The Father of All Torment by John Edward Lawson

When the world leaked from your eyes the violence of your tongue capsized, taking down five thousand lost souls with it. What were you thinking? Trying to carry the dead with you when you left…it’s unconscionable. Oh, enough about that. What can I do to help, you ask? I can keep my mouth shut, for one--something you would have been wise to do yourself. After all, the Paterfamilias of Dread would have a great interest in any word on your whereabouts. You know how it is, with all those phantoms of animals reanimated and skulking about. One truly cannot be too careful these days. Even the masturbated ghosts of babies never to be born are enough to give one pause; the vengeful bastards of monofornication would do anything to drag others down to their level of misery.
    Thought the afterlife would be some kind of party, did you? Don’t answer that, don’t say a word. Ah well, you psychics, you all think you’re just so smart, eh? Honestly. It sounds like a good scam when you are still drawing breath, but did you once consider the ramifications of your actions? Do you think this kind of overcrowding makes for a pleasant eternity, or for pleasant inhabitants? The thousand-year wait to get into the afterlife should have been your first clue, you dilletante.
    The supper electronic, the feast of neurons and protons, that spectacle will have to wait for another decade. Everything will be there. What you and I need, for the time being, is a good shadow to slither in. No, no, it’s true…I’m not doing this for nothing. You see, I happened to be there. I witnessed it when you began to leak. The sight was a thing of ragged beauty, the type that one rarely finds here. Possession of your memories friend--mind those babies!--possession of your memories is where my interests lay. Yes, the little bastards run thick as desire, I’ve already explained that you can’t be too careful. Mind your step. Always remember to keep clear of these sick generations of animals and babies as they are not what they appear to be.
    Where do they watch from? Nowhere, of course! Do I have to explain everything to you?! I thought you were the knowledgeable psychic in life. How you ever managed to convince thousands of people to invest in you to smuggle their souls--ah, we’ve no time for this. Keep moving, will you?
    “Will you stop bossing me around?”
    Oh. Oh, well, now you have done it, haven’t you? You’ve opened your mouth and given them something to track. Yes, look: here they come now, at least a hundred-thousand strong, the wastrels and lepers and insane infants, the opium-induced nightmare beasts and monochrome tigers. It’s a good job you know how to escape the tidal wave of pursuers cascading down into this valley of flavorless desolation. Oh, of course I’ve time to be flowery now that I’m not being “bossy” anymore. So, you’re ready finally to listen to me? Good. Let us away through this alley, yes, now down this tunnel, which I built especially for this circumstance. What’s that? One of them got at you?
    Look! Look now. Your needs are bleeding all over the place! The squirrels and the hounds will be onto us soon enough, friend. I’m afraid that you’re on your own from here on out. Perhaps it was fate that we separate here, perhaps it was fate that the burden of five-thousand souls overcome you just at the crucial moment, just at the gates of Heaven. And you thought your ability to communicate with the dead was a blessing in life? Ha! I’ll just take my payment now, thank you very much.
    I will concede, I didn’t keep you from being caught forever, but you couldn’t be naïve enough to think you could escape punishment for all eternity. Not that it matters now. At the very least you will be truly in the dark as to the nature of your guilt, and of those who assisted you, after I relieve you of your prior thoughts and memories…I would tell you to give Father my regards if I thought you’d remember. Oh, don’t look like that. Perhaps, in a few thousand years I’ll slip in and rescue you from your torments if things have cooled off by then.
    It’s been a pleasure.
------

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.


"The Father of All Torment" originally published in Three Pieces Guaranteed to Rot in Your Drawers
Copyright John Edward Lawson

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.

-------

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

Tarma's Song by Andrew Freudenberg

 Tarma’s song reached out into the Station. With serpentine determination it slithered through the power conduits, slid along the narrow walkways and caressed the bones of the mostly dead. Where once there had been melody there was now none. Any sense of rhythm that the song may have once contained had been crushed by time. There was no longer any vestige of beauty or humanity remaining.

    The song did not come effortlessly for Tarma nor did it come without pain. Born as a mere whimper somewhere down deep in the knotted recesses of her gut, it scraped its way up towards her larynx. On arrival this rotten travesty of an organ gave it some volume and a modicum of form before forcing it on its way. By the time it crept over Tarma’s black and broken teeth it was as much moan as mantra. She threw back her head and just let it come.

     The best part of two full centuries had passed since her mundane birth four and half billion miles away. That this twisted creature was ever an innocent human child, a thing of beauty and hope, seemed impossible to reconcile with her current reality. Time, always a cruel mistress of decay, had been allowed to play for too long.

   At first glance, if there had been anyone present to make the erroneous observation, her skin appeared to be smooth and dark. On closer inspection the many harsh repairs became more obvious. Her dusky complexion was actually a patchwork of dried meat and knitted polymers, a collage of finely grown synthetics interweaved with the dead remains of her own flesh. The finer parts of her face, nose, ears and lips, all had become contorted by the excess surgical attention that they had received. Her fingers were claws, permanently splayed on shaking hands that she could only clutch closely to her chest. One eye stared blindly and endlessly, the lid lost some years before. The other was a swirl of unnatural colour that held little promise of sight but in fact retained some function. The synthetic surgeons deserved praise for this small miracle. A few clumps of grey hair remained, unruly outgrowths amongst the scars on the bumpy savannah of her skull.

  Sanity and self awareness had begun to fade fast as she passed the century mark leaving little but animal instinct. The machines dispensed necessary nutrition and cleaned up after her, leaving her free to roam aimlessly as she pleased. She had become not much more than an ailing pet.

       Of course eleven healthy adults had not been sent so far from home without some faint hope of return. Failing that, the crew had been assured, more flights would be bound to follow. Events had turned good intentions into lies and history had left them to die slowly in their remote prison. Disease and degeneration had eventually claimed half a dozen victims and suicide had killed another three. Then there were two.

    Eventually Tarma’s song would wake Luiz from his fitful nightmares. Luiz’ groans would bring a faithful server to his side, stimulant injections at the ready. Once these polluted his blood stream he would follow the sound of the song as fast as a man with no limbs or sight could possibly manage. He had no more idea of why he did what he did than she. His conscious mind had lasted several decades beyond hers but eventually the ministrations of the medical minions had left him equally damaged. Their skills at prolonging the human body were almost supernatural but the inner spark eluded their touch and in the end its extinguishment was no small mercy.

An hour of writhing and rolling bought him, scratched and exhausted, to the floor of the observation chamber where Tarma performed. With an entire wall made of glass the view of Neptune below them was magnificent and the blue planet bathed them in an azure glow that only she could see. He would join her in duet, his song a scaly baritone barrage of unrecognizable curses and spittle. Together they would spend the day howling of their lost humanity to the swirling clouds below.

----

Andrew Freudenberg is amused by darkness so he writes about it. His work can currently be found causing trouble in anthologies from the likes of Knightwatch, Rainstorm and Angelic Knight Press. He lives in the South West of England where he is raising a small army of boys and attempting to create ‘longer stuff’.
‘Tarma’s Song’ was originally featured in ‘Kizuna: Fiction for Japan’. Please check it out!

Copyright 2011 Andrew Freudenberg

BABY POWDERED HILLS by Justin Grimbol

The old man sat in his wheel chair looking over the snowy fields. He was covered in blankets, but he was still cold. His body trembled. 

 There was a baby out there. It was dark but the moon was full. It lit up the fields like a parking lot. There was a baby out there. He had seen it crawl out of the darkness and he had been watching it slowly make its way to his house.

At first he wanted to get out there himself and help it. But then he came to his senses. What was he going to do once he got out there? Nothing. He was too old. They would both end up freezing to death. So he sat there and watched and tortured himself with guilt and a whiny sense of uselessness.

A couple more hours passed. The baby was still out there and it was still alive, still crawling, making its way through the deep snow. Where did it come from? The old man wondered. It was a strong little bastard. That was obvious. God only knew how far it had traveled.

He felt silly just sitting there, waiting for the baby to come to him like that. What if the baby had no interest in him? What if it just walked by? The idea depressed him.

He felt tired. Eventually he dozed off. His head fell back and he began to snore and his breath turned to steam in the cold air. He didn’t wake until the baby was at his feet.

“What the hell do you want?” the old man asked him.

“I’ve been crawling around for days,” the baby told him. “You got any food in there?”

The old man looked at him suspiciously. The baby was being pushy. He didn’t like that.

“Come on, I got money,” the baby told him. “I got like two grand in my diaper. You got any whisky in that big old house? You got any pussy? I bet you got a ton of pussy in there. Farmer pussy. I bet you got like a whole heard of tough ass farm chicks in there.”

The old man didn’t say anything, but the disdain he felt was obvious.

“Forget you,” the baby said.

The old man watched as he crawled away. God damn, he thought. What the hell’s wrong with kids these days?

---

Justin Grimbol went to Green Mountain College for thirty years. He majored in Partying and Dry Humping. He is the author of DRINKING UNTIL MORNING and THE CRUD MASTERS. 

Copyright Justin Grimbol

Artist, Genius, Sorcerer by G. Arthur Brown

The cover of the text appeared to have droplets of water on it, so, using a napkin, I made an effort to wipe them away. I was shown to be a fool, for these were not water droplets at all, but merely an effect of the cover painting. I flipped through the internal notations, finding the artwork credited to one David Caldwell. A painting this convincingly three dimensional requires a considerable amount of skill. One of two conclusions would explain this:

A)    David Caldwell is a genius.

B)    David Caldwell is a sorcerer.

This is not an exclusionary disjunction, I decided. He might be both a genius and a sorcerer. But I was forced to consider that, although I did not know much of sorcery, it could be presumed that a work of three dimensional art is not an incredibly difficult thing to create by sorcery, so I deduced that if he were a genius, he was likely not also a sorcerer.

But upon formalizing this note I reconsider. As a hypothetical sorcerer operating in a society that does not readily acknowledge the existence of said black art, perhaps it would be ill-considered to commit acts which could only be accounted for by sorcery, thus giving up the game and revealing the true nature of his powers. It would then seem that an intelligent sorcerer may use his arcane abilities to produce three dimensional works of art that might otherwise be assumed to be created by non-sorcerer geniuses. If this is correct and he is a sorcerer, then he is likely a genius.

A conclusion would require further research.

His small terrier dog was harder to apprehend than I had presumed. Presumption has shown itself, once again, to be my undoing. In the process I was bitten numerous times. It becomes far more difficult to retain one’s composure when one is bleeding into the flowerbed of a well-known artist, possibly also genius and/or sorcerer. The prospect of climbing back over the fence was more and more daunting after each dog bite on either my hands or ankles. Surprisingly, the dog was able to lull me into a false sense of security in several instances, at which point I would bend over and try to snatch up the small creature. This is when he would occasion to bite my face.

The dog could be the familiar of a sorcerer. Conversely, it could be a rambunctious terrier dog attacking an invader of its home territory. It was, without a doubt, the most cunning animal I have ever encountered during my research. But could this be accounted for by mere innate animal intelligence? A conclusion would require further research.

Upon eating the dog’s heart, I was unable to come to a confident conclusion in the matter. It had taken considerable time to light Caldwell’s grill, and shortly after I had worked out the organs of the tiny beast, someone had alerted the police to my presence. In my head I am marking the case as open until I can complete the necessary investigation. As I fled the scene, I wondered if Caldwell also had a cat or a parrot or, possibly, a large lizard like an iguana. Hamsters and the like have such small innards that I have never found them useful in my scientific inquiries.


Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown

Lucky Number 13

Kitten just received its 13th 5-star review on Amazon (including that delightful one by R.A. Harris on Amazon UK).  Tamara Romero, author of the exquisite Her Fingers, was the benevolent woman who pushed the number to the threshold of the weird, the number 13. 

Here's the review:

Trust the buzz, adopt the Kitten, because what everybody says about it is true. This is the story of a silly kid -like most children- that can't even understand that his kitten is not a kitten. His pet is a lovely, upright and adventurous thing that vomits coloured stamps. The boy's mom is an evil woman who wants to get rid of the kitten. Oh boy, they have enough trouble at home. Her life is already too complicated. So the kitten will end up in the hands of the Collector and travel to the Steel Planet. Luckily you always make new friends when you travel around, and so does the kitten. He will get a name, a decent cat condition and lots of hanging out with a knight with fish-hands. All this sounds crazy, I know, but G. Arthur Brown will take your hand and drive you smoothly so you don't faint. My personal highlight is a very particular retelling of children stories: the pee baby. We want more pee baby stories, G.

Thanks, Tamara!

Trust the buzz!

Buy Kitten now (also for Kindle). 

Interview of Sara Genge

I was checking out what the fantasy and science fiction market was like, one day, when I happened upon "Seagull Girl's Butterfly Tongue" by Sara Genge in magazine.  This story was not like the other stories in the magazine.  It was surreal--dare I say, even a bit psychedelic. It dealt with zombies, but not like any zombies you've ever met before.  The only thing I could I even think to compare this amazing writing to was the work of Kelly Link, which also subverts my expectations about zombies.

So, with the help of my local library, I was able to track down a few more of her stories in anthologies. And with the help of facebook, I was able to locate Sara herself.  She indulged me by answering a few questions, in between her saving the world and learning yet another language.  



GAB: Tell us a little bit about yourself.


SG: I'm a Spanish-American neurologist living in Stockholm. I am currently learning Swedish (willingly) and forgetting French (involuntarily). I have moved more than eight times in the past year and a half and would really like for it to stop now.



GAB: How long have you been writing?


SG: I started writing speculative fiction during my fifth year of medical school in Paris, France, where I was an Erasmus student. My neurology residency got in the way and I have been writing very little for the last couple of years. Although writing scientific papers takes the edge off things, the craving for writing fiction is still there.

GAB: Why do you write?


SG: Because it's totally different from anything else I do, it opens my mind to new worlds and it's fun. Also, if you're as busy as I am writing is a form of transgression, you take this time that you have and you use it to do something that's not directly applicable to your life or objectives. I hope my writing is equally challenging to the reader: the function of good speculative fiction is to confuse you a little and help to lever you out of your standard mindset if only a little bit.


GAB: Do you consider yourself a genre writer?


SG: I barely think of myself as a writer, much less one with adjectives. I'm a neurologist who writes, or a writer who does neurology, or a language student, or someone with very poor command of Swedish inverted word-order. All these things happen at the same time, or flash after each other in rapid succession. Some days I can barely write in any language and have to think hard to figure out how to say something in my mother tongue, whatever that is.


GAB: Who are some of your biggest influences?


SG: Ursula LeGuin, Scott Card, Frank Herbert. I've also been compared to Octavia Butler although I hadn't really read much of her stuff until after I was a published writer. I think critics tend to compare female writers to other female writers, so LeGuin and Butler get dragged out a lot.


GAB: Who are some of your favorite authors?


SG: See above. And Shakespeare is God, of course.


GAB: Do you have anything new coming up?


SG: Not coming up, but I've actually started writing again and have a story in the works (I'm back, baby!). It's set in France but the society is going to be sustainable and very Swedish. Except that the food will be good.


GAB: Can we find any of your writing online?


SG: All over the place. The Daily Cabal page is still up, even though the project has been terminated: it published microfiction five days a week and I contributed to it for some time. My stories are still up there. Drabblecast has podcasted some of my fiction. "Godtouched" is available in the Strange Horizon's archive
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2007/20070115/godtouched-f.shtml, Transcriptase has two of my stories
http://transcriptase.org/about/sara-genge/. Family Values is in Cosmos Online http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/science-fiction/family-values/. And of course, if you want to build your own anthology, there's always Anthology Builder.


GAB: What’s your favorite film?


SG: Apart from Spanish films which you probably never heard of? (Sorry, still need to mention one: Amanece que no es poco, get it with subtitles everyone. If you don't understand anything it's ok: surrealism, nobody does).



GAB: What’s your favorite musical artist or type of music?


SG: I love Ben Harper. Lisa Ekdahl has a great voice and sings in Swedish, which is great practice for me. Nina Simone makes me shiver. Leonard Cohen's last album was absolutely spectacular and also recommend going to the concert, the best I've seen from anyone over 70 (honestly, from anyone ever). Yeah, I'm not very hip or literate as far as music goes.