Rose by Sarah Shaw

    I didn't mean to kill her, but I did. I don't even know how I killed her, but I did. I wish I knew, but that doesn't make her any less dead or any less real. Because she IS real. Here. And now. And when I close my eyes and when I open them...she's always there and I want her to go away and I feel guilty for that and I beg her forgiveness. I don't know if she hears me, but she's still there, existing. Existing inside, outside and even upside-down.

    Being haunted sucks. Even if I deserve it, which I do. I've never known how to take my atonement with grape jelly like a good girl. Even when it pretends to be an airplane. I can't swallow. How am I still here and she's not but really still is?

    I'm lying on my bed in my stuffy, dry room with no windows. She's here, hovering. Not above me, she never gets that close. But near. Maybe I just think the room has no windows. Most rooms have windows to look out of and see the sun and the snow and the life.

    There she is, not flying, but hovering. She's weightless since she's not here but is. She's still, her eyes closed and as purple as the only time I held her and she escaped from my embrace and left me with a shell. Was it my tears that killed her. No, it was something I did before that. She won't tell me.

     Is she angry that she had to share? That her roommate grew bigger while she desperately played catch-up. I hear her roommate roll over in his sleep in the next room...the one with windows and I feel the guilt again. Or still. I feel it still. Like her, the guilt is always there....it just changes forms.

    She floats down and touches her tiny, open mouth to my toe and I jerk my foot back. She shoots back up quickly and I slowly stretch my leg back to where it was. Did I really feel her? Did she touch me. She's never touched me before. Her eyes are open slits and I think she's staring at me, her miniature face contorted into an incomprehensible expression. Her mouth opens and then I hear it. Barely, but I hear it: “You replaced me.”

    In the next room, the one with windows, her replacement shifts in his sleep and emits a soft whine. I think about how different things would be if he was a girl or wasn't here at all. Guilt again. Always and always shifting and changing.

    “I didn't mean to,” I whisper, or maybe just thought. Is she still staring? I can't tell. She's hovering closer now and touches her mouth to my knee. I lie still and feel a pinch on my skin. That's something new and real and here.

     The roommate and the replacement shuffle a bit in their beds. I think it's still dark outside but it doesn't matter since it's always dark. And cold. And she's still pinching my skin between her toothless gums. A tiny pinch since she has a tiny mouth. I want to bat her away like an insect, but I don't.

    She releases my knee and glides through space to just above my belly. She opens her mouth even wider to bite down on the loose skin and fat just below my navel. I don't, am unable to resist this behavior from her. She deserves it. She's earned it. Her little gums grow needles that pierce my skin and she rips the bit of flesh away from my body and dissolves it.

    My brain has less weight now.

    She repeats her actions until she digs a hole in my abdomen large enough for her tiny head. My belly reaches for her and vacuums her into myself.

    She is here but not here and I drift into a guiltless sleep.


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Sarah Shaw lives in the middle of Alaska where she thinks up stuff and writes it down.

Copyright 2013 Sarah Shaw
Art by Tony Horne Shepherd

Dahlia's Lullaby by Jason Wayne Allen

I was thirteen years old on the summer night Dahlia came to my window and I may be confined bodily in this asylum, but I assure you my soul rides on the night skies grasping tight to my beloved Dahlia, until the time comes once again, when she returns and all of you will know I am not insane but free when you hear her lullaby, and see her scalloped wings silhouetted by the moon.

            That summer night I tongued the split lip given to me by a bully named Matthew Moore. My mother had acquired yet another boyfriend who moved us into a new neighborhood. I was a frail boy, with an awkward disposition, introverted with acne and glasses. While walking the new neighborhood I came to a football field where Matthew and other boys were playing a rough game with no pads or helmets. During a brief intermission I was spotted where I was approached by Matthew and three others.

            "Three dollars to watch," said Matthew. 

            "I'm sorry…I don't have any money," I said.

            "Pull out your pockets." As I reflect on my first meeting with Matthew Moore, there is not a fiber of me that regrets what I eventually did to the boy.

            I pulled the pockets out of my blue jeans showing him I didn't have any money, and felt a sudden jolt from behind as I was pushed forward into Matthew, who threw me to the ground, pinned my shoulders with his knees and commenced bashing my face with his fists. I left to the sounds of laughter and returned home. My mother tended to my bruised face and mended my glasses with electrical tape.

            That night my blackened eye pulsed and I fantasized about handling the situation more bravely. Eventually, I dozed, but was startled awake by a knock and three rhythmic scratches at my bedroom window.  I was thirteen years old, no longer a child, and thought myself silly to be afraid. This was simply some kind of animal, but still I was frozen scared and prayed the knock, scratch, scratch would go away, and eventually it did, replaced by a lullaby so beautiful, as if sang by a seraphim. The melody held me in thrall, and drunk from the influence of the song I stumbled over to open my bedroom window.

            Words trivialize Dahlia's beauty. She towered over me; I estimate seven feet, nude, her skin shockingly pale, her breasts enormous with flat, pink hypnotic nipples, her hair fiery red, and flowing down her back like The River of Styx. Instantly identifiable as female but with modifications, such as the folded membranous wings behind her back, the white fangs behind rose lips and her eyes amethyst-purple.

            A painful erection pulsed beneath my pajamas, she continued to sing as she gently pushed me to the bed, and exposed my sex. She glided a relaxing tickle with long, pointed fingernails down my exposed torso, and she sat on my erection sheathing me inside her. I came immediately. When she lifted herself off, she had taken with her my penis and scrotum. She stopped singing and whispered into my ear. “When you become a man, you can have these back.”

The melody returned and she left the same as she had entered. I went to the window and saw her spread wings silhouetted by the moon.

When she took my genitalia there was no pain. There were no scars, smooth, I was sexless. You may ask how I went to the restroom, sufficient to say, sitting down.

Summer passed, school started, and Dahlia hadn't returned. My time at this new school was short lived after my second meeting with Matthew Moore. In the boys' restroom, I was confronted, much the same as before but more brutally. Matthew and the same three others took turns pummeling me, and ended the beating with humiliation as they stood in a semi-circle and urinated on me.

That night, I heard Dahlia's rhythmic knock and scratches. Then euphoria filled me, as Dahlia's lullaby filled my bedroom. She opened the window and entered.

"Where have you been?"

She squatted and produced my genitalia. Perfectly intact she displayed my penis and scrotum in the palm of her hand. "I told you when you become a man, you may have these back!"

"How?"

"Ask the man who humiliated you," she said. "I need a man tonight. Maybe I should visit your tormenter."

            She put my genitals back inside of her and left. That night I didn't sleep. The next day, I didn't hesitate and ran up to Matthew Moore screaming, "Did you touch her!" I remember the puzzled look on the boy’s face, straddling his chest, pushing my thumbs into his eye sockets, the bulbs of his eyeballs breaking, and I remember wanting to feel the back of his skull.

            That night Dahlia escorted me to bed and I made love to her with every fiber of my being. I racked her body with orgasms, and when I came I laid exhausted beside her. As she was leaving I begged her not to go. She motioned for a kiss.

Her mouth extended revealing eight tentacles that grasped my head.  I was pulled into her mouth and into oblivion.

             I awoke years later with my genitals intact. I had acquired a wife named Sarah, a daughter named Lillian, I was an accountant, and we lived in a two story house in the suburbs.

Memories of Dahlia flooded back. I decided a sacrifice was to be made to summon her.

Sarah found me in the fetal position, bleeding to death, blood gushing from my crotch, and screaming in agony.

My mutilated genitalia lay on an inverted star, constructed with electrical tape on the linoleum floor of our bathroom.

            When one night, this asylum is pregnant with the melody of Dahlia's lullaby, you will all know…you will all know. I'll soon be a free man.

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Jason Wayne Allen is a writer, specializing in the Horror and Bizarro genres. He enjoys coffee, books, comics, guitars, metal and punk rock music, and Horror and B-movies, like Troma. When he's not reading or writing you can usually find him zombified at some silly Clock In, Clock Out job.
Jason Wayne Allen is southern by the grace of some dark god, but currently resides in Methtown, Missouri, also referred to as Saint Joseph: Where We Accept EBT.  You can buy his stuff here.

Copyright 2013 Jason Wayne Allen