A Heartless Romance by John Edward Lawson

I closed my eyes and puckered my lips; my heart was doing the same. I never imagined my heart and I would go that far but we did, and it was unnervingly exciting. I wanted to whisper, “Don’t look.” Or, “Don’t tell me if my mouth tastes funny.” Or, “This hole in my chest is getting cold.” Instead we kissed long and hard, and the serenity that came over me only just barely countered the quickening of my breath, the mounting tension in my muscles. The kiss itself could not have lasted more than ten seconds but was as draining as a funeral service. When we finally drew apart my lips were dripping warmth--not a wetness induced by the passion of the moment, no; it is simply in a heart’s nature to be a bloody mess.
    We held back in wonder momentarily, laying there in the stark moonlight with the stiff grass complaining against our backs. Then we simply embraced. It pulsed sticky against my cheek, and yes I am not ashamed to admit that in that moment I took the liberty of fondling a ventricle. Rest assured there was no protest from my heart.
    “I…love you,” I said uneasily. It was the first time for that arrangement of syllables to pass the hurdle of my lips, but somehow they made it.
    “Don’t get carried away,” my heart said with it’s typical brashness. “You’ve got that attachment thing going on, don’t you? That co-dependancy thing. Seen it on the TV.”
    No, I wouldn’t let my heart spoil the moment’s worth, not after all we had been through. So after a short lull I looked over its quivering, bulbous exterior and said, “Check out those muscles. You’ve been working out again, haven’t you?”
    “Ah, well,” it chuckled, finally softening. “You noticed? Do I really look like all that?”
    “You know it,” I purred reassuringly.
    So I leaned back on my elbows and watched my heart strike some muscle poses, cranking out coronary-worthy pumps in the attempt to impress me. “How about that,” it huffed. “How you like me now?”
    “You’re the only heart for me.” Having said that I let my mind wander a bit, which brought on a surge of panic. “Oh no. Oh no, oh no. What are we going to do? Huh?”
    “Hey, we got away clean. Sure there was some gunfire, and sure some people got hurt, but we made it out of there okay. All’s we got to do now is stick to the plan and get moving. Head down Mexicali way and lay low for a while.”
    This settled my nerves enough that I was able to start gathering our get-away gear. “I love you. I really do.”
    My heart did not reply.
    “That man, the one at the desk? He had pretty good aim, huh?”
    “Good enough to tear your chest open pretty bad.”
    In that grove of trees it felt as though we were redefining enchantment with this criminal affair. Robbery, murder, arson, we did it all with a passion that had been lacking in every other moment of my life. My heart had me in its grip, I knew it then as surely as I do now, and maybe in the final analysis I would be no more than a pawn blinded by love in this game of rogue excess.
    “It’s time we got a move on. Remember, careful what you say to people. All’s we got to do is hook the first car what comes along, then we’re home free. Or we’re walkin’.” I followed my heart out of the woods. We took to the road and the ensuing reliance on my feet gave me a whole new appreciation for them. But that love quadrangle is another story altogether.
----

John Edward Lawson has published nine books, seven chapbooks, and over five hundred works in anthologies, magazines, and literary journals worldwide. He is a winner of the Fiction International Emerging Writers Competition, and has been a finalist for the Stoker Award and Wonderland Award. Other nominations include the Dwarf Stars Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Rhysling Award. As a freelance editor he worked for Raw Dog Screaming Press, Double Dragon Publishing, and National Lampoon, has edited seven anthologies, and served as editor-in-chief for The Dream People. Recently he became a columnist at IMJ, covering events in the publishing industry.








"A Heartless Romance" originally published at RedWritingHood.com
Copyright John Edward Lawson
Artwork Remedios Varo

Early to Rise, Late to Bloom by Mark Allen Berryhill

Audra stared at her ceiling. She always woke up before her alarm. It wasn’t fair. She looked over at the pot in which the alarm grew. It quivered and twitched, and at this point looked like a slimy egg popping up out of the dirt. She gave it maybe twenty minutes before it bloomed and started shrieking. At least she would beat her brother to the bathroom.

She sighed and turned on her side, but jumped out of bed when her hand touched something wet and slimy. She pulled the cover back to reveal an irregular spot of dark red goo about the size of a saucer. She groaned and pursed her lips. The first time this happened she thought she had finally gotten her period, that maybe she had leaked in the night, but no, it was just her brother’s pet slime mold, Rusty, coalescing.

“Go do that somewhere else, you little asshole” she whispered.

She rummaged through the junk on her floor to find her cell phone on and tossed it at the little beast. It quivered and slowly oozed away.

She didn’t trust that thing. Last week she woke up and it was in her hair. She guessed it liked her, but as pets go that thing was pretty gross. Her mom said it liked her room especially since Audra did such a terrible job of keeping it clean. It wasn’t fair that he got a pet and she didn’t. For her next birthday Audra would demand a kitten.

She rummaged through her clothes pile, which had gone from being mostly clean to mostly dirty. She picked the bra she wanted to wear today and plucked off a tiny white mushroom.  Her mom would freak if she knew how dirty her room was. She flicked the mushroom into the slime mold, which dripped off her bed into a little pool near her feet.

“Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

Her mom insisted that if she would just fold up her clothes and put them away like she was supposed to she wouldn’t look like such a slob. She sniffed the clothes she picked out and her jeans still smelled like laundry, and that was enough. It wasn’t like she was going to impress anyone. Everyone paid attention to the girls who didn’t look like little boys.

She gathered her stuff up and snuck out into the cold and damp hallway. Fungal shelves full of knickknacks lined the walls, giving off a faint light you could only see if you didn’t look directly at them, but at least they made it easier to avoid bumping into anything. If she woke her brother up he’d demand that to go first and then stink the place up and use all the hot water. So, she tried to be as quiet as possible. She had always wanted to be a ninja assassin when she grew up, but her mom said that would never happen unless she took school more seriously. Audra had already figured out that school was just a place to socialize, and she just didn’t see the point in that.

She opened the door and closed it without making much of a sound. The first thing she did was to turn the shower on—if her brother knocked on the door she could always say she couldn’t hear him over the sound of the water.

She flipped on the light and it flickered into a soft bioluminescence. Her mom needed to replace that bulb. She took off her night clothes and kicked them into a corner, then looked at herself in the door mirror. She thought of this as The Daily Examination of Shame.  Nothing. No change at all. What the hell was going on? She couldn’t think of another girl in her grade that was as underdeveloped as she was, it was ridiculous. She was tired of pretending to complain about cramps that she never had.

She thought back to the fourth grade. They split the girls and boys up and forced them to watch cutesy sexual education videos with kiddy cartoon euphemisms. Well, her fruiting bodies didn’t look like they were going to bloom any time soon. Everyone giggled throughout the entire video and it really pissed Miss Spink off. It wasn’t that they weren’t mature to understand what was going on, but they all had the internet, they might have titled the videos, “What You Already Know In Insulting Animated Form”. In fact, her best friend Tabby had already got her first period so it wasn’t like any of it was a secret.

That was a long time ago.
 
She tested the water, it was so hot it almost hurt. She turned the showerhead so that it blasted the wall instead and stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain closed. She peed into her hands and worked that into her crevices. If the girls at school saw her do that they’d eat her alive. It wasn’t like her family couldn’t afford antifungal soap—they didn’t have to do it this way. If her mom would skip the organic food that wasn’t any better for you than real food they wouldn’t have to use their own piss like poor people. And it didn’t even work, not like the medicinal stuff! She still got rashes. In fact over the summer it got so bad that most of the hair on her head fell out. The buzz cut she sported might reinforce the whole little boy thing, but no way is she going to rub urine into her hair no matter how “sterile” or “natural” it is
.
Her mom insisted that by using anti-fungal soaps humanity is just breeding more dangerous strains of infection. Before Audra was born her uncle had contracted a nasty brain fungus, climbed a radio tower, and then bloomed—to everyone’s horror. Or so she said. Audra knew her mom just liked being a weirdo and wanted a freak for a daughter.


The gritty bar of soap her mom bought smelled good, so at least there was that. Gym class would be so much worse if she stank on top of everything else. She scrubbed herself with that soap until it almost hurt, and when she rinsed the soap out of her eyes she looked down to see a trail of red swirling between her legs and going down the drain.

She gasped and turned around. Rusty had slipped under the door and followed her into the tub. The little bastard was way smarter than you’d expect it to be, or dumber. It slithered unsuccessfully up the side of the bathtub, trying to get out. She tried to scoop it up, but the water wasn’t helping, and soap, even stuff that wasn’t anti-fungal, did terrible things to slime molds.

She didn’t know what to do, so she adjusted the shower head to rinse it down the drain.

There was a pounding on the door.

“AUDRA, YOUR ALARM IS SHRIEKING!”

“CAN YOU FUCK OFF, MOM?”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY!?”

“CAN YOU TURN IT OFF, MOM?”

Audra wished she could wash herself down the drain, too.

-----

When he isn't gardening, Mark Berryhill spends his days exploring complex social issues through fart jokes. 

Copyright 2013 Mark Berryhill 

Cactus Subconscious by Shawn Misener

I'm bouncing along the desert like a rubber ball, deftly avoiding cactus after angry cactus. My pants are soaked with scorpion juice.
      The voice in the sand: "If it has soul you must funk it."
      The field of geysers has turned to carbonation. A bubbling tribute to the three clouds suspended in the air. What does a cloud feel like when swallowed?
      Below, the army of Southwestern poets begins to gather. One by one they set up shop: Rusty typewriters, old booze, loose tobacco, and pissy attitudes. Flailing through the sky I see them as they skeptically measure me up.
      "He won't be up there for long," they croak, sharing nods and commiserating huffs. The clacking of atomic words explodes from their fingers. They blast away my abstractions with sex, drugs, and indie rock.
      "See you when you fall," they sing.
---
Shawn Misener lives in Michigan.  His chapbooks include Dry Humping a Fire Hydrant and In Your Face(book), and he edits the absurdist blogazine Clutching at Straws.

Copyright Shawn Misener
Artwork by Carlo Carra

Tree by Sarah Shaw

Roger had never seen the tree before. It didn't seem possible, since he walked through the woods every evening after returning home from work, but there it was. The tree loomed over the trail that cut through the dense forest near Roger's home; the trail that was frequented by hikers and berry-pickers during the summer, cross-country skiers during the winter, and Roger every day at around 5:47 pm.
    What the hell was a tall deciduous tree doing here amidst spindly spruce and birch trees, anyway? The trunk had to be at least seven, no eight, times the thickness of the oldest and healthiest spruce in the forest. Roger stepped off the path to investigate.
    As he circled around the tree, the glowing outline of an arch became visible on the trunk. Roger put his palm on the bark surface and, with a minute amount of pressure, the arch swung away from Roger and he tumbled in.
    "What in the goddamned...." Roger sputtered. When he pulled his knees in to stand, the door he had tripped through slammed shut. He frantically felt around the smooth curved wall around him, but his fingers didn't find a door.
    "Oh god, oh god, what the fuck..." Roger repeated, spinning around the circular closet. All that occupied the room was an electric lantern on the wall. Then he smelled it. A familiar scent wafted into his nostrils and he breathed it deeply. Roger would know that comforting smell anywhere. Oatmeal Cookies.
    Oatmeal cookies were his favorite. They beat out chocolate chip. Snickerdoodles didn't stand a chance against them. The smell lulled Roger until his eyes rolled back. He dropped to the floor in a heap and was too busy being unconscious to notice when the floor disappeared.
       
                                           ***

    "Wake up, Mr. Blue."
    Roger felt a light tapping on his forehead.
    "Wake up, Mr. Blue."
    Tap, tap, tap.
    Roger struggled to open his eyes. They felt glued shut, but he was able to manage it. He was lying on his back and the strong scent of oatmeal cookies was still present. A small, dwarf in a green jacket and pointed hat was leaning over Roger and smiling at him with an a lipless mouth full of gray and yellow teeth.
    "You're finally awake, Mr. Blue. That's just grand," the dwarf chuckled, "I'm so glad. It's your lucky day.”
    "Lucky?" Roger slurred. Whatever had knocked him out was still lingering.
    "Oh yes, quite lucky," the dwarf grinned.
    Roger looked around. He and the dwarf were in what appeared to be a hospital room and he was lying on a cot. Next to the cot was an unused monitor with wires hanging from it.
    "What happened?" Roger noticed that this particular hospital room had no doors or windows.
    "You happened, Mr.Blue!"
    "Who's Mr. Blue?"
    "YOU are Mr. Blue, Mr. Blue," the dwarf poked Roger in the chest three times with a gnarled finger. Roger looked down and saw that he was wearing his blue work shirt. When he looked back up, the dwarf raised one of his small hands above his head.
    "Macaroon!" the dwarf shouted and with a snap of his fingers, the hospital room was gone.

                                          ***

    Roger and the green-clad dwarf were in a lush meadow, surrounded by stone ovens and wooden tables. Working busily all around them were brightly dressed dwarves in matching pointed hats. The wonderful and intoxicating smell was even stronger than before. Oatmeal cookies.
    "I'm Bertram, bye the bye," said the dwarf in green," and I told you that it was your lucky day! It's Oatmeal Cookie Day! Every day is a different cookie and you just happened upon us on oatmeal day, Mr. Blue. Would you like to try one? Or five?"
    While Roger had no idea how much time had passed since he first fell into the tree, he did know that he was hungry. All of the fear that he felt had dissolved. He didn't even care where he was. All that Roger could focus on was the stack of neatly piled oatmeal cookies that sat on one of the wooden tables. He snatched a cookie and sniffed it. He took a bite of the cookie while Bertram looked on, rubbing his bony little dwarf hands together.
    The cookie was the best cookie that Roger had ever had. The flavor was familiar, but so unlike anything he had tasted. Sweet, with a hint of cinnamon, and a savory undertone that Roger wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't experienced it. His body buzzed in sexual arousal and Roger fought the urge to touch himself. He wasn't so enraptured that he forgot about Bertram and the other dwarves staring at him.
    "Hmmmm...." Bertram muttered and sounded very distant to Roger, "usually this is where they fall down. Guess I should take care of that."
    Roger was swallowing the last bite of his cookie when Bertram hit him in the head with a wooden rolling pin.

                                        ***

    Roger was awakened by a hard slap with a spatula. He tried to voice a protest, but someone had stuffed cloth into his mouth. Bertram stepped back from the table that Roger was bound to, grinding his nasty little teeth and tossing the utensil over his shoulder. Roger couldn't move, but could see that they were in a shack with a door and two curtained windows..
    "You can't move, Mr. Blue, so don't even bother to try. You're tied to that table and you wouldn't get far without any feet anyway." The dwarf gestured to a counter along one of the walls. On the counter, a foot stuck upside-down out of a meat grinder. Roger looked down the length of his prone body and saw that his legs ended in charred, black stumps right beneath his knees. His eyes teared up and sweat started to streak his forehead. He twitched as he stared at a pile of bloody ground meat that sat on the counter. He realized that the air didn't smell like his favorite cookie anymore.
     "When I said that it was your lucky day, I meant it," Bertram started turning the crank on the meat grinder and a crunchy, squelchy sound filled the room. Roger fought the vomit that threatened to come up his throat and choke him.
    "That was the best damn cookie you ever had, I betcha. And don't worry, Mr. Blue. You'll have some more. Can't promise that they'll be oatmeal, but they'll be good just the same," Bertram waved the aroma of the bloody pile of meat and bone to his nose.
    Roger tried to scream. Bertram didn't notice.
    "Ah yes..." the dwarf inhaled deeply, "I think that you will be quite wonderful in a ginger snap. You seem to have just the right bit of tang to you. These feet are plenty enough for a big, fine batch of baked deliciousness that will last us awhile." Bertram swiveled back toward Roger and snapped his fingers. "You must be famished, eh, Mr. Blue! I'll go fetch you some cookies. Got to keep your strength up. Can't have you dyin' before we've used every last scrap of you. The ingredients have to be fresh and no meat is fresher than meat that was just alive!" Bertram shuffled quickly through the door and closed it behind him.
    Roger wept.
------------

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

Copyright 2013 Sarah Shaw
Artwork by Juan Gris

Rat by Darrin Naill

He spent his morning trying in vain to keep the bread from copulating with the toaster. Each time he would leave the room, he would hear the click of the toaster going down. Each time he returned, a new set of twins lay on the counter covered in butter or jam or, on one occasion, honey.

The radio in the basement was supposed to be off, but would come on of its own volition each time he passed by the closed door to the basement steps. He would hear the white noise tune itself to an all-Spanish station and then fade to pops and buzzes only to go quiet as soon as he would open the door.

The window unit air conditioner in the upstairs bedroom played country music in faint bursts as he walked by the landing.

It had been weeks since he had heard from his cousin, who had, months before, been abducted and transplanted into the television. He always told him what to do to keep the appliances in order, but now, he was increasingly lost. So he did what any sane person would do: he sat in his cat-eating recliner and stared at the blank screen to wait for the next episode of his cousin.

He called for a glass of sweet tea, and it came (though he should have requested "iced" sweet tea, as what he got was lukewarm).

After his tea, it was time to hunt. The rats, at times, rolled across the floor like giant dust bunnies. If he could manage to stand in the right spot, then the corner chair, which always tried to kill him, would slide across the floor and run over the little buggers.

Just as the chair was zeroing in on him, the TV rang. That had never happened before, so he was a little put off. He kicked the television, which made it slide across the floor, crushing the corner chair, and ending his hunting trip.

"in a moment" the television shouted "will be the end".

He looked at the television. No picture. The floor began to tremble.

"there's a hole in the bottom of the sea" a passing rat sang.

The floor gave way, folded, and swallowed. All stop.

---------
 Darrin Naill. 70s born, father of 3, husband of 1. Eater of meats and cheeses. Hunter and Fisher; general killer. College degreed, yet employed at a bargain. Acquainted severally, friended fewly. Bourbon.

Copyright Darrin Naill
Artwork Juan Gris

R.A. Harris Interviews G. Arthur Brown

Okay, this happened a while back. (Another attempt to sell my New Bizarro Author Series book Kitten.) But in case you missed it, R.A. Harris interviewed me, and here's a sample of his witty question techniques (patents pending):

LeakyLibido: ....Tell me, young squire – if you were at the point of a sword and the hand that held the other end was attached to an arm that was attached to a torso that was attached to a head, via a neck, and on that head there was a mouth and that mouth did move and sounds were elicited in that movement that formed the words, “sum up your life philosophy in five words”, what, pray, would you say?
Simulacrum: Mind your own business, man.
LeakyLibido: Oh, ok. Well… erm… how do you take your coffee?
Simulacrum: I prefer tea. But if I must have coffee, sweet and light.


Check out the full interview at Leaky Libido!

And Kitten is also available for Kindle!

Make a Better Brody by G. Arthur Brown

In this canoe, adrift at sea, I do not feel truly secure from the bites of sharks. The Ocean of Shame is just half a channel away.

"Open boats be damned!" Shaking your fist at the canoe doesn't help, I can tell you with more assurance than I have that I will not be eaten by sharks. For a moment I think I see a huge sausage just beneath the surface of the briny deep. It is just a dead manatee. I poke at it with my spear and it bursts open, oozing decay that bubbles up and forms a foul smelling pool. The sea here is incredibly calm. I grab the locket that hangs around my neck and hold it tightly in my fist. "Veronica! Why did I ever leave thee?" I pose the question in a deliberately melodramatic fashion. In my mind I see her Victorianesque visage, not bothering to open locket and look at the portrait that has been emblazoned on my mind's eye.

An albatross squeals overhead. I convince myself he's lamenting Veronica's distance from here. She should have been in this canoe. I fall in love with the oozing corpse of the sea creature now floating well behind me. I name the canoe Later. I pat the leg, that appears to be attached to me, and I say, "They just don't make canoes like they used to. I bet you a shark could snap this thing in two. I saw that movie. I think Paul Newman would have made a better Brody." The albatross squeals her agreement. I sample the fine wine that is the sea. Blurriness ensues.

Copyright G. Arthur Brown
Artwork by Salvador Dali