas, their limbs rotating and splitting and bending through hidden dimensions, before settling on their current forms. They still felt like jugglers, though more amateur than before. Tomlinson even had a badge on that said as much. Gavin had goat legs but instead of hooves he had waffles for feet. Eric didn't have any legs at all, but as he was particularly lazy this was not an issue and was in fact a rather moot point to bring up.

Tomlinson was a professional at heart (even though that was where the amateur badge had stuck) and so began a new routine by throwing the dragon and the two young souls in a conceptual manner towards Eric. Eric sat in a boiling tub of water, screaming about how he wasn't a witch, Eric was the witch. Then the bath was in Eric. Then Eric was in the bath again.

Still, the dragon and the two souls were in a flight that could have rivaled Jesus' ascension to Heaven it looked so darn good, heading towards Eric, who was ranting and raving in the bath full of now luke-warm water, now frozen solid, now evaporated, when Gavin, being blind as he was, walked right into the path of these mythic projectiles. They struck him on the forehead, bowling him over. He folded into origami pseudo-dimensions until he was one-dimensional, which was an achievement considering there were no dimensions for his one dimension to exist in.

Tomlinson became Gavin. It wasn't a choice on his part, but given the circumstance, he wasn't about to complain. Gavin had a far better body anyway. The new combined being felt like his name was Tomgavlinson.

The three juggled objects became one, became a soccer ball, became a hot potato, became Tomgavlinson's own stupid sense of self. He bicycled kicked the conceptual iteration of his own stupid sense of self over his head towards and away from Eric in an impossible movement. It spread into a triptych piece of art that critics would refer to as “a shoddy use of imagination” and then unanimously slam as a feeble attempt at “weird for the sake of... well it's not even apparent what the point is, but the green is giving me a headache”. Thankfully, the shitty art then de-materialised just as Eric reached to catch it. His hands had become black-holes again.

“Eric,” Tomgavlinson mumbled through a mouth hidden somewhere under a roll of fat that grew around his face like a bubbling tumor, “Didn't I tell you to get that checked out?”

Eric blushed a deep blue. Then he started screaming about which witch would eat his sandwich. Tomgavlinson squashed a logician beneath an Idea of a toaster and a smattering of logic  caused him to diverge into Tomgav and Lininson. At least there were two of them again, they both thought, though not in unison, that would just be daft.



----

R. A. Harris still lives in England, a merry land made up inside his head. He writes bizarre fiction and some of it gets published. Go here: www.leakylibido.wordpress.com to see some of his famous flash work.

Copyright 2013 R.A. Harris 

Artwork Giorgio de Chirico