Sleepers by Matt Hegdahl

“It’s impossible,” I told him. I looked around at the wood paneling of the room, the random black lights hanging from the ceiling, and the litter box in the corner, full. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Of course I didn’t sign up for this, I didn’t even want to come here, I didn’t have a choice though, they loaded me up as they did everyone else.

“It’s for the safety of society,” they told us with gun barrels pressed against our naked backs.

National security was at stake and we were to blame, or at least that’s how they saw it. According to the president we were a new form of sleeper cell, except some of us didn’t even know it. There were the ones that had been informed and given a chance to turn themselves in, but there were more like me.

I had no idea, honestly I didn’t know, I simply followed the protocols and proclamations that they issued. I followed the instructions that they left in my voicemail. The government official that called clearly said, “Go to the clinic on Evergreen Street, tell them your name and social security number, and they will take it from there.”

I had expected they would take some blood, but they did so much more than that. I’ve never been through so many tests in one clinical sitting. They swabbed my nasal passages until my eyes watered. My throat was rubbed raw from cotton and they used those skinny little popsicle sticks to scrape the inside of my cheeks. My colon was prodded and examined and then clipped. They thoroughly checked my prostate and even procured a semen sample. Hair clippings, nail clippings, and five vials of blood. The entire process took all day. Specialists were stationed all over the hospital and it was at least a 30 minute wait for each test.

I had expected to be informed of my test results, and I was, when they kicked in my door and drug me half naked out of my bedroom at gun point. I didn’t even have to ask when they loaded me on the bus. I was seated next to a woman who had most likely turned herself in.

I was among those they called the “sleepers” because we didn’t show any signs of sickness, physical or mental, but it was there, hidden deep inside us genetically, in our cellular structure. The sickness suppressed, waiting to come forward and strike without warning, in most cases people will live their whole lives with it and never have an outbreak, never show any symptoms or infect anyone else. It’s the small percentage of carriers, around three percent, that has society shaking in their boots. It’s because of this small percentage that I’m now in this room, dimly lit with ultra-violet lights and smelling of cat piss.

According to the specialists, the ammonia from felines and low levels of ultra-violet lights will suppress any possible outbreaks. So the first bit luxury I’m allowed when I get off the bus is this dank dark room. I know I’m a carrier, but I can’t believe they would label me as a member of a “sleeper cell.” It’s as though they think I was intending on being a biological weapon.

It’s the new form of suicide bomber, the extremists find a carrier, someone that doesn’t want to go to one of the camps, and they induce an outbreak and infect as many members as possible. These groups have found the best way to wage biological warfare, they don’t need labs, or special tools, all they need is one carrier. After every member of the group is infected they simply spend the day wandering around a city, maybe urinate in public, or cough in a department store. This is my life as a biological weapon. They keep me on reserve, until the time is right.

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Matt Hegdahl lives in the second coldest city in the United States. He has more degrees than a unicycle has wheels, and, like a unicycle in a motocross race, they are completely useless. He lives with his wife and two puppets.

Copyright Matt Hegdahl
Artwork Leonora Carrington

The Tree by Ray Fracalossy

The maple tree stood upon the hill.

Motionless, daunted, consumed in ambition, it remained certain that with sufficient effort it could uproot itself and walk away. "I am in need of change," it thought. "I will replant myself in the suburbs where I will make new friends, and become a home to creatures now unknown. I will spawn children and grandchildren, and when I eventually rot away, I shall be in the mist of a dense forest." The idea of looking proudly upon its numerous offspring made the mighty tree attempt a smile.

In the winter, he would become naked, and was unsure how trees in the suburbs concealed themselves from this embarrassment. Garments were obviously needed, and clothing implied the exchange of money.

Was there work for an ambitious tree? The post office? "That's steady employment, isn't it? But you have to be able to drive, which," thought the maple, "is a difficult thing to do for a giant such as myself." You can't drive with birds in the vehicle.

Perhaps the answer lay with the problem itself. Was there any possibility of making money by selling pictures of his wintered naked self online first, and securing clothing before jumping into his big move?

Men approached. The tree attempted to move, and found he was too securely rooted. Noises, blackness, unconsciousness. He awoke later in the form of a picnic table and chairs, on a deck also composed of his innards.

He had indeed found a new life in the suburbs.

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Ray Fracalossy is the author of Tale from the Vinegar Wasteland, and a frequent contributor to the New Absurdist whenever it is functional. All around good egg, not deviled in the least.

Copyright Ray Fracalossy
Artwork by Ruth Ruhnke

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

The Finding Smile by Shawn Misener

He was a smile. The rest of him was almost transparent, barely a glimmer of form, but his gaping grin shone so intensely that it provided a distraction from everything else missing.

My mother gave her all to convince him to be a politician. My sister begged on bleeding knees for him to give her head. I just needed somebody to help me find things.

I handed him the list of lost items. He quickly looked it over, then swallowed it whole with that magnificent, glowing mouth. “We'll look for your sense of humor first,” he said.

It took six days in the jungle until we finally had leads. He negotiated with birds so colorful they made crayons leap from cliffs. He threatened enormous snakes, and when they didn't cooperate he'd clench their jaws between his gleaming teeth and swing them around like weed whackers.

We finally stumbled upon the End of the Earth. A beautiful sight for sure, the red yolk of sun framing his levitating smile, bright upon brighter. Hovering closer, he whispered “Look in your pants. The secret to humor is nestled softly down there.”

So we began the frightful journey back home. By law I was required to go without my trousers or underwear. To refuse would invalidate the rediscovery of comedy. He took hold of my shaft and used it to point us toward the highway.

In this way he guided us out of the jungle and home to my wife, where I proceeded to make love to her with all kinds of sarcastic thrusts. Orgasmic laughter all around. “I'm sure glad you followed that smile,” she later sighed, sweat dripping from her chin to her clavicle.

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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 Picasso 

Kitten Invades Alaska!

Kitten was sighted in a Barnes & Noble in Fairbanks Alaska!  Special thanks to Sarah Shaw.

It won't be long until Kitten finds it way into coffee houses in Iowa (I mean, if they've got coffee there, I have no idea), preschools in Utah, churches in Missouri, houses of ill-repute in Wisconsin.  It's all the r(amp)age. 

Have we forgotten what R.A. Harris had to say about G. Arthur Brown's Kitten so soon?

"One part a nightmarish family saga, and one part a fantastic, surreal voyage of discovery for a kitten. It's a seriously fun mix of grotesque humour and sombre existential horror."

That it is, R.A. That it is. 

His Blind Friend Daniel by G. Arthur Brown

My blind friend Daniel claws his way in the corners, as if in search of food, but he is just vetting the tile work.  I shouldn’t leave it to him; he’s blind and vetting is what I’m paid to do.  But I’ve got a jelly donut.  I didn’t tell Daniel that I had anything good to eat and he’s not exactly a blood hound.  I take a big bite and my lips smack.

Daniel’s head shoots up.  “What was that?  Are you eating?”

“No, Daniel.  I’m blowing kisses to the ghosts,” I say as I dust the confectioner’s sugar from my chin, as if he might see it, finding me out.  “Place is full of them.”

“I can feel them, too.”  He slides his greasy, gray finger tips along the grout.   An ecstatic expression squirms on his face, his hard-boiled egg eyes locked firmly on me.  “I know I am inside a ghost when I feel suddenly cooled, like an AC unit just kicked on. But it is also like you’ve been immersed in gelatin of some type.  You get the fear, like you’re going to drown.  But it happens so fast that you don’t have time to panic.  Sometimes, if you are lucky, they leave you a little bit wet.” 

“I know I am inside a ghost,” I kid him, “when I am at the nursing home.”

He nods gravely, pensively.  “Their tiles need much work.”  He brings a filthy pinky to his nose and sniffs. “A dead person ate fenugreek here.”  He utters this in such a way that I have no doubt he is correct.

It is then that I notice that the jelly is not jelly at all. It is a green fenugreek custard.  I can taste it now. It was never even sweet.  “Do old people get pudding?” I ask.

“Yes, of course they do. You know that.” He runs his fingers along the edges of the sheets, tucking me in.  It’s comforting to hear his voice.  It is so dark and cold here.

“Tell me a story.”

“You know all the stories. You invented the stories.”

“Tell me one that I have forgotten.”

He clucks his tongue.  “Do you remember the story about your blind friend Daniel?”

I shake my head.

He clears his throat. I imagine what his face must look like while he composes himself. He begins, “Your blind friend Daniel claws his way in the corners, as if in search of food, but he is just vetting the tile work.”

Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown
Artwork Remedios Varo

Love is a Disease by Sean Tigert

Gabe was left alone in his crib a lot while mom and dad were busy; that’s when his addiction started.  A needle in his arm or a bottle of pills hidden under his princess blankie—a hand me down from sis since mom and dad couldn’t afford new shit all the time.  Just shoot or swallow and those hugs came floating back, all warm all over.  The sun setting through the window in his bedroom prison was angelic as the loving eyes of mom and dad with his chemicals.

        When sis got all the toys and attention ‘cause dad was never taught how to love anything that didn’t have a vagina, Gabe forgave dad and took some pills that felt like dad holding his hand.  As sis was getting ready for school and mom and dad spent less and less time with Gabe, Gabe spent more and more time with his parents in a bottle and syringe.

        As Gabe grew, he saw how mom and dad took pills too, and he knew, they must also miss their moms and dads.  Gabe met doctors who prescribed him pills that numbed his emotions for when Gabe was alone, at school, work, but usually it wasn’t explained to him what the doctors’ pills should do, and Gabe would experiment until mom and dad were there, helping him up.  He had tried alcohol, but it always left him feeling like crap.  Dad was never a big drinker either.

One day, there was a knock on Gabe’s apartment door, he lay in bed and watched those sunset rays coming through, remembering mom and dad, as his girlfriend was sweet enough to answer it.  There was a loud banging sound. His girlfriend screamed.  Gabe lived in a bad neighborhood and he feared the worst; he grabbed his gun and ran to help his girlfriend.  The men in Kevlar were waiting for any sort of movement; four rounds from a military surplus MP5 tore through Gabe’s face and chest as he came out of his bedroom.          

Mom and dad buried their baby and wished it were them instead.  Mom and dad knew it could have been them, and when no one was looking, mom and dad took pills that brought their baby back.

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When not writing, drawing, or changing diapers, Sean Tigert gathers material for new creative projects by either escaping humans or stalking them.

Copyright 2013 Sean Tigert
Artwork by Juan Gris