Contributor: Amin Hosseinioun

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It was a hole in a long row of muddy walls; with a short roof and not a single word on its window. It seemed like the shop was hiding. A green eyed black cat was licking her kitty beside the shop. In front of it a horde of berries were hanging from their tree and enjoying shadows of its wide leaves, which cast a shadow on the shop. This was the first berry tree Man has ever seen with no berries under it. He was here after an anti-sneeze herb, farther from Ghanat-Abad[a neighborhood in Tehran] mosque, near the old high school, and past a few broken arcs.
The window was dark and dirty, and the shop itself was filled with bags of herbs. Man pulled his tired feet to the shop, took off his gray coat and laid it on his left shoulder, pushed the glass door and stepped in.
There was neither a bell nor a welcome. There was not a living soul except a red beak crow sitting silent on a bar, beside the jars filled with snakes and bats and frogs. "Hello, anyone here?" Man said, long and loud. The crow was staring at him without a blink. And then those sneezes came back again, these damn sneezes came to him each and every hour hardening the breathing, wetting his eyes, making his everything sour. He put his hand on his knee. Tear drops were in his eyes, his throat was hurt and he wished to die, and the sneezing stopped as suddenly as before.
"It`s nothing, I`m going to fix it now" a young voice said. Man raised his head and saw an old man behind the counter. "You mean you can stop the sneezing?" Man said and the old man smiled and his beard gave way to his yellow teeth. Man couldn't see the crow anymore. The old man opened a jar and a green smoke floated playfully in the air, he grabbed it with a spoon and put it in a glass, then shattered a little dried herb on it and recited a verse and handed it to the man: "Gulp and get fine". Man was in doubt, he was shocked. The old man said: "Grab it Ebi , we don't poison people here."
Man stepped back a step: "How do you know my name?"
The old man put the glass down and laughed: "I call all strangers Ebi, don't be insulted Sir, but you are under a spell and you are lucky it is a simple one, gulp and get fine!"
Ebi wanted to run away, but his throat was itchy again and a wave was climbing down his nose, those sneezes again! He jumped forward and grabbed the glass and gulped it at once with closed eyes and everything was gone! It was like the potion built a breaker in his nose.
The old man said: "be my guest son, but if you want to pay, it is 5 grand."
Ebi was shocked:"5 grand? For one glass?"
"It is anti-spell, not jam." The old man came back.

It was no place to hesitate. Ebi paid and got out. He moved down the street where he had parked his car. The berry tree still had its shadow on the shop.


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I am a published writer in Farsi, in Iran, I have published two Gothic novellas with my brother and many essays. there are two more stories by me on Linguistic Erosion, and I am trying to experience more in English writing.

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Author: Amin Hosseinioun

Contributor: Mark Slade

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AUG-27-19---

Mrs. Beasley rented me a grand room containing a lumpy bed and moth eaten blankets. The room is the same size as the room I was given by the bastards that said I was looney. That will be a word I'll not use often with my own lips, as it is a very dirty word.

Mrs. Beasley is a lovey large woman just ripe for the picking. I lick my chapped lips every time I see her, and I see her often through the little hole I made in my bedroom wall. I always just catch her as she is finishing dressing or bathing her left side of her body. What were the chances mine and her bedrooms were next door. Just ripe for picking.

Mrs. Beasley tells a tale of a missing husband at a young age. A right fool if you ask me. She said Father and husband didn't get along. The husband went missing a few months after they were married, never to turn up again. So, the only way to make ends meet was to rent rooms.

There are other guests in Mrs. Beasley's house. A large house her Father used to own. As she said, her Father was a renowned Surgeon and respected scholar in the medical field. What Mrs. Beasley don't know is what is stored in the basement of the house. Something I stumbled on when I was looking to get rid of that nasty cat of hers I was experimenting with sassafras and arsenic.

I rather felt in awe of a master, it seems. Pure genius, the bastard was. I accidentally touched a lever of some sort and the wall of the cellar moved. It opened up to a new dark and dank room. What I saw was completely and utterly beautiful.

It was about twelve of these wonderful human sculptures. Several people with animal body parts. One woman had the legs of a goat. A man had the head of a deer, antlers and all! But my favorite to have been the man split in half, sewn together with the right side of a woman.

I wonder what Mrs. Beasley would think if she ever stumbled upon her Father's passionate art?
(2)

AUG-28-19---

Living in Mrs. Beasley's house provides wonderful opportunities. The other guests stay to themselves mostly. Except Marx. He is a snotty little man with big world ideas. I don't agree with any of them. I don't believe in a class war. It would interfere with my own activities. He is a very nosy individual. Every time I open my door he seems to be standing in the halls, listening. At the dinner table he is almost always writing in his little book.

Mrs. Beasley seems very much in awe of this stupid little man. She laughs at his dense jokes. Interested in every word he utters.

I'm sorry Mrs. Beasley, I can not have competition for your affections.

Mrs. Beasley would be upset if she knew what I did. I let myself into Marx room. That's the very reason I keep mine locked. It was cold and smelled of soiled linen. His room was littered with books, none of which were on a shelf. Books are a waste of time, unless you read Sherlock Holmes. Murder is always entertaining. What I saw next made me go red.

Marx had his own little hole to Mrs. Beasley's room.

Oh, yes. It was time for him to make his exit.

I waited until nine, which is when Marx goes out to the pub. I donned my costume of black pork pie hat, black scarf wrapped around the lower part of my face; and of course my black goat hair coat. I didn't want anyone to recognize me. I slipped my pearl handled knife in my coat pocket. I was ready for the newspapers to print their next BLACK RIPPER story.

I followed Marx down a street past the banks and shops. It seemed we traveled far to reach a pub. That was when I realized he was leading me on a wild goose chase. We ended up at a bridge. He stopped, looked over, dropped a few books over the edge into the river below.

What was his game?

“Oh, Mrs. Beasley....you'll never know how much I love you....”

Then the bugger jumped!

I turned to make sure no one heard his screams as he leaped to his death. I was dumbfounded. What the hell? I heard police whistles. Heels on the cobblestone. I did the only thing I could do. I ran.

I ran all the way to Mrs. Beasley's home. I went to my room and stayed to myself the rest of the night. I heard Mrs. Beasley rummaging in her room. I couldn't resist. I removed the painting of Queen Victoria. Through my little hole I watched Mrs. Beasley dress for bed.

Just ripe for the picking.

There was a knock on her door. She opened it and let a large brutish man inside. I believe he fixes things around the house. They kissed. She took him by the hand to her bed.

“It worked,” The man said. “Those love letters to Marx....then the kiss off letter.”

“He gave me the envelope of the rest of his money he earned from the publishers. I found it slipped under my door earlier. The fool!”

I couldn't resist watching them. I hate him, the large man. But Mrs. Beasley . What luck. A woman after my own heart, the murderous bitch.
(3)

Sept-24-19----

Mrs. Beasley's guests have been disappearing. It has come to the day that I am the last of guests. I have my suspicions. Her helper around the house, a large burly man, has been carrying a trunk down to the basement and in the house again.

I was curious. I headed back down the basement. I saw the wall to the hidden room was open. Mrs. Beasley's helper was with her Father's masterful sculptures. He had the trunk open and was extracting various body parts from that moldy velvety box. I knew his intention right then. He was the one carrying on the legacy of Mrs. Beasley's Father.

I saw my chance when a hacksaw and a hammer appeared beside the man.

*********************************

When I was done with Mrs. Beasley's helper, I headed to my room to clean the blood from my hands and clothes. Mrs. Beasley stopped at my room. She saw the blood and smiled at me. She took hold of my shirt, pushed me against the wall, kissed me hard. I moved my hand to her left breast, squeezed. I moved my hand over to her right breast, gave it a squeeze.

It felt strange.

Nothing was there. No soft pillow to lay my head upon. Her night dress fell to her feet revealing her naked body to God and me. At first I was horrified. Then aroused.

It seems her Father not only experimented with the dead for his sculptures, but also the living. The right side of her was man's chest. And in between her her legs was not only her womb, but a dried up dead penis.

“Take me as I am,” Mrs. Beasley said.

I did. And another chapter in my life has begun.


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I have appeared in Burial day, Blood moon rising, and Weirdyear. I live in Williamsburg, VA with my wife and daughter.

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Author: Mark Slade

Contributor: Miles Gough

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I thought I might have offended the Grand Fiend. It was about the food. He was eating his old stand-by, Pickled Presbyterian's Feet and I had a thin crust pizza with extra cheese and garlic. I said with a mouthful of pizza, “Oh no, I can’t believe I’m eating this in front of you. I am so sorry.”

The Grand Fiend was his usual magnanimous self. “I will take your apology, for I am sure that you did something that deserves forgiveness, but I am baffled why your food would cause you to prostrate yourself so.”

I said, “The garlic. The extra garlic. I know you’re not a vampire, but I don’t know how if it affects you and I should have asked.”

The Grand Fiend leaned back, “And how does garlic affect the mighty vampire?”

I knew I was being set up for the fool, but I couldn’t stop. “Uhm. Well it’s anathema to them. They can’t be in the same room as someone who has garlic.”

“It is so good that the old propaganda still has its power. I am relieved that even you, one who is learning the ways of the nether beings, falls for it. Garlic, to ward off vampires. Isn’t that the quaintest thing.”

I put my pizza slice down. “It’s propaganda? So it does nothing to vampires?”

“Of course it does something to vampires, just the same as you. It makes them hungry.” He noticed my confusion and took a breath. “Let me ask you this. Who do you think first said that garlic was protection against vampires?”

He didn’t let me think of an answer before he shouted out, “Vampires. Vampires did it. Now, you ordered your pizza with extra garlic, because you love the taste of it. Vampires love their food, also spiced the same way. They like to bite into flesh that has the odor of garlic. So how do they make sure their meals are well-seasoned? Why eat people who wear garlands of garlic around their necks. How do you get the livestock to wear such ungainly necklaces? Why, spread the rumor that garlic will keep the creatures at bay. It’s brilliant marketing. The humans feel more secure, and the vampires get tastier feasts.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “So all vampires love garlic that much?”

“Oh no, please don’t let me mislead you. They just don’t want bland food. Who does? There is a reason the folklore mentions a variety of herbs used to ward off vampires, because different vampires have different preferences. Some vampires spread the rumor that rosemary kept the bloodsuckers off, but they did that only because that was their favorite herb. You’ve heard of rosemary chicken? This is rosemary peasant.

“I know of one vampire that traveled through the countryside spreading different pieces of advice to each of the villages he entered. One village, he told them to use a poultice of thyme and sage, another was told to use garlic and another still to bathe in water and rosehips. He did this because on the evenings he wanted a garlicky dinner, he hunted in that village. If he wanted tender sweet meat, he preyed upon the village of the rosehips. The whole countryside was his spice rack.

“That’s the way to be. To create a variety of choices so that you will never be bored. If you have the same thing every day, dressed in the same manner, then you are nothing but old clothes and over boiled roasts. Live life with some fire, some taste.”

I felt excited about what he said, but I didn’t want anymore pizza. The Grand Fiend must have thought similarly, because he looked at the Presbyterian Feet he was gnawing on and sighed. “Yes, one must not be stuck in a rut. Let’s have a merry hunt. Shall we partake in a few pints of ice cream?”

And that is what we did. I got Rocky Road, and the Grand Fiend splurged on a large tub of Butter Blood-Clot Ripple.


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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: Robin Wyatt Dunn

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I believe in the future.  I believe in the future.  I believe I do good for my children’s future, come what may to this old Rome of ours, I believe in the Information State.

“What’s that, Dad?”

“That, daughter, is Yankee Stadium.”

I am only a product of the Enlightenment;  so are you.  Knowledge ceased to be occult back around 1700;  that which God had hidden became only temporarily obscured, awaiting the righteous tools of men.

“Who is that, Daddy?”

“That’s who we’re looking for, honey.”

A pretty blonde.

“She’s pretty, Daddy.”

“Yes, she is, honey.  And she’s bad.”

“She’s bad?”

I see if we can get a third confirmation on the iris scan:  Interpol comes through at last;  they only have half our processor chains.

“Yes, she is, honey.  Very bad.”

Another home grown terrorist, reading Marx, Engels and Khalil Gibran in paper format, dropping off the grid for extralegal periods of time, and returning to us changed, made cancerous, filled with knowledge that has no place in civilian minds.

I press a key and she is bound for Kiev on a windowless night flight:  if she does get out of there, it will be as a corpse.

“You see, honey, I can make people disappear.”

- -

Eight years later

History is so funny.  What is sweeter than forgetting, once you reach a certain age?  

There’s always another Holocaust.  We need it, child.  We like the blood on our hands.  It fulfills some unspeakable desire.  I, who knew your eye color and your DNA and your loves and handwriting curves, I, who knew which way your dick slanted, I who knew your face in a thousand different angles, I have finally fucked myself.

And you will too, goddamn you.  What are you being trained to expect?  What do you really hope to get out of this?  You goddamned fool.  Go ahead, read.  Read, goddamn you.  

In the beginning was the whirl.  The whirl of your desire.  Entertainment.

Entertainment, child.  Entertainment, dear heart.  Entertainment, rube.  Suck that pallor off your face, reader.

Entertainment:  a containment field!  The splendor of a child’s sigh!  The curve of her thigh!  The ecstasy of these long nights!  Have you never stood on stage and felt that ancient and abiding need out there past the lights?  

Stories don’t have beginnings, middles and ends, you see.  You think Aristotle was some god?  You think he was like Jesus, shooting fire from his fingertips?  

No, stories just have necessary and unnecessary parts.  My daughter is dead, you see, I killed her.  Not with my own hands, you understand.  I didn’t do enough for her.  

I was a biometric scanner.  I was innocent enough to be surprised that the bosses were granted a free pass.  They didn’t need to be fit into the databases.

And so I found myself here in this garbage alley.  Happier, in a way, though the happiness of sleeping outdoors in a city is the strangest thing.  You’re raw, you know, rubbed down hard, and every little voice and every little breeze fills you to the brim with life, fit to burst, you can hardly take it.  It’s why we take to talking to ourselves out here.

My daughter, what happened to her?  I don’t know, to tell you the truth.  I assume she’s dead by now.  Dead to me, certainly.

It was such a nice simple story, you know?  An empire of surveillance, and an end to violence.  An end to fear.  And we all go to bed with smiles on our faces.

You know what I mean:  see how nice and Aristotelian it is?  Step 1:  identify the problem.  Step 2:  brainstorm solutions and settle on the favorite solution.  Step 3:  implement the solution.  

Why do you always need it so nice and simple?  More important, why did I?

I suppose I have to tell you this part:  you’re like me, I know.  We think simplicity has the ring of truth, that it reveals the structure of our lives, but the truth is it usually conceals.  It covers up inconvenient details;  it stifles debate.  In a fight-or-flight live-or-die world, subtlety and complexity become indulgences, rarely afforded.  

But that isn’t all of it, is it?  You want to be justified.  It isn’t enough that your desire for the predigested and the canonical reflects some ancient neurochemical habits;  you want to make aesthetic claims, like Aristotle, moral claims, even.  If it bleeds, it leads.  Elect the taller man.  If it doesn’t make sense in the first five seconds, delete it.  Why worry your pretty little head over entertainment?  You paid good money for it.

My job, as a kind of government storyteller, a weaver of details, was to coat you in the veneer of safety like a good Hallmark card, to sing you a little lullaby.  

Aren’t you better than that?  Can’t you be better than that?

Do you always insist that the good guy wear the white hat, and the villain the black?  Must I give you only the same images and sounds you’ve encountered a dozen times before, superficially rearranged?  

You are dying you see;  me, I was reborn.  

Listen, child, it’s not so hard.  It’s about attention.  What is the nature of attention?  When you attend?  When you open wide your eyes?  Wonder, or affliction?  If you wait, the gnome and the angel return, you see, the random curves into order, and it is an order that you make, you see, child, it is made together.  And that is what we forget always.  Always we forget it because creation, like birth, is the most painful.  To bring into being.  That which is always easiest as a child becomes so hard later.

Let me remind you:  when your Daddy told you you could be whoever you wanted, he wasn’t lying.

Who do you want us to be now?  And ask yourself:  how did I get this transmission to you?

Your cursor is blinking.    

- - -
Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park. He is 33 years old.

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Author: Robin Wyatt Dunn

Contributor: Caitlin Hoffman

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There are times one must go mad. If not to protect, then to ascend. If not to ascend, then to revert.
We were all mad in our mothers’ bellies, just as they were mad in their own. Were we all to be sucked back up into the vaginas of our predecessors, everyone would agree with me.
Cuts must occur, if only to tie oneself back to society. The same goes for abuse and bloodshed, poetry and.
Dream-drenched graveyards.


- - -
Caitlin writes books nobody reads. She's bad at writing bios.

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Author: Caitlin Hoffman

Contributor: Brent Rankin

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Hey, like I was sitting at this bus stop, waiting for the Number Seven, when Jesus Christ sat down beside me and asked for a cigarette. I only had a doobie. Of course I gave it to him. I mean, the Son of God and all that. How do you say no?

He was wearing flip-flop sandals, worn out jeans, and a teeshirt with a majajuana leaf silkscreened on the front. He had the long hair, beard, and all.

“Are you…?”

“Yeah, yeah. Yeah,” he said. The questioned annoyed him. “What? You think I’m Windall Wilke?”

“Who’s Windall Wilke?”

“I don’t know. I just like the sound of the name. Kinda flows.”

He fired up the smoke, sucked a long drag, exhaled, and sighed. “Damn, that’s good,” he said and then, “Bet you got a few questions, uh?” He sucked in more smoke.

“I guess. Are you really Him?”

“What? Flowing white robes, halo? Scabby hands and feet? That is so yesterday, man.” He sucked on the roach and blew the smoke out of his nose.

Before I could asked the Savior a question, He said, “I’m no magical Genie. I don’t grant wishes. I can’t change the past or the future, if there ever was one. Dad saw to that,” he sucked on the doobie, “Didn’t know Moses. And get over this,” as he blew the smoke out, “I never slept with Mary! Where do you dudes come up with this crap?”

“I wasn’t going to ask that,” I said.

“All right, then,” he finished the last suck on the roach and dropped it. He crushed it under his foot. He said, “Hey, I did bring that old man back from the dead. Cool! Turned water into wine…very cool.”

I’ll go along. “Okay,” I said, “when will the world end?” I shoved my tongue into my cheek.

He ground the roach deeper into the concrete and shrugged, “Yeah. Funny you would ask that. In a few hours.”

“What? Are you for real?”

“Ain’t my fault,” Jesus said. “Hey, you people forgot about me. Everything I did, I did for you guys. Mankind. No one cares anymore. So the old Man sent me here to let you know. It’s over, man. Fire from the sky, dude…fire.”

“Like in the Bible.” This guy’s a nut case.

“I didn’t write that! Dad did. And, yeah, man. Kapoof!!” He held up his fingers and wiggled them, “Fire, baby. Just letting you know.” Then he said, “Well, gotta go now. Don’t care to be around for the bar-be-que. You know what I mean?” H winked at me, stood up, and said, “Hey, thanks for the smoke.” He walked away.

I sucked my tongue out of my cheek and when I looked, Jesus was gone. And I missed my bus.

Takes all kinds. At least he wasn’t parading a sign: “The End is Near.” Or, standing on a soapbox.

Yes, sir. It takes all kinds. You know, Windell Wilke does roll of the tongue, sort of.

Hey, do those clouds look funny to you?


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Having published the e-novella "The fisher man" on Amazon and Booktango, I'm experimenting with flash fiction. I'm finding it exciting. So much to say so briefly.

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Author: Brent Rankin

Contributor: Sean Crose

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Back in '95 I was really into the postimpressionists. Van Gogh and Gauguin were my favorites. I'd watch the Altman film, Vincent and Theo late at night by myself in my parent's den while getting loaded on beer, taking time every few minutes to step out on the back porch to smoke a cigarette and reflect. Those were the times. Art was important. Life was a mysterious, golden gift from God.
I had a girlfriend at the time named Gretchen who lived up in Western Massachusetts, by the Vermont border. On the weekends I'd ride up the to see her and on the ride back home I'd check out the fields and hills around the areas of Sunderland and Amherst and marvel at the colors. Everything looked almost purple or blush – just like in the Gauguin paintings of Tahiti.
I'm not sure whether the fields and hills really looked that way or I just wanted them to. After all, the fields and hills of Tahiti probably didn't look much like Gauguin had painted them. To the post impressionists, perception was everything and I was following their lead, perceiving life as I wished it to be rather than as it really was.
Perhaps that's why I resented the fact that I lived in Waterbury so much. It was hard to perceive life in Waterbury being anything other than what it was. There were no great natural scenes that Gauguin or van Gogh would ever be interested in.
Also, it's hard to perceive yourself as a starving artist when you're trapped working part time in a busy supermarket. Gauguin and van Gogh would never work in a place like that. They would literally starve first.
As time went on I began to realize I really wasn't much like van Gogh or Gauguin. They were the real thing, starving artists. I was merely a writer who struggled under the burden of unconventional normality. To this day I'm not sure whether they had it right or I did.
I'm glad, though, that I'm not van Gogh or Gauguin. I'm not going to cut my ear off, after all, and there's no way I'm going to die from syphilis in a hut in the South Seas.


- - -
My name's Sean Crose. My writing has appeared in such publications as "Crack the Spine," "The Copperfield Review," Six Tales," "Fiction365," and "Breakwater." I live with my wife, Jen, and Cody, the world's greatest cat.

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Author: Sean Crose

Contributor: Mike Wiley

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My grandmother hated spiders. “Never turn your back on one that’s alive,” she said to me. “And not even when you think its dead.”

I’m not sure what they ever did to her.

Despite her warnings and condemnations, I grew up more or less indifferent towards the arachnid community. I guess you could say I even had one as a pet through my first year of college.

A tree-horned daddy long leg had made a home behind one of my stereo speakers. It didn’t bother me, and I didn’t bother it. The thing even seemed to like most of my music. The harder, the better. If I played Slayer or The Dillinger Escape Plan, it would come out from behind the speaker and do a little bobbing, swaying motion. Nothing fancy. It’s not like it was a goddamn tap dancer; just a spider. Though I think it really liked The Refused, because it would actually change colors when I played that. During the buildup to New Noise it would sort of tremble, weak at all eight knees. Then when the lyrics came (Can I scream? Yeah!) it would burst into a bright red, like a clown’s false nose, one leg pumping up like a fist. I would have said it was amazing, except that I had seen a leopard gecko do a similar trick a few years back.

It was still living there in the dorm room the day I moved out. On that day, as I was packing, its body turned blue.

That part of the story took place on the west coast of the United States of America. About six years later, I found myself living on the east coast. Brooklyn, as it were. I had a career, a wife, and had more or less forgotten about Dave (Dave is what I had named the spider, by the way). Only occasionally during those dull cocktail conversations where one is pressured to produce a story that makes you appear interesting did Dave ever make an appearance in spirit.

Well, one night I came home after heavy drinking and a ton of head banging to find my wife, Emily, duct-taped to a chair in the living room. Her mouth was gagged with a gym sock and she had a black eye. The Refused was playing on a stereo in the bedroom. I knew right away that I hadn’t stumbled into a kinky love affair because the men my wife typically had affairs with all listened to pansy music.

I don’t know how he did it, but Dave had found me and he wasn’t looking to make friends.

Tears streamed down Emily’s face. Because she couldn’t talk, she gestured wildly with her eyes, indicating the bedroom door, which was neither closed nor open. It was ajar.

I crept up to the bedroom door. A red light emanated from the room that glowed like camp-fire coals. Suddenly, a large shadow passed before the open space and the light went out. I kicked open the door and immediately received a blow to the face. I fell on my back. Just like that, Dave was on top of me, spider fangs hovering inches above my face. A drop of frothy venom fell from one of the fangs and caught my ear. It smoked and burned like acid. The smell was horrible.

Normally I can hold my own in a fight, but you’l have to give me some credit here. Dave had one arm or leg for each one of my limbs, plus four extra. You try taking on the Lord Vishnu in hand-to-hand combat.

“What do you want?” I screamed.

“You left me and have taken up with this whore!” Dave said. Each of his four free arms delivering devastating blows to my face and torso. It was a flurry of hairy, glowing red arms and legs.

“Dave! Please stop!” I begged.

“Stop calling me ‘Dave’!” it said. “My name is Margaret and I love you. You left me behind like so much trash all those years ago.”

I stopped fighting.

Turns out ‘Dave’ was a female the whole time. And she had the hots for me. As soon as I found out the truth, I had a break down. I started sobbing.

Margaret gave up the fight too. Her body turned from red back to it normal, doo doo brown color and she fell onto her back by my side. I couldn’t stop crying.

“I love you too, Margaret!” I blubbered. We were both crying.

Just then, I heard a slow creaking sound as my wife tipped her chair over onto the spider, crushing it to death. The gag fell from her mouth.

“What is wrong with you?” she said. “That spider just invaded our home and beat the crap out of both of us. Untie me from this chair so I can leave you.”

So, to answer your question, that’s pretty much how I ended up homeless and begging for spare change outside this here liquor store. Now let me ask you a question. You gonna finish that sandwich?


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Mike Wiley is an active author and musician residing in Brooklyn, NY. He can be reached at rosebombsexplode.com.

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Author: Mike Wiley

Contributor: Mike Putnam

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The Taylor Triplets. The unvanquished juniors at our public ivy. Blonde, from one of the richer suburbs outside of Columbus with an Irish city's name. We had an entry for them, but it was a blank page once clicked. A member of ours had been on the case of the dyed-brown-one since fall of their sophomore year to no avail. Glasses-clad had a boyfriend going to OSU from another one of the 270 loop suburbs, or so we had heard. Intel was understandably weak due to the majority of the female student body knowing about our database. Someone once tried to tag all three of them under the TBSD (Taken But Still Down) category but it was removed from their page the next day after more than a thousand down-votes and hundreds of heated comments. Many of those comments about how, regardless of the validity of the statement, you couldn't tag three people to a lifestyle choice one of them allegedly practiced. That was just laziness, which few stood for in our community. So the hunt continued, for merely a scrap of credible information on any of them. Was one into DP? Or another into group scenarios? What about being filmed? Were they adventurous with their lovemaking? Did they have a strong stand on the whereabouts of the orgasms' final location? What semesters (and/or seasons) were they most active? There were currently two hundred and fifty-six possible tags that could be attached to a girl (or girls), giving perspective suitors an idea of what they could potentially try. No one had even posted drink advice or music interests for any of them. They were brick walls even at their drunkest and none left without all being accounted for. Much sleep and even more money had been lost trying to crack the code of the Triplets. Unfortunately, the entry between Rebecca Tanner and Jessica Turner was a total joke to all looking for advice.


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Mike Putnam is a writer currently living in Ohio. He considers himself a curious spirit.

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Author: Mike Putnam

Contributor: Nicole St.Onge

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I sat outside the house, as I had been for several days now, reminiscing the time that I had spent silently hiding among the grass in a sprawling field. I remembered watching as they came, creatures in pairs and groups, sauntering along and stopping occasionally to pick up and observe my companions with eager eyes. If one was not satisfactory, he would be dropped back onto the ground carelessly, and the creatures would continue on, leaving us glad that we had survived another day. After a good time of evading the eye of the creatures and hoping that I wouldn’t be the one to be taken next, it was to my dismay that I was selected by a group of takers.

Upon my arrival to their small dwelling, I was set on a table beside a few of my new acquaintances. We were terrified and curious as to what our fates would be, and we didn’t have to wait long before we found out. The young lad on my right was chosen as the creatures’ first sacrifice, and the rest of us were forced to watch in horror as the proceedings ensued. A knife shifted into our view, and we were shocked as one of the creatures dug the blade crudely into the top of our poor friend’s head and began to cut around its perimeter. After the larger creature had separated one part from the bottom, several of its smaller offspring dug in, tearing out his innards and dropping them into a bowl with a sickening splat. Following the gutting of our poor companion, we found ourselves looking on and holding our breath as the larger creature stepped in once again, this time slicing a grotesque image into his front side as the younger ones cheered in sick excitement.

I watched as the horror continued on each time until finally, it was my turn to endure the damage. I had heard of these acts of insidious destruction before and had nightmares about the subject; families being separated, children and their parents being forced to stomach the inevitable torture that would occur, all the while knowing that they would never see their loved ones again. I never once thought it would happen to me; I was so young-I didn’t deserve to have my once peaceful life in that field end in such a gruesome and untimely way!
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I woke up in a daze and eventually became aware of the steady warmth that was burning inside me. I felt no pain, just the brisk wind of the fall that I had come to know and love on so many autumn nights. Then I heard voices emerge from several of the small creatures as they walked down a path beside their fellow traveler;

"Come on, Dad! Hurry up!"

"It’s time to go trick-or-treating!"

"The other kids will love our jack-o-lanterns when they come!"


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Author: Nicole St.Onge