The Wish Thief

Contributor: Candy Caradoc

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The wishing well was situated, oddly, on the terrace outside the Café Voile. A shiny, gold and ivory, opulent-bordering-on-flashy attraction currently glittering in the moonlight. Also visible from the outside: crystal-clear windows (more glass than brick was that wall, and therefore impractical and wrong, as far as he was concerned), white tables with fancy chairs made of swirly-patterned metal, and the large, cursive lettering of the name above the main door. It’s all a rich-cunt’s fantasyland, he thought, what do they need a wishing well for, anyway?

He had stolen things in the past. Only minor things and only when he was in need. Apart from those incidents of mindless shoplifting in his school years, but which everyone grows out of and hardly count, he supposed. The issue was, he now believed, who you stole from.
So when he’d received an unexpected medical bill, overdue rent notice and extortionary car mechanic’s invoice all in the space of a week, he’d had a good hard think about where he could take some money without too much risk or too much damage to his conscience. And he had thought of the ridiculous wishing well outside that poncy café.

He’d only ever seen it from a distance. He couldn’t think what it could possibly have been if not a wishing well. And yes, sure enough, the cylindrical brickwork was half-filled with water and there were gold and silver coins, dully catching the light, at the bottom.

He had decided from the first that the easiest way to go about it would be to climb in, as long as it wasn’t too deep (it wasn’t) and he was prepared: he climbed in with his waterproof draw-string bag and, water level comfortably below the tops of his galoshes, got to work.

The idea popped into his head that some would accuse him of stealing other people’s hopes and dreams. His thoughts immediately addressed that issue, as though challenged (he had nothing better to occupy his mind, anyway). Firstly, he thought, these people are living every dream I ever dared to have, and then some. Secondly, who can really sum up their life’s aspirations in the flip of a coin? And, further to that, people rarely know what will actually make them happy. And finally, no one who spends about ten bucks on a slice of cake should be allowed to purchase their heart’s desire for a lousy fucking coin. Mere shrapnel cluttering up their designer purses. Dead weight next to their cheque books.

What about the innocent kiddies – is that what they would ask? Rich kids have it all and don’t even know what to do with it yet. Their problem, if anything, is having too much. Not to mention the irresponsibility of teaching susceptible minds to rely on fantasy. Bad enough that rich kids have the idea that they can sponge off their parents. Now they can sponge off the powers of a magical water-holder, too?

He was taking these coins, but he was giving something back: giving everyone a wakeup call. You want a castle? Get building. Want to be famous? Get your ass to an audition, and, preferably, hire an agent. And for God’s sake get some talent. And if you want to donate to the needy then by all means toss your coins away in some ridiculous, childish ritual meant to stuff further riches into your already glutted lives.

He’d finished – bag was damn heavy, too. These people liked a wish.

He climbed out and moved away from the empty well – a wishing well with no wishes to fulfil. He suddenly had the comical thought that a wishing well with no wishes on its “to-do” list may be so desperate for a purpose that it could actually grant a wish if someone would just give it a go – that even a supernatural fancy could get one thing right.

He stopped, reached into his pocket and fished around amongst the screwed up paper and cigarette stubs and rubber bands and gum till he found the small coin. Then he meditated for a moment before tossing the coin into the well.

He snorted sardonically at his own ridiculousness and walked away.

Well, fuck it, he thought. We all have a job to do, don’t we?


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Candy Caradoc lives in Melbourne, Australia. Last year she completed a thesis on uncanny representations of the effects of narcissistic parenting in Hoffmann’s The Sandman and Aronofsky’s film Black Swan. One of her stories, about a woman in love with a straw man, appears in Dog Horn Publishing’s Women Writing the Weird.
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The Microcephal

Contributor: Joseph Carfagno

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We sat on the couch crammed so tightly our legs were touching, the popcorn was on the table in front of us, we didn’t touch it, our favorite show was on, live from Paris, we saw it on tape delay, each week a new remarkable guest. The host, prone to logorrhea, strode to the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very special show for you tonight. We’ll be talking to the smartest man in the world.”
The guest came on, he was thin, he wore a brown suit, he was a little shorter than medium height though that was probably due to the extraordinary smallness of his head, about two-thirds the size of an ordinary adult male’s. This head, in its mid-forties, had reached an advanced state of baldness, due, we conjectured, to the extraordinary brainpower it contained. Seated, he looked like a miniature. The host showed a short video clip that explained the origin of the guest’s intelligence. The usual authority provided the voiceover:
“Many people speak of synapses firing when they are engaged in profound or insightful thought. Though” – we were relieved didn’t say while – “it is true that sparks traverse our synapses when we think, we must still acknowledge the source and sustaining force of those thoughts. All thinking originates in the dendrites. By shrinking the gap between the dendrites, reducing the synapses to near nullity, thought becomes both more profound and quicker. Our guest became the smartest man in the world, a man who thinks as deeply as the Buddha and faster than any game show champion, by so compressing his synapses that his head, in natural sympathy, compacted.”
There were photos of the guest growing up, riding his bike and playing soccer as a boy, finishing off bicycle kicks, playing parts in university dramas -- that’s when his head started to shrink, it seemed normal before then -- his first job at the lab, and so on. The video ended with the guest, his tiny head filling up the camera, screaming at the top of his vocal range, “Dendrites are what matter! Dendrites make you smarter! Dendrites are all!”
The show broke for commercials. We remained silent, no one touched the popcorn, we were all silently wondering what amazing things the small man would say. The host came back. “Of course tightly packing the dendrites is merely a prerequisite, a necessary but insufficient condition, for extreme intelligence. They must also be cleverly arranged and have the power to originate and appreciate the most brilliant thoughts.” He sat down next to the guest, sipped some cold water, leaned over to him, and asked his first question. We all leaned forward for the answer, at last we’ll be enlightened, the camera zoomed in on him, we saw the tiny vocal cords quiver.


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Joseph Carfagno was born in Brooklyn but lives in Connecticut.
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UFOs Over St. Cloud

Contributor: Tony Rauch

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I tell ya, they buzzed back and forth - high and low, wooshing in angles, cutting tight curves, zipping across the pale blue sky - bright silver disks, big and small - piercing puffy white clouds, thrusting overhead, zooming around and around, whipping in great wide arcs above the tree line - zipping up into the atmosphere, down over the yard, sailing back out to beyond, and then looping back again just like that - with shiny blueish silver glinting off the sun, streaking bright lines and flashes in the morning sky.

I gazed in awe, kneeling on the living room floor, my hands on the picture window. “Ah, Dad,” I finally collected myself to stammer, “Ya gotta see this stuff. . . Take a look. . . You’ll never believe what’s goin’ on out here. . .”

“Yeah, . .” my dad swallowed lazily. He was lying on the couch, reading the Saturday morning paper. “. . They been doin’ that all morning,” he rolled over, folding his arm over his face to hide his eyes from the crisp morning light. “I’m sure they’re just showin’ off. . . Just goofin’ on us,” he yawned. “Wake me if any of ‘em have the guts to actually land, or if one of ‘em knocks on the door or something.”


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Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.
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An Uncommon Home

Contributor: Troy Manning

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Tim’s house was fairly large and somewhat haunted. Most of the ghosts left him entirely alone and it is not good for a man to be that way. He would often try to talk to them but very seldom would he receive a reply.

Tim intentionally purchased a home near a cemetery so he might have company that he would neither have to provide for nor clean up after. The closest he ever came to that before were some sea monkeys he had as a child. They required nearly as little upkeep as the cactus he later was given as a housewarming gift.

The house in which Tim lived was a white North Carolinian manor. Just looking at it was enough to make one suspect it had ghosts. In the three years he lived there, Tim counted four of them. They were Kevin, Janet, Nancy, and Brad.

By far the tallest of the four was Nancy. She stretched to nearly eight feet. Tim knew this because he frequently heard the clinking of his chandelier that hung down six feet from a fourteen-foot ceiling. One could suppose she about stood five-feet tall and reached up the remaining distance with her arms, but Nancy didn’t have any arms. A pink sticker on her driver’s license said that any part of her body could be used in case of a medical emergency and those were the parts they used.

Coming in at just under five feet was Kevin. Compared with Nancy he was essentially a midget. Whenever he wanted to make the chandelier clink, he would have to use a stick or ask Nancy for assistance. Nancy was happy to oblige Kevin but when Tim would ask her to make some noise, the house would fall deathly silent.

Though only five foot three, Janet was easily the scariest of the bunch. Sometimes she would play with squeaky doors while at other times she would cause rotting flesh smells in different rooms of the house. Tim once asked her how she made those smells but she simply replied with a shrieking laughter that frightened him very much.

As for Brad, he was neither here nor there but sometimes everywhere all at once. Of the four, he was typically the most visible. Whereas the others were usually more effusive, Brad often took the form of a dense smoke. It brought Tim comfort, at times, to simply pull up a chair in the midst of him and reminisce about old flames.

Tim might never have known the names of his housemates if it weren’t for a friend that they all had in common. Cindy, one of those transient romances from Tim’s adolescence, reestablished contact with him through Facebook. He invited her to dinner and she, almost immediately, recognized the peculiar odor in the house as Janet. They often played together as children, Cindy explained, until Janet’s family moved away. Janet frequently suffered bouts of depression and burned her arms with cigarettes. As she seldom bathed, the sores would often putrify. Other than that, Janet was generally pleasant to be around.

Tim told her about his house’s other three inhabitants. By his descriptions, Cindy was able to put names to them as well. Recently, she had learned from a Tweet that Janet had been in a fatal car accident several years back while out on a double date. Janet, driving, lost control when Brad, her date, lit up a cigar then politely offered it to her. Nancy, an unusually tall girl who was keen on smaller guys, also succumbed in the crash, along with Kevin.

Though disturbed by this information, Tim took some comfort in knowing that those with whom he shared his home were practically his peers. Cindy soon joined the household through matrimony with Tim.

Becoming increasingly intrigued with things supernatural, Tim began attending a local seminary and was eventually ordained as an Episcopalian priest. While this made a few of the occupants uneasy, Father Tim assured them they could stay as long as there was no more smoking.


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Troy Manning is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California. He has recently been taking literature classes at Cal State University, San Marcos where his stories have been published in the creative writing program's Cat Ate My Chapbook, Fierce Notes 1 & 2, and the Spring & Fall, 2010 issues of Oh Cat.
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NINETEEN SECONDS

Contributor: Gil C. Schmidt

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A lifetime… in nineteen seconds…

Harry London slammed chest-first into the rubble, his helmet flipping up and banging against a chunk of concrete as ragged as a scream. Heavy machine-gun bullets chewed the air and dirt around him as he struggled to merge his flesh with the cover he so desperately had run to.

Across the charred and mangled street, strewn with several bodies in uniform and gray tweeds, Gunther Meis swung his heavy Vickers machine-gun in a deadly spray, trying to catch up to the British soldier racing desperately across the clearing to leap for cover. The Vickers was unwieldy, the narrow tripod legs slipping on the dusty floor inside the crumbled building that once housed a druggist and his medicines. Gunther cursed as the soldier skidded behind a concrete slab, the bullets spanging to fly off in unknown directions. He stopped firing to scan the street again, and the empty windows of the few remaining houses across the way. He checked the belt and grunted, satisfied he had ammo to fire a full minute’s burst if he cared to. He shifted his weight, peered quickly over the parapet and ducked as a bullet whinged off to his left.

Harry curled up, holding his helmet steady. The strap was broken. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bullets stopped. Rolling slightly left, he peeked at the machine-gun’s nest and saw the German soldier adjusting the gun’s position. Harry quickly sighted his rifle above the parapet and stopped breathing, heart pounding like a drum in his chest. Suddenly, the German raised his head and Harry pulled the trigger. The bullet went high and Harry cursed, rolling fast to his right to avoid the onslaught of bullets he knew was coming. He twitched a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin and held the explosive in his hand, silently counting One… Two…

Gunther turned his head away to avoid the dust coming off the wall and lunged back to pull the Vickers’ trigger. Bullets tore at the edge of the concrete slab, reducing it by chunks and cracks from vertical ledge to air. Gunther roared as the Vickers fired, slamming the gun to the left to rip at the top of the slab, then down, hoping to bounce the heavy bullets into the enemy. He saw a green-gray object fly up from behind the slab, arcing its way across the dead street towards him, and without thought, yanked the gun up and to the left to intercept the grenade--the grenade!--his roar becoming a mad shriek of rage.

Three… Four… Bullets shredded concrete to dust behind him, then walked like heavy rain across the slab to tear it above his head. The bullets then dropped to smash brutally into the slab’s lower edge and pieces of cement peppered Harry’s backs and legs. The slab was no cover there! Five… He threw the grenade in a stiff-armed toss, just like he was taught in Bingham, the thick-bodied metal apple curving up and away. Harry imagined it was flying straight and true, aimed with deadly precision at the machine gunner. He heard the bullets rise, then rise again as the hammering they caused became buzzing until suddenly a shriek of rage became--

An explosion. The grenade blew up as Gunther’s aim crossed its path. The shriek of rage rose to become…
Harry acted without thought, rolling to his feet as the explosion shredded the air everywhere, tucking his rifle and leaping to his feet, his mouth erupting into a shriek of rage that joined the German’s shriek…

Gunther saw the British soldier rise like a spectre, like a demon, from the blast’s cloud, rifle at the ready, shrieking just as he was…

Harry saw the German, heard him shrieking and pulled the trigger…

The shriek ended as the bullets tore through Gunther’s head and neck.

Nineteen seconds… A lifetime. In nineteen seconds.


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Gil C. Schmidt has been a regular submitter to Yesteryear Fiction since the early days when it was a daily magazine. His story "Initial Quantum State" is also featured in his book "Thirty More Stories." Get "Thirty Stories" and "Thirty More Stories" for free: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/gil-c-schmidt or http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/gilthejenius
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Hockey Night In Canada

Contributor: Tony Rauch

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I move to the south side. Mostly to try and get something done for once. Everyone I know hovers around the north side. When I lived up there, people used to stop by every now and then, which was nice, but eventually it impeded my progress. I couldn’t get anything done. I vowed to change, but eventually I had to move. I guess, for me, it just got to be too much of the same ol’ thing up there. I needed an infusion of newness.

Unfortunately, after some time on the south side things began to get lonely. Sure I was getting things done for a change, but it wasn’t the same. Life didn’t seem to have that spark and flash to it. Colors seemed to fade.

I thought about this a lot, finally deciding to get involved with things on the outside more, so I started a music club, that is a group of people who get together and listen and talk about music. I figured this was a good way to expose myself to professional appreciators like myself, to music I may not otherwise happen across, and to stay connected to the outside world.

Every other week we get together, each member bringing in a song or three that excites them, makes them happy or sad or sleepy or whatever. This week we’re meeting at Dade’s, but when I show up no one is listening to music. They’re all sitting around watching Hockey Night In Canada [a news show that reports on all things hockey, from the low juniors to the majors, including the European leagues, but basically the news is just an excuse to showcase the fights of the day, which are always dismissed by Donnie, the amiable host, merely as squabbles, spats, tiffs, and the like]. Now I like watching Hockey Night too, but it was time to appreciate music, not time to appreciate hockey fights.

“Why no music?” I ask, concerned, thinking maybe someone passed away.

“We can do that another time,” someone mentions absentmindedly, without taking their eyes from the television.

“But . . it’s music time. Not . . not hockey time. . .” I stammer to myself.

Everyone else sits there watching hockey highlights.

“I like watching hockey too,” I finally say, “But when are we going to rock-out? And with wild abandon?”

“Maybe later,” Ray Ray utters unconvincingly, stuck in a hockey highlight trance.

“Well, did they change the time for Hockey Night?” I look around, concerned.

“It’s on much earlier now,” someone stares at the television, swirls of color and action circling the screen.

I look around and sigh, “That’s disruptive.”

“Gotta roll with the changes, guy,” someone yawns, staring, mesmerized.

The TV hisses a bad apartment fizz: “. . inching Moose Jaw up two points in the Prince Albert Conference. And now onto Quebec City, where it seems Tommy Luc Quey is involved in a minor disagreement with Hamilton’s Pauly Pierre.” The announcer, a hearty little man named Donnie Cheety, who appears as if an effeminately dressed cartoon Leprechaun complete with compressed wiry frame, red face, bright orange hair, tidy beard, green plaid velvet suit (complete with little vest), and little pink bow tie. Donnie is, shall we say, the excitable type, but very serious and dour when it comes to the fisticuffs, as if each daily dust-up is somehow holding society together, as if poetic metaphors representing our own struggles, as if cathartic releases of our existential angst or ennui, as if mini operas dramatizing the human condition - man fighting himself, man fighting against his own limitations in an indifferent world, man struggling against the confinements of society - as if each tiff worked to excise our struggles of the day. The news of the day was just a frame to build tension and suspense, to put a context around the fighting, the existential release of incomprehensible forces.

So the action switches from Donnie in the studio to two grown men whaling away on one another, arms a blur, heads snapping, sweat flying, a tooth being dislodged. And the fight goes on for a while, a mechanical whirl of extremities in a pair of windmill blurs, Donnie muttering in a fatherly tone: “Now now boys,” although it is not clear to me what that comment is in reference to. Then towards the end of the fight, when the referees finally manage to work their way in to break it up, when the combatants are spent and noodley, the show switches back to the studio where Donnie is turned to the side, looking down at a monitor beside him with a grave look of concern. Finally he swivels to face the camera, “While in New Brunswick, new commissioner of the Royal Academy . . .”

“What about dinner?” I finally mutter, looking around as the action subsides to the business affairs of running leagues and drafting junior players.

“We don’t have to hang out every night, you know,” Ray Ray yawns, which pretty much stops me right in my tracks.

“We haven’t met in, like, three weeks,” I sigh, disappointed and confused.

“Have a seat,” someone walks past me, someone I’ve never seen before, “Apparently there’s some good action tonight.”

“We gonna listen to music after?” I look around hopefully, “I brought demo versions of . . .” I trail off, a little hurt.

“Which ones?” someone mutters unenthusiastically, slumping low on the couch, staring at the television, nibbling on Chex Mix from a bowl in his lap.

I look down at my satchel, hanging from my arm. “Ah, ‘Nobody Knows’ by Destroy All Monsters. And, ah, Sissy Bar’s cover of ‘Gin and Juice’. And, of course, the biggie: Sonic's Rendezvous Band’s epic ‘City Slang’.”

“That all?” the Chex Mix guy, another person I’ve never seen before, again mutters unenthusiastically, “Got any metal?”

“Ah, only some Hellhammer,” I shrug, “‘Ready For Slaughter’. All three-and-a-half minutes,” I report.

“Nothing longer, huh?” the guy on the couch manages to seem disappointed and uninterested (or unimpressed) at the same time.

“I think there’s an epic eight minute version out there. Maybe what I have is edited from some original longer version,” I sigh, thinking they won’t care anyway.

There’s a pause, then the guy on the couch with the snacks comments, “Hellhammer. Yeah, Hellhammer’s good,” he looks away to consider this a minute, “‘Ready For Slaughter’. . . Haven’t heard that in a while,” he nods to himself, thinking. “Ready For Slaughter.”

“All three-and-a-half minutes,” I nod.

The guy on the couch looks back over his shoulder and smirks, repeating, “That all, huh?”

“Yeah. Really,” I squint and shrug, “Wouldn’t a very brief song illustrate just how ready you are for slaughter? As apposed to a filibuster?” I gesture, “Because, to me, I’m not convinced. No. I don’t buy it. That statement strains credulity. I’m incredulous,” I announce to no one in particular, as if thinking out loud.

The guy on the couch looks away and nods again, “I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem like they’re ready for slaughter at all.”

“If anything, it sounds like they’re stalling,” I shrug.

“Really,” the guy on the couch thinks, turning back to the television, “Come on guys, get off your asses and get on with it already. Geez. . . Sounds like maybe their heart’s not really into it.”

“And if you’re not quite ready for slaughter just yet, then fine, take your time, we can wait,” I look over to the television, “Misplaced your keys. Your girlfriend’s annoying, unorganized friend needs a ride to the airport. You’re stricken with the ol’ ennui. Broke a shoelace. Forgot to set the alarm. Your boss flaked and you had to work late. We’ve been there. We understand. No hurry guys. Really. Anytime. Whenever you’re ready for slaughter, we’ll be right here,” I shrug.

“You know, I’m just not feelin’ it tonight,” Dade walks past me to the television, yawns, stretches, stopping at the television, then turns and wanders into the next room.

Finally the announcer on the television looks back into the camera, “Let’s check back to Quebec City, in on how Tommy and Paulie are hashing things out between themselves.” And the drama resumes with Tommy and Paulie twisting free of the referees’ grips and meeting to flail away at one another again, finally losing their balances, slipping to their knees, bear hugging one another to the ground, then laying on the ice, side by side, taking turns punching one another.

“A nice way to resolve their little issue,” Donnie chimes in boastfully as the referees grab Tommy’s and Paulie’s legs and drag them away from one another, bloody, sweat soaked, and spent. “Now, doesn’t that feel much better?” coos a supportive Donnie, “Nice to have that off your chest and out of your system, now isn’t it?”

Tommy and Paulie slowly sit up, then stand, the referees holding them up and ushering them away from one another. Again, Tommy catches his breath, twists to break away from the refs who are holding him, and goes after Paulie.

“That’s the way, Tommy,” Donnie comments, almost egging them on, as if within each fight could be found a little life lesson, “No reason to give up so easily. Can’t get anywhere if you just give up. . . Wheeeeeeere does giving up ever get you?”

The refs grab Tommy and try to pull him back, eventually one jumps on his back, slowing him down. They work him to his knees, twisting him away, then raising him and leading him off as he struggles to get free.

“You’ll all live much longer with that out of your system,” Donnie reasons heartily, “No need to keep things bottled up and festering.”

The scene shifts back to the studio where once again Donnie is turned to the side, gazing longingly into a monitor, as if reliving a cherished memory of youth. He has his fingers to his chin as if considering some mythic riddle of existence. Then he slowly moves his gaze back to the studio camera, “Nothing wrong with a hockey fight,” everyone repeats, including myself and Donnie, Donnie reporting sternly in his thick Canadian accent, his eyes aglow as the station fades to a commercial, but the rest of us repeat it as if some contemplative mantra, not as in a monotoned relaxation technique or philosophy, but more as if from an ingrained gene.

Finally, through the confusion, pain, disillusionment and hurt, I say, “What if you don’t know what your place in life is? . . What if you . . . don’t fit in anywhere?”

“Don’t worry,” Dade calls from another room, “Donnie just signed a new three year contract. . . He’ll be fine. . . Really.”

“Bad case of nostalgia acting up?” someone asks in a reporter’s monotone, as if mimicking Donnie, then hitting the mute button on the remote to turn off the sound as a laxative commercial comes on.

“Guess I was looking forward to . . .” I trail off, as if thinking, adjusting my satchel on my shoulder.

“Let’s hear that Hellhammer,” the guy on the couch shrugs, “Break it out, man. It’s only a commercial,” he nods to the television which glows patiently, staring like a devil’s eye.

“Apocalyptic Raids or Demon Entrails?” someone asks, referring to which album the song is from.

“Yeah, I could maybe use a good jolt. A short dose of Celtic Frost, or Discharge might hit the spot right about now,” someone looks off to the distance, thinking.

This perks me up a little. I smile, “Yeah. Yeah,” and step forward, as if to indicate ‘that might work’. “I’m not sure what it’s from though,” I turn to the stereo.

“Bad day, huh?” the guy on the couch asks as I step to the stereo, bend, and remove the compact disk from my satchel.

“Bad week,” I report. “Bad month. . . How’d you know?” I poke the buttons to activate the rockage, but the guy doesn’t answer. The music comes on, the operatic opening chords churning to gain a chugging momentum to gallop around the entire room. I stare at the floor to consider the artistry on display.

“Hey,” Dade calls from beyond, “What is that? . . Hey, . . turn that up.”


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Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.
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The Gravestone

Contributor: Tim Gerstmar

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The nitre oozes from the cracks of the crumbling stone. The water drips and runs along the grooves of the epitaph, life reduced to a few Roman letters and dates. The water rolls along the stone and falls into the deep puddles that drown the grass. The limestone dissolves slowly, minute by minute, hour by hour, as time has wanted it to do. Out of the cracks unnameable things crawl, slithering and sliding as the storm clouds thunder above and send the rain, renewing the land. They are the eaters of the dead, tearing off bits of flesh with their serrated mouths. However, they can only ingest solids, energy is another matter, in this case the energy of love.

A woman stands before the grave. Her long cold hands tremble. It's been fifteen years, and yet still she comes. She places the bundle of red roses wrapped in wet newspaper at the foot of the stone. She does not cry, and she never has.

The birds sit on a wet branch above her. They shake their feathery bodies and think about food and safety, and the young. They don't know about death, only birth. Such a small thing, and yet it can survive the elements, the harsh cold, and the damp that cuts and kills. To them there is only each and every agonizing moment.

Deep beneath the soil, past the roots and the stones, and the tunnels of earthworms, inside the wooden casket, pregnant with moisture, the parasites go about their noiseless patient task. A large drop of water forms on the inside of the lid and falls on the skeletal brow. It splashes right between the eyes, the space of sight, of the third eye, of remembrance and longing.

She cannot stand in front of the grave for too long, because then the real memory comes back, of passionate nights, of the thrill as they put him to rest permanently. Then they held each other, her and her lover, in the embrace of youth with the dampness of sweat all over them. They had finished him for good. They lay together in lust, fresh from the barbaric savagery and the pleading of her now murdered husband. The pain is too much now, and she turns away.

She walks down the long lonely overgrown path, back to her car. The wet autumn leaves stick to her cold bare ankles. A branch breaks above the woman, and some drops of water fall on her, sending a chill through her as they splash on her neck. The flap of wings and a black bird takes to the air, cutting a dark wedge shape in the sky, the branches of bare trees like veins against the clouds. Then there is something else, a cracking sound and the thump of something heavy hitting the ground.

It's amazing how unreal and distant it all seems now. She and her lover planned it out well enough. Her lover. Then he left her suddenly. She recalls the twisted wreck of the car and the police lights, the gleam of wet pavement. Then there was the horror as she saw him there, twisted and lifeless. How could he leave her like this? How could he let her suffer the guilt alone? She tells herself that she will be home soon, and that she will be warm in her own living room with the television playing low. She tells herself many fictions. She also tells herself that she doesn't hear the slow agonizing tread of footsteps on the trail behind her.


- - -
Tim Gerstmar has been an ESL teacher for twelve years. He has traveled extensively through Asia and worked in Korea and Thailand. During his free time he enjoys writing short horror and science fiction stories.
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Away with some of it

Contributor: Tony Rauch

- -
I run up to our house. There are some strangers on the lawn and my father is handing them some of our belongings. “What’s going on here?” I huff out of breath, “Why‘re you givin’ ‘em our dining room chairs and grandfather clock?”

My dad looks down to me, “The entire village has to pitch in, not just us, honey,” he holds one end of the long ornate wooden clock and helps walk it down to a waiting horse drawn wagon on the road, “We lost at something and so we have to give some things up, that’s all sweetie,” he shuffles his feet to position himself as the strangers load the chairs into the long wooden wagon, “We can get by with out ‘em,” he helps to shove the heavy clock onto a blanket in the wagon. There are some other objects in the wagon - an end table, a cupboard, a butter churn – but none of them were ours. Another wagon shakes by full of other people’s belongings and passes to clomp its way out of town. Several men sit on the furniture in that wagon. The horses are galloping as if they are in a hurry to get out of here. “Maybe next time,” one of them calls.

“What did we lose at?” I ask in confusion.

The strangers climb aboard the wagon and lurch forward.

“A contest, dear. Just a contest. . . A thing we have from time to time,” he watches the wagon pull ahead and wobble on down the road and out of town, not letting on as to what exactly the contest was that the town lost. He has a strange leather glove on one hand, a big fat one, and bends to pick up a long piece of rounded wood from the grass at the side of the road. It looks like a smooth spoke from a wagon wheel, only a little longer.

My mom walks down to us, “Dang contests,” she spits in annoyance and shakes her head, her arms sternly on her hips.

“Hey, don’t feel too bad,” my dad chuckles. “We’ll get ‘em next time,” he looks down at me, then over to my mother and smirks, “How do you think I got this house.”


- - -
Tony Rauch has three books of short stories published – “I’m right here” (spout press), “Laredo” (Eraserhead Press), “Eyeballs growing all over me . . . again” (Eraserhead Press). He has additional titles forthcoming in the next few months.
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Skateboarding 101

Contributor: Don A. Gerred

- -
The horizon grew dark. Across the intersection of an empty access road, in front of a lifeless shopping center, barren trees of late autumn formed a wall of black shadows against the fading colors of an early sunset. Streetlights buzzed, signaling their intent to flicker to life.

All was quiet. No engine noise, no music, no voices; silence except for an occasional chirp from a bird with no plans for winter migration.

The horse-shoe shaped shopping center faced an enormous parking lot filled with cars precisely parked between yellow lines. Abandoned, the smashed, deserted vehicles disintegrated in the parking spaces. The burned-out shell of a late 80’s Honda Accord landed upside-down; roof on the sidewalk, wheels in the air. The beaten and battered hulk blocked access to a lane of neatly nested shopping carts.

The stores were dark except where faint light seeped from a few anemic signs. An ice cream store’s neon sign spelled “CAR.” “VEL” burned out long ago.

Thick layers of dirt covered everything, windows, sidewalks and cars. Safety glassed windows were cracked and shattered as though someone, or something, had attacked them with a car jack or a baseball bat.

Long ago, the door to a jewelry store window imploded. Gold, silver, Rolex watches, diamond rings, rare gemstones and glass shards intermingling on worn black velvet. Once beautiful baubles scattered among the debris, treasures too dirty to glitter and gleam any longer.

A boy limped passed the broken door, oblivious to his surroundings. In the darkening sky, he looked to be about sixteen, a teenager. He was tall and skinny, thick, curly black hair hung in his face, obstructing his vision. He shuffled along carrying some kind of long flat thing. His right hand pinned it tightly against his scrawny thigh.

He moved off toward the rear corner of the parking lot toward a steep concrete ramp. He paused at the top. A faded ‘wheelchair accessible’ sign dangled from a steel rail. His baggy, tattered three button Italian suit might have been an olive color once, now it was dirty gray. Both knees poked through the torn pants. His loose necktie was knotted with a Windsor knot; the color faded and the pattern indecipherable.

The thing he carried was a skateboard. He flipped the board upside down with an awkward jerk. The board was grubby and the wheels rusty. It looked like a kid had forgotten it in the front yard for an entire year. The current owner spun each wheel, one at a time, watching each until they stopped. As the teenager watched each wheel revolving freely, he muttered to himself in a barely audible raspy voice, “Good.”

Deliberately, he set the skateboard on the level, flat concrete at the top of the ramp. The board surface revealed a faded skull and crossbones emblazoned around the word ‘FLIP’ in its center. His movements were painfully slow. He stood erect. It took two attempts to get his left foot on the front of the board, even as his right hand clutched the steel handrail running parallel to the sides of the ramp. He paused and gazed intently across the street at the parking lot.

There was not a living soul in sight. He stood for a long time and gave the impression of searching for an image from a long lost memory.

His stiff right foot rose and rested firmly on the back of the board. He gingerly pushed himself backward and shoved himself down the ramp.

He was rigid, unable to bend his back or his knees, and unaware of the need. Gravity took over. Somehow, he balanced on the board as it accelerated forward, crossing the seams in the sidewalk with a quiet clack-clack, clack-clack.

The board went in a perfectly straight line. It was a little short of its maximum speed when the board intersected the steel rail at a corner point. There the ramp swapped directions to complete the route from sidewalk to the parking lot.

The rail caught the teen’s body at waist level. He was flipped off the board in a judo movement. The board rolled faster under its lightened load.

The boy hit the pavement face first. A thick black oily substance splattered on the concrete. His head bounced like a melon into the street, the rest of his body tumbled behind him.

The skateboard held its steady course. It passed under the railing, and under an Econoline van. I was halted mid-trip by smashing into a pile of rusty, power tools. The impact flipped the board onto its back. The racing wheels slowed and finally stopped. The board was lifeless once again.

The boy lifted his head off the ground high enough to look for the skateboard. A streetlight flickered above. He pulled himself off the ground in the same slow and deliberate manner he used to cue up the board.

His face had gravel and stones embedded in it, minor mutilations compared to his grotesquely, broken nose. His nose lay smashed flat against his upper lip. Not one drop of blood flowed from the shattered nose, just that black, oily stuff. He managed to get to his feet. He walked forward looking for the place where the skateboard crashed to a stop. Suddenly, he stopped. He either sensed or felt the injuries to his face.

He used his hands and fingers like a vise to squeeze the bridge of his nose. The cartilage cracked as he adjusted it. That facial feature was still crooked but no longer flat.

He looked around for the board, but couldn’t find it. Losing interest, he started shuffling away. Bright street lighting revealed the ripped back of his coat, and the grungy shirt underneath. Three large holes punctuated his upper back, exit wounds from a .357 Magnum. The wounds were open and oozing but not bleeding. Holes through his heart and lungs made it difficult to believe he could remain standing, let alone ride a skateboard. Impossible in fact. But then again, Zombies aren’t really alive, are they?


- - -
I have a wife, three daughters and a female cat. It is hard to find time to write more than my signature on a check or a credit card slip!
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Flashcard Freestyle and that wicked, wicked Bandwidth

Contributor: Cheryl Anne Gardner

- -
Before the killer cheeseburgers and sex toys, I was a free man, listening to my own love dirge in the wee dark hours with fatal abandon. Then it all caved in around me: crystal wine glasses, decadent desserts, and dirty pool water. That's how these things happen in the real world. It's a party -- no extra legroom and the incandescent lighting's a little weak. Glen, my best friend, wanted revenge, domination in a single drop of sweat. She'd never been his girlfriend. She had hits in the millions. She was a ghost, a construct, bountiful acres of flesh he hadn't had the sense to manhandle the way he'd wanted to. He said she was ugly, pixilated, but I didn't think so. She had small hands and big dreams. Now she was my baby strange pushing the hard edge in the periphery. Our romance was a brief and righteous act of lust and longing, not a snot-palmed-purplish song of internet dating desperation, I can tell you that. She was mine, in real life. I was in the back of the room; she at the bar, and I watched her squeezebox a penny in those lacy little capris with her ankles bare and her warm lips crusin’ the cocktail rind at ten seconds to midnight. Five, four, three, two, one ...

She didn't kiss anyone, so I texted her site, hoping she was still mine.


- - -
When she isn't writing, Cheryl Anne Gardner likes to chase marbles on a glass floor, eat lint, play with sharp objects, and make taxidermy dioramas with dead flies. She writes art-house novellas and abstract flash fiction, some published, some not.
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Yard Work

Contributor: Matthew Vaughn

- -
Fred pushed his lawn mower while the afternoon sun beat down on him. He was sweating profusely, he had to constantly wipe at his eyes to keep them from stinging. Maintaining his yard was hard work, but Fred didn’t mind, he loved to look out at the fiery orange fur that covered his lawn.

As he pushed the mower across the length of his yard from one end of his house to the other he couldn’t help but contemplate a break. Part of him thought about how nice it would be to sit on his porch swing and sip on a nice cool glass of liquefied goat meat, it was his favorite. But he wouldn’t do that, he didn’t have time to take a break, his yard needed him.

Having just completed a row and reaching his driveway he did let off the handle of the mower, but not to take a break. Fred pulled his small ruler from his back pocket and knelt down to the fur. He placed his ruler straight up and down to measure the height of the orange fur, it read three and a half inches, just like it was supposed to.

Standing up Fred stretched out his back, it was hurting pretty bad today. Before starting his mower back up he decided to throw a little more fertilizer in it. He walked around the side of his house and chose the body of a nice fat man. Hefting up the dead bodies was probably the hardest part of keeping his lawn looking superb, but Fred thought it was a small price to pay.

Fred carried the fat body to his mower and threw it in. As he grabbed the handle to restart the mower he looked over to his neighbor Marty’s house. Marty was his only competition for best lawn on the street, even though he could never truly beat Fred.

“What the hell?” Fred said. Marty had his mower out and was preparing to start on his lawn. He came around the corner pushing a wheel barrel full of hot dead blonde women. “That son of a bitch, where did he get the cash for that?”

Fred was very unhappy about this, he knew that beautiful blonde women, especially some as well endowed as what Marty had, fertilized a fur lawn like nothing else. There wasn’t much Fred could do about it other than get back to work on his own lawn. He squeezed the handle, cut a chunk of flesh from his arm and dropped it into the mower to bring the machine to life with a roar.

Turning away from Marty helped Fred quite a bit, he smiled at the bright orange of his lawn as he mowed row after row up towards his house. He stopped a time or two to refill his mower with bodies, none quite as nice as Marty’s hot blondes though. He had a couple nicely fat men, but the rest were barely over weight at all. It was almost embarrassing to be seen tossing an average size dead body into his mower.

Reaching his house Fred glanced up to look at Marty’s progress and his neighbor saw him looking. Marty’s mouth grew into a big goofy grin as he threw his scrawny arm into the air and waved.

“I hope you have a stroke out here you dumb bastard.” Fred said to himself as he half heartily waved back. He pushed his mower up onto the front of his house and continued his rows across the front face of his house.

Once he reached the roof he let go of the handle on the mower letting it die. Fred pulled out his little ruler and knelt down onto the roof. He checked the height of his orange fur, three and a half inches, just like it was supposed to be. Fred smiled as he cut a chunk of flesh off his arm and started the mower up again. There was no way Marty was going to have the best lawn on the street, no way.


- - -
Matthew Vaughn fixes machines in an Injection Molding facility. When he is not working with robots plotting world domination his enjoys writing bizarre stories. You can follow his ramblings on twitter @ https://twitter.com/edkemper or at his site http://mcvaughn.wordpress.com/
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Challenged

Contributor: Douglas Polk

- -
November 3, 1989 was the day I was born. My Dad had three car wrecks that same day, all with the same pimply faced kid. The day was a Friday, and the next day, the Nebraska Cornhuskers lost to the Colorado Buffaloes 27-21 at Boulder, for only the second time in 22 years. That is the way my Dad remembers my birth was a Friday, because his beloved Huskers lost a football game the next day. It was the only loss of the regular college season for the Cornhuskers. Colorado was the ranked second in the polls and Nebraska was ranked third before losing to the Buffaloes. The Huskers later lost in the Fiesta Bowl to Florida State 41-17 to finish the season 10-2.

My birth was an emergency c-section and I went right from the delivery room to the intensive care nursery. After nine days I was finally able to come home. The next day my Mom went back into the hospital for a week with a dangerous infection. It wasn’t until almost three weeks after I was born before my family was able to be home together. My Mom seemed to take this to be some kind of omen.

A toy is directly in front of me. Red and white and looks like a clown but is a rattle. Stretching I reach with my left hand and try to grab it, but my Dad stops me. He grabs the rattle and places on my right side. Leaning to the right, I once again reach with my left hand, but again my Dad stops me. He places the rattle next to my body, on my right side, but has tied my left arm to my side. Looking at the toy, I begin to rock until I tumble onto my right side. I roll myself around until my face is next to the toy, then I grab it in my mouth. My Dad and Mom clap and tell me what a smart boy I am. My Dad unties my arm and then waves my hand in front of my face, then he waves another hand in front of my face. A hand so similar to my own, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was my own.

My parents realize within the first three months of my life, that my development is different than other babies. My Dad was the second youngest of seven children, and had babysat for most of his 19 nieces and nephews, one time or another, before I was born. Taking me to the doctors and questioning my development, it was decided my development was being affected by “new born stress”. Since my birth was an emergency and was so difficult for both I and my Mom , it became the justification for me not wanting to use my right hand. No one at the time realized, I didn’t even know I had a right hand.


- - -
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In Pucklechurch Terrain

Contributor: David Macpherson

- -
The knuckles crash my cheek and one of my teeth loosens. Later, I will spit blood. But now I swing from my side and connect with somebody’s ear. My shoulder twinges from the compression of the impact. I hope I didn’t hit one of my own. My bros: Joey, Mac and the other guy. The guy whose name I don’t know. He sits by himself most nights at the end of the bar. But when the swinging starts, he usually swings for us.

Mac clobbers the bearded dude with the frosted beer mug, clubbing him on the top of the head. Joey takes an elbow to the chin. We are all backing up to the fire exit. We’re not surrendering, its just that we can see the bouncer heading our way and its best to take it outside then to be taken.

I aim my foot for the little guy’s knee and I get nothing but air. I can’t do any of that karate shit. I grab the front of his collar and swing him to the side, hitting the broken bowling game. I step outside to the alley and now I’m doubled over from a shot to my gut from some fist.

The assholes run. The only one left is the one we’re all kicking on the ground. The one that stumbled. He moans long and low like a fog warning. We step back and I guess he crawls away. I don’t know the assholes we swung at. I just saw Mac moving hard and jumped in.

The bouncer pours into the fire exit door. “This shit keeps happening and you’ll be out for good. Not just the night.”

“Fuckers started it,” Mac says.

“They always do,” the bouncer says.

“We can’t help it,” the guy whose name I don’t know says. “It’s part of the DNA of every bar goer. It’s a royal tradition. Hell, a king of England died in a bar fight. King Edmund the Magnificent died in a pub fight in 943 in Pucklechurch. This thief Leofa was giving one the King’s bros some shit and wouldn’t leave and they had at it. Leofa knifed Edmund. But at least the King’s men got Leofa too, Evens it out. If it’s good enough for kings, who the hell are we to stop?” He wipes the blood from his lip.

I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I know he’s right. The way I feel now, the pulsing of the blood in my veins, it’s not just my blood, I feel all my bros and all the bros before me, like a line going way down the years.

The bouncer thinks its funny. He almost smiles as he shakes his head and steps back to close the door on us, leaving us heaving for breath in the alley. The click of the door’s lock telling that we’re exiled again.


- - -
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Johnny Depp ruined my day

Contributor: Matthew Vaughn

- -
I walked into my local Marketplace and stopped near the entrance to look at the DVD’s in the DVD Machine. I had been dying to see that new Johnny Depp movie, but the last three times I looked for it, they didn’t have it. Scanning through the available movies it seemed this time was no different.

I thought about kicking the machine, but I knew that wouldn’t get me the stupid movie, if anything it would probably just hurt my foot. I tried cussing at the machine a little, but all that got me was some funny looks from people passing by.

But then, like being open handed smacked in the face, an idea popped into my head. I decided I would climb into the DVD Machine and just wait for somebody to return a copy of the movie.

It was a perfect plan, but squeezing myself into that little slot the DVD’s slid through proved to be harder than I hoped. With a little wiggling and some sweet contorting skills I managed to get in there.

Walking around all the different movies was kind of boring at first, but then something weird happened, I wasn’t the only person in there. Taking a left around the newest romantic comedy starring Justin Timberlake I almost ran into another person.

“Oh, excuse me.” I said. Then I realized it wasn’t a person. It was a large collection of dirt and debris shaped like a rabbit. It was an Evil Dust Bunny.

“Oh crap, its an Evil Dust Bunny.” I said aloud.

It frowned at me and then started punching me in the jeans. I wasn’t really sure why It was doing that but I didn’t like it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, please stop.” I said to It. The Dust Bunny looked at me and smiled, I took that as a good sign. Then It smacked me over the head with the latest Hostel movie, uncool.

I didn’t waste any more time trying to talk to this thing, instead I pulled a Sponge Bob Christmas special down in-between us and took off running.

I decided to head for the slot that I originally came through. As I was running I looked back over my shoulder. The Dust Bunny was surrounded by movies starring Ryan Reynolds, Jack Black, Chris Evans, and Simmon Pegg, and they were all laughing at me.

I finally reached the slot and tried to go back through exactly opposite from the way I came in. After I got my whole body out of the slot my head got stuck, I looked back just in time to see the cover of Kung Fu Panda 2 come flying at my face. It was solid hit, and it was enough to push my big noggin through.

Standing in front of the DVD Machine I straightened myself up and flipped off the machine. I promptly turned and left the store, stupid Johnny Depp and his good movies.


- - -
Matthew Vaughn fixes machines in an Injection Molding facility. When he is not working with robots plotting world domination his enjoys writing bizarre stories. You can follow his ramblings on twitter @ https://twitter.com/edkemper or at his site http://mcvaughn.wordpress.com/
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The Reaper

Contributor: Chris Griglack

- -
His shadow stalks swiftly from tree to tree, though the man is little more than shadow himself. The dark cloak weighs heavily on his shoulders, bound with a duty black as night.

They scream when he cuts them, but this is good. A silent harvest is a poor one. He whistles a tune as he works, and the wind whistles through their branches with him, a tune of cold, slow, remorse that no words can convey.

His sickle flashes, and for a moment the wind stills as the willow's hoarse, ethereal scream fills the air. He gathers the freshly cut boughs and moves along the river bank to the next tree, whistling the song of lament known only in that grove.

The moon hides her face from his work, but the stars look on with interest. Too distant to hear the screams, too cold to care. He continues harvesting as they watch, winking down at him as if they understand and share in the secrets of his work.

But they don't even know the song.

He waits for the wind to draw a veil of clouds across their peeping eyes before he tends to the seedlings. Each one so delicately balanced on the cusp of existence. No light can see them until they are rooted. Even the tiny glint lost in the dark depths of his eyes could be enough to wither their fragile shoots.

His shrill whistle becomes a low, rumbling hum to soothe the earth as their roots invade her. She trembles as they lap up her moisture, the sole comfort she can offer to these sad, tender lives. They drink greedily to ease their fears and quell their confusion, sating themselves on the tears of their elders.

The most ancient willows weep to see their children so, and the river swells with their sorrow. They rattle their branches in a howl which the wind echoes, dropping the veil in which the stars are tangled.

In the light of their curious glances the river glows. Individual streaks of silver tears gleam brilliantly for a moment before they are briskly swept away by the current.

One by one the trees grow silent as a different light moves among them. This light is dampened by the darkness with which it is imbued, a terrifying darkness with which they are all too familiar. It is accompanied by a shrill whistling which they shudder to hear.

He touches each one with the shining sickle before moving on. They shiver at its icy touch, squirming beneath the bark which imprisons them before stiffening in silence.

When dawn breaks the grove is silent but for the slow whistling of a man with no past. He vanishes as he walks amongst the trees, merging with their shadows which writhe in the sunlight though their pale bodies remain still.

The reaper fades from the ancient grove, but his song lingers in the air. A haunting echo of a man that only the earth and wind know.


- - -
My name is Chris Griglack and I'm a senior English major at UMASS Dartmouth. I prefer to heavily blend genres when I write in order to create unique works, but I occasionally write straightforward horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, as well as poetry, reviews, and non-fiction opinion pieces.
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Midnight Surprise

Contributor: Linda Garnett

- -
“Mitch, can't this car go any faster? We’re not going to make it."
“We’re almost to your house, Jackie. You’ll make your curfew.”
“We should've left the dance earlier. I told you what’ll happen if I’m not home right at midnight.”
Mitch laughed. “You didn’t need to make up a stupid story so I’d get you home on time.”
“I didn’t make it up. Drive faster!”
A few minutes later, Mitch parked outside her house and glanced at his watch.
“Not bad, it’s only one minute past midnight. How about a good-night kiss?”
He let out a blood curdling scream as Jackie the werewolf lunged at him.


- - -
Linda Garnett is currently editing her first novel, a science-fiction comedy. Her work has appeared in New Flesh, Flashes in the Dark, Static Movement, WeirdYear, Flash Shot and The Short Humour Site.
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The Beach Dream

Contributor: Phillip Donnelly

- -
In the dream, he was a she.
He had the frame of a young girl, thin and fragile, but the body had no face. He, or rather she, or it, or whatever, was walking along a rocky beach in late Autumn. The sun set, turning the sky a dark red, like the embers of a forgotten fire.
She knew she was looking for something but did not know what. There was a dreamy emptiness to her quest, but also the will to continue.
She could make something out near the water's edge and cautiously approached the bobbing figure, wondering what it could be.
The sound of the waves washing against the shores grew. It became magnified and distorted and each wave began to cry. Each wave was soured with the bitter spite of all little girls, each wave's curl was twisted by the crashing malice of a child’s hate.
The sun, which had been setting, rose again and began to burn with a new midday intensity, its rays now beating in time with the waves' girlish laughter.
The grey sand turned black and oily, swallowing the dreamer’s feet. The boy who dreamed he was a girl wanted to run away, but couldn’t get her feet out of the slimy black quicksand. The more she struggled, the deeper she fell.
She stopped moving and felt her sense of will start to ebb and flow into the will of the tide.
The figure she had seen in the water was being swept towards her. As it got nearer, she could begin to distinguish some of its features. It was a little over a foot in length, and almost rectangular in shape. Whatever it was, it was floating. It grew closer, inch by inch, and the rest of the world began to fall out of focus and dissolve.
She could see the strands of long brown hair floating on the water, like a thousand tiny sea worms, all moving independently of one another. She could also make out a navy school uniform of some kind, but it was tattered and the sun and salty water had left it partly bleached.
One shoe remained, but the other had been removed by the tide, revealing a tattered sock, with a bloated yellow foot and blackened nails underneath.
Entirely against her will, she turned the floating corpse over.
What had once been a young girl's face stared at her through eyeless sockets. Maggots squirmed in the bloody holes and the child's skin had been stretched and so totally disfigured as to be unrecognisable. It had become a ghoulish mixture of blue and purple, but with the faintest hue of yellow underneath. Septic fluid seeped from her ears, and a large grub poked out of the hole where her nose used to be.
Despite the visage, the dreamer’s attention became fixated on one of the child's ‘hands’, part dog’s paw, part eagle's claw. On one side, white fur was soaked and matted, but on the other, it had yellow scales, some of which had fallen off, revealing bloody flesh. Twisted talons jutted out of the rotten flesh and gripped something fiercely.
She tried to unfasten the dead girl's grip, but she didn't have the strength. It was as though the girl had died through the effort of holding onto whatever was inside her claw, and not even death could make her release her grip.
The dreamer wanted to leave but couldn't. She did not remember where her home was, or who she was, or if indeed she was a she or a he. The answer to these questions was wrapped up in what the dead girl was holding.
“We know not what we are, nor what we do,” a ghostly voice whispered, and then a thousand wavelets giggled ringlets of contempt.
The sun suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a full moon. A billion stars came into being and waited. The girl’s hand opened, revealing the skull of a foetus.
Without warning, the dead girl jerked her head towards the dreamer in a strange mechanical way. The dreamer flinched at the sound of the bones clicking into and out of place as she made raven-like spasmodic movements with her head.
What was left of the girl's mouth slid into a sickening smile, a slimy grimace. Her open cavernous mouth contained no teeth and no tongue--only a hole that seemed to lead to infinity, and to the hell that lies beyond it.
A mournful but raspy voice emerged from the gaping hole. It was an adult female voice, a voice that had once been human, but would never be so again: a voice moving from sadness to despair.
When it spoke it felt as though all other noises on the beach had vanished.
"I am mother, child, future and past
I am the waves, the tide and the sea
I am all and you are nothing
And now not even time is yours”

*****

With a sharp intake of breath, the dreamer awoke...
And then he died.


- - -
Phillip Donnelly grew up in Dublin but has spent most of his life teaching English as a foreign language in various countries and continents. He currently lives in Hong Kong. He has had several short stories published in ezines, including one at Weirdyear, Proppland, and has also written three novels and several travel books. He is currently trying to interest publishers in his latest noel, Kev the Vampire.
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Die Big

Contributor: David Macpherson

- -
Two days after my grandmother died, we were in Neptune, New Jersey, where she was spoken about by people standing behind a podium. My father's best friend growing up was there with the wife he was soon to divorce. He spoke of the importance of family, God's ever loving gaze. Things like that.

Afterwards, we grandchildren were deposited on the Ocean Grove boardwalk, while the parents went to handle the paper work that survived the old lady. We talked for a while about college and work and things we did. The wind did not allow such autobiography and we walked down a frigid December gang plank in silence, heading to the Playland we went to when we visited as kids. It was shuttered closed. Not for the season, but for the ages.

We spoke about the funhouse we loved. The tilting room, the hall of mirrors. The pre-recorded shrieks of horror that startled me every time. On the plywood that covered the Playland entrance was spray painted the words Die Big, in large block letters. Fearing omens, we turned round.

On the boardwalk, the Devil his own self stood on a soap box selling whatever was desired, wanted. Anything at all, cheap, only the price of a soul. They didn't even have to be our souls. They could be lingering in our pockets, stuck on our shoes, sent to us in the mail by mistake.

It was too cold to be tempted and we walked on, finding our parents. My Aunt was in tears. She wanted her mother's engagement ring. The nursing home said it was missing. It had not been stolen, goodness no, just missing. These things happen.

They said my grandmother probably was the one to lose it what with the state she was in at the end. My aunt didn't care, she said, “It's not even that nice a ring, I just want it back.” With nothing to give her, we bid our goodbyes.

For the next week, I found myself inspired to do stupid, drunken acts with no knowledge of why I might do such things.


- - -
David lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.
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Boy With Grenades

Contributor: Stephen V. Ramey

- -
A boy stood in dappled sunlight, blocking my way. He was bone thin, all arms and legs. His expression reminded me of a clown's face. Not the garish white makeup and oversized nose, but the way his lips curled into a goofy smile even as his gaze violated me.
"What do you want?" I said. I had some change in my purse, but he should at least have to ask before I offered it up.
He laughed a child's laugh, unpracticed, full of noise. He raised one hand. In his fist was clutched a hand grenade, oblong and dimpled, grayish green in color.
"Where is your mother?" I said.
"Here," he said.
"Where?"
"Dead," he admitted.
"Your father, then." What a crass woman I must seem, not to offer sympathy for a dead mother.
"Hell," the boy said. He lowered the first hand and raised the other. It, too, held a grenade. The pin dangled like an earring.
"Is that a toy?" I said. "Who's watching you?"
That laugh again. Burst after burst of caustic sound. It set my nerves on edge, stirred something dark in my gut. Nauseated, I clutched my stomach and crouched down. Beyond the boy, a couple held hands on a park bench. Were they his parents? They seemed too young.
"So?" he said. He stood over me now, a scarecrow silhouette. I swallowed the sourness from my mouth.
"So?" I managed. I felt an impulse to cradle him, to feel that mouth pulling at my nipple. I leaned onto my knees.
A grenade fell past my face.
The explosion threw me back, light and sound and emotion all at once. Hair pulled from my scalp, skin from bone. I felt the structure of my skeleton cave in.
Pain radiated from my uterus, shot to my ankles and elbows, my tender breasts. Another contraction. Contraction, convulsion, burst after burst.
The bastard who raped me flashed bright, that pocked face, the pug nose and squinting eyes. Drunk, disoriented, I felt him thrust into me, once, twice, again, again. Where was the pleasure it was supposed to bring? Where was the connection I craved?
Another digging cramp. Sobs stretched my throat. A dented oval gushed out of me, red tissue, a spreading clot. Was that a face?
The boy was gone. Shifting patterns of light lapped at my shadow. A wave broke over my upturned face, coated my tongue with honey. I breathed in and out.
The dark thing inside me was gone.
Smoothing my dress, I stood. As I walked past the couple, I felt my halo emerge.


- - -
Stephen V. Ramey lives in beautiful New Castle, Pennsylvania where it is always sunny and warm and kittens do not suffer. His work has appeared in various places, and he edits the annual Triangulation anthology from Parsec Ink.
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Rob’s Sleep Messages

Contributor: David Macpherson

- -
Rob was this roommate I had in college who had slept hard. He'd be asleep and not wake up even when the phone was ringing, but he would get up, answer it, and have a conversation, all while still being asleep. You would be on the phone with him talking and suddenly you would realize that something wasn't quite right, the way the conversation was going was off and you would ask, "Rob are you asleep right now?" And he would say, "Yes." So you would say, "Now Rob, listen to me. Hang up the phone and go to bed." And that’s what he did. He had no memory of any of this. Not even a dream memory.

We would have him write down phone messages when he was like this. He would wake up and see a note in his own hand that said, "I was asleep when Pete called. I will call him in the afternoon." That was a nice message. We didn't do nice messages often. Sometimes he would read messages that he wrote down that said, "I'm a bad bad boy. Have to return my professor's diaper." Or "I live in the Pink Pretty Panty Pantry." Junk like that. It wasn't clever, but we thought it was. Rob would smile along, though who would really like this kind of shit being done at his expense? Really.

I didn't see him for a while, I had graduated, and we were roommates, we were never best buds. But I was visiting an ex-girlfriend in his dorm, seeing if we wanted to do something about our relationship status or just be something undisclosed when I saw him. I didn't recognize. My ex had to tell me it was Rob. "Come on, that ain't him." She just shook her head and went back into her room closing the door behind me, which kind of let me know where I stood with her.

“Rob,” I said, “How you been?” I didn’t need for him to tell me. He was thin and puffy, all at the same time. His skin looked pale, like it had trapped in the wash for fifty cycles. He hadn’t been showering often enough, that was easy to determine.

He took some time to recognize me. Then he smiled yellow teeth. “Man, you are just the kind of guy I was hoping to see. I mean, you know people. I need to know people who know people.” It was like a bad musical number but I just nodded my head.

He dragged me into his room. He didn’t have a roommate. No one wanted to be his roommate, so the second bed was vacant waiting for a brave soul to fill it. “Remember those phone messages you guys used to have me write when I was asleep? Remember that? Well I still have the notebook and still I wake up and there be more of them. But about a month ago, they changed.” He pushed aside hamburger wrappers and showed me the note book he wrote the messages in. I looked at it.

They were how I recalled them. Funny things: “Must buy new footie pajamas,” or “I’m a little tea pot short and stout.” Then in his hand was a longer message, “The time has come. There will be knives on throats. There will be stains on poor campus carpets that no one will be able to remove. They will have to cut the carpets out. The blood will come. The bodies will be deposited. You need to understand Rob. This is inevitable. This shall occur. I needed a scribe, someone to record my good works. I chose you Rob.”

“Wow,” I said. “That ain’t funny.”

Rob grabbed the notebook back. “There’s others. They get more detailed. They list dates things will happen. The dates are still in the future, but not by much now.”

“Dude, go to the police.”

“How can I do that. It might be me writing this, thinking this. I might not just be dictating it. I don’t know. I figure all I need to do is not go to sleep. That’s all I can do.”

“Rob, what can I do for? Really. You won’t do the right thing and go to the cops.”

He smiled that ugly smile. “I know you have connections. Mini-thins and coffee are not cutting it anymore. I need something stronger to keep me awake. You know people.”

“Rob, that’s not a solution.”

He just stared at me. Ugly tired eyes did not plead at me, they just observed me, clinically, dispassionately. I told him sure, I would call some people. I would get him all he needed and then I left campus.

I didn’t call anyone. I don’t know anyone. I can’t figure why he thought I did. Every day I check the campus news site to see if anything happened. Nothing yet. And that’s good I guess.


- - -
David is a writer living in Central Massachusetts with his wife Heather and son George.
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A Leaky Head

Contributor: Nathaniel Tower

- -
A puddle of goopy pink blob greeted Marty Cooper when he woke up one Sunday morning. He'd been dreaming about his wife being angry at him for some reason or another.
When his alarm blasted him out of his nightmare, he tried to spring his head off the pillow and silence the buzzing, but the thick sticky substance clung to his head and pillow like gum to a shoe and asphalt on a hot day. The further he pulled his head away from the pillow the further the pink gelatin stretched.
Despite the force pulling Marty's head back to the stained pillow, his head felt significantly lighter. Staring at the goop, it didn't take long for Marty to figure out what was happening. His brain was leaking out of his ear.
While trying to gather the strength to lift his leaking body from the bed, Marty tried to remember what he had done the night before and where his wife was right now. There was the off chance she had gone to church, but he didn't think she would have gone without at least waking him. Unless of course she really was mad at him. Perhaps that hadn't been a dream after all.
Through his gooey thoughts, Marty thought he heard his wife's nagging voice call for him to get out of bed so she could change the sheets. Marty sprang out of his bed like a lopsided jack-in-the-box. His unbalanced body bumped into the nightstand, knocking over the hand-blown glass lamp his grandmother had given him for no reason other than she was dying. The lamp fell to the carpet out of Marty's desperate reaching hand. He shook his head to try to regain his center of balance, a string of thick pink goo squirting like jelly out of a water pistol onto his dresser and carpet.
"Muhbran," Marty shouted, the words coming out mostly wrong. He clasped his hands to his head in a scene reminiscent of The Scream, which Marty had never actually seen. The goop seeped onto his left hand and oozed its way between his fingers and down his arm, but nothing came out of the right ear.
Marty raced to the bathroom, his body dragging as if he were some sort of wounded animal searching for protection from an onslaught of hunters. He rifled through his toiletries until he came across a loose cotton ball. Showing no concern for the grime that had collected in the soft fabric, Marty plunged it into his left ear. After tilting his head to the right a little to let his brain settle, he stood and looked in the mirror.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with his general appearance, save for the cotton ball sticking out of his ear. Only a few seconds into the study of his visage, Marty saw the cotton ball expanding as it filled with the pink sludge that he had formerly used to think. Without thinking, he sprinted from the bathroom into the kitchen and threw his body down by his wine rack. He pulled out the bottles one by one, but they were all unopened. Without much consideration, he chose the finest bottle from his collection, a 1998 vintage, and set it down on the linoleum tile while he searched his drawers for a corkscrew, but all he could find were some knives and toothpicks.
By now the cotton ball was a breaking dam, and Marty's liquefied brain was seeping down his neck and unto his favorite shirt. He mumbled and moaned as he grabbed the wine bottle and headed down the hall and out his front door. Bottle in hand, he stumbled like a drunken zombie across his lawn and then his neighbor's, almost tripping over the Sunday paper. Two cars driving slowly through the neighborhood almost collided as their drivers gasped at the sight.
Marty charged up the lone step onto the neighbor's porch and began pounding on the door. After three knocks he slapped at the doorbell. Unsure if he'd actually hit it, he slapped twice more. A moment later, with little sense of urgency, a man in a blue robe opened the door.
"What's going on, Marty? What brings you over to the ol' abode so early in the morning?" the robed man asked as he sipped from a steaming coffee cup.
"Corscrew," Marty shouted as he held up the wine bottle while pressing his other hand against the swollen cotton ball.
"I don't think you need to drink this early in the morning," the neighbor replied with a few hearty laughs.
"CORSCREW!" Marty screamed at the man, the force of his efforts causing a thick sludge of brain to ooze between his fingers and onto his neighbor's immaculate porch.
"What the hell?" With a horrified look, the neighbor slammed the door. Marty heard the man's hoarse screams echo around the foyer. He smashed the bottle of wine against the sidelight window, the shards of glass piercing the delicate flesh of his uncalloused hand. With blood seeping from his hand and brains gushing from his head, Marty staggered back to his house with the half-broken bottle dangling from his fingertips to do the next most logical thing: call 9-1-1.
Hunched over in a near bear crawl, Marty reentered his house and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and flipped it on. His fingers jabbed at the buttons until he finally dialed the right combination.
"9-1-1, what's your emergency?" he heard an operator say as he brought the phone to his good ear.
Before he could utter a response, he saw the handgun resting on the floor. He inhaled deeply the scent of fresh gunpowder. The phone slipped from his hand as he felt the small hole on the right side of his head. His body collapsed to the carpet and his wife smiled in the mirror.


- - -
Nathaniel Tower writes fiction, teaches English, and manages the online lit magazine Bartleby Snopes. His short fiction has appeared in over 100 online and print magazines. His story "The Oaten Hands" was named one of 190 notable stories by storySouth's Million Writers Award in 2009. His first novel, A Reason To Kill, is was released in July 2011 through MuseItUp Publishing. Visit him at www.bartlebysnopes.com/ntower.htm
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INSTRUCTION FOR CLASS

Contributor: Chad Stroup

- -
Do not attend class; it is a construct.
Cross the revolving threshold with a malleable mind.
What you absorb may or may not affect you profoundly.
You may think the man next to you is corporeal.
Caress his well-worn sweater.
It is the dressing of a corpse.
You may know in your mind's eye that the woman across the room is breathing.
Crumple a piece of paper and softly toss it at her.
It will bounce off her face as if she were made of wax.
You may believe that your professor is planting seeds in your mind.
He or she is digging shallow graves.
Determine for yourself what will be engraved in your headstone.


- - -
I am an MFA Creative Writing Student with a focus in fiction at San Diego State University. I enjoy twisting the possibilities of the darker side of fiction. I also run a blog at http://subvertbia.blogspot.com/
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Corduroy

Contributor: Ward Webb

- -
The gash in my forehead stung like a bitch. If it wasn’t so dark I’d be able to check my fingers to see how bloody it is; but it’s too dark in here. Dark and stale and hard to breathe. I don’t feel a lot of wetness on my fingers – so the cut shouldn’t be that bad.

The tire iron is wedged under my ribs – pressing into my side with each bump we hit. He was on paved asphalt for the longest time, but somewhere in the last five minutes he must have turned off. Now it feels like we’re on some kind of unpaved dirt road - one with an obnoxious amount of potholes. His speed is reckless. I can tell from the roaring thunder surrounding me. If only it wasn’t so dark...

I never saw him approach me. June and I had just checked out and were heading back to the car when she told me she’d forgotten to pick up her pads (the whole reason we’d even gone to the convenience store in the first place – I was always forgetting things, so was she – that’s why we were meant for each other). I climbed behind the steering wheel and gulped away at my Slushee. The tiny rocks of ice peppered my teeth and almost hurt with the chilled bite. I watched through the window as June thoughtfully selected the proper size, and made her way to the bored looking cashier. He never even looked up at her while he rang her up. I just sat in the car and watched and worked on my Shushee, as happy as an eight year old.

I never heard the breathing. I never even thought to turn around and check the backseat like they warn old ladies to do. I guess I should have, but it’s a little late now. If I ever escape from this guy, I’ll check my backseats from now on. I swear.

A particularly large dip in the road sent the iron tools below me clanking together. I gasped; the jolt had rocked the air from my lungs and sent it exploding out into the darkness like a sour burp. He couldn’t hear me. He couldn’t hear anything over that music. How someone can listen to German marching songs at full blast while driving down the interstate is beyond me. All of the tracks sounded the same to me. Heavy, driving drums and cheers in a foreign language where every word sounded hostile. I closed my eyes and tried not to panic as the car purred around me.

The thin, coarse carpeting mashed into my face and left an itchy imprint. The smell of oil and antifreeze was suffocating, but I kept quiet and thought about my next move.

There was nothing I could do lying here in the dark listening to the gravel of the road crunch a foot beneath where my head was positioned. I had to move fast when the trunk opened – I knew that much. He had not had the foresight to tie me up, which was my one and only hope. Knocking me unconscious hadn’t done anything to render his plan effective. I was crafty and as soon as that lid popped up, I’d be ready. Somehow.

I picked and pulled at the tiny, curling lip of carpet. I struggled to get it loose. Held in place and glued down by years of accumulated spills and pinned against the ground by the weight of my body – I tore and pulled as hard as I could and finally a tiny strip came loose. Being blind made things much harder.

Finally I felt the car bank to the right and then swoop off to the left. The sound of gravel disappeared. There was suddenly no sound at all – but I still felt the car moving, so we must be on grass. I struggled to find something to use as a weapon as we slowed down. The marching tunes died. The only sound was my breath.

The engine cut off like a roaring lion being shot in the face. Instantly the silence was overwhelming as I lay there listening to the muffled sound of footsteps coming my way.

The jingling of keys came through the heavy steel lid, one grinded its way into the lock and a tiny sliver of night peeked through. I’d had no time to pry the tire iron from under my ribs. I thought I had more time. I had to get up. I had to spring now, as soon as the lock released.

With my free legs I kicked against the bottom lid of the trunk as hard as I could and the sheet of metal flew up. Instantly I saw what lay in store for me. Framed by the edges of the car’s trunk, four men waited quietly behind the man that had appeared in my back seat. Standing there grinning and looking ominous; I’d seen enough of their faces in that fleeting glimpse to know I was in trouble.

My kidnapper stood there looking down on me like I was a particularly nice stuffed animal he had won at the fair.

“Told you I’d find us a nice ‘un,” he said over his shoulders to the others. “Now hand me the rope. We gone show this here boy how we do things down South.”

A triumphant murmur escaped the onlookers as the one furthest from the car tossed an old, dried bundle of rope to the man from the backseat. It landed at his feet with a thud but he never took his eyes off of me. Squinting and mouthing words I couldn’t hear, he sneered and his broken teeth glistened in the moonlight.

Suddenly I realized this wasn’t a game. It wasn’t some hate-crime-prank carried out by the local frat boys – this was serious. I saw the men behind him clearer again. My bloodshot eyes searched around looking for any chance I could cling to for hope – but there was none. Parked alone miles off the road in an abandoned, fallow field I was all alone. I was outnumbered. I was blocked from leaping from the trunk. If I tried to run, they could just overtake me in the car. There was no hope.

He ushered me out of the trunk by my throat with another ignorant slam about my religion spewing from his whiskey-cracked lips. As I stepped over the rim of the car’s boot – I looked off across the field. Plowed lines lay parallel, tilled and churned and ready to take the seed of another year, they covered the ground like corduroy in every direction.

I turned and faced my five attackers. I didn’t see men, I saw only the weapons they carried. As I pulled my right leg out of the trunk and stood up – the only thing I saw coming was the rope, a crowbar, a baseball bat, a short-stubby carving knife and a dirty old pistol.

The land shimmered in front of me and my feet suddenly felt like lead. I panted. Air choked off in my throat and tiny blue fish swam around everywhere, toying with my vision. I fainted and landed face down in the cool earth.

The last sound I heard were the footsteps approaching; and that heavy, lustful breathing from the five men.


- - -
Some of my other work has appeared in Deep South Magazine as well as Dew On The Kudzu.
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