Jeremy Thompson's Blog, page 5
July 3, 2021
“Festerweights: A Tartarean Prizefight”
Here’s my story “Festerweights: A Tartarean Prizefight,” which appeared in Disturbed Digest: September 2018 before going out of print.
Festerweights: A Tartarean Prizefight
by Jeremy Thompson
One night, a biological anomaly wandered into a zoo after hours. Unnoticed by poker-playing security officers, the bizarre creature had the run of the place.
Having only recently escaped from a deranged scientist’s lair—where it had existed for years, enduring vivisections and genetic engineering—the anomaly possessed no intentions beyond satiating its appetite. Slavering, smelling warm-blooded repast, it moaned anticipatorily. So many caged creatures. Which one would it choose?
And oh, what a sight was the aforementioned escapee. In homage to Buer, five goat legs ringed its body. Like P.T. Barnum’s “mermaid,” it had the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish. What appeared at first glance to be fluorescent green fur was in fact more akin to sea anemone tentacles. Mimicking a manticore, its mouth contained triple-rowed fangs, while its jagged quills and clawlike fingernails were those of a chupacabra. Indeed, its creator had been quite imaginative.
Exploring the premises with its strange loping gait, the anomaly bypassed gardens and aviaries, restrooms and statuary. Apes might have been slayed had they not begun to throw feces, and the reptiles smelled too unappetizing.
Finally, scenting a delicacy unparalleled, the anomaly drew to a halt. Towering posts braced stainless steel mesh, imprisoning tigers within their enclosure. In that domain of heated rocks and climbing trees, with its ponded epicenter and tall, swaying grass, two apex predators dwelt. Recently mated, they’d soon be progenitors; inside the tigress, four cubs were gestating. Her muscles ached so tremendously that she could hardly move.
Sighting the feline’s tawny, black-striped form, the anomaly realized that no other meal would satisfy. Attempting to leap through the mesh, though, the lab escapee was rebuffed. Toppling headfirst into concrete, it endured a collision that resounded through its brainpan. Its subsequent howl terminated in a sputter.
Blinking stars from its sight, the beast wobbled back to the mesh. Attempting to pull the latticework to shreds, it learned that it lacked the upper body strength. One last option remained: the anomaly’s triple-rowed teeth. More durable than diamonds, they chewed. And lo, the steel mesh fell to tatters. Squeezing its bulk into the newborn aperture, the anomaly nearly grinned.
Fatigued, lying on her side with her distended abdomen protruding, the tigress registered its approach. Unwilling to fight and unable to flee, peering warily betwixt grass blades, she awaited the inevitable. In eight days, her cubs were due a birthing. Were they instead fated to endure grim digestion?
Exuberant at the notion of warm meat in its gullet, the anomaly grew careless. Sparing no thought for the tigress’ mate, heedless of all hazards, it unleashed a most jubilant sonance.
But the male tiger had observed the anomaly’s entry; though captive, the beast hadn’t yet succumbed to docility. Ergo, even as the anomaly approached the inert tigress, her mate silently slinked through the tall grass behind it.
As the anomaly’s jaws opened up as wide as they could and dipped toward the tigress’ flank, the stealthy male tiger pounced. Though two-dozen feet distant, he cleared the intervening distance with a singular leap.
Alerted to the male’s presence by his pre-jump roar, the anomaly found that its reflexes were too slow to spare it from being broadsided. Yelping, it was dashed to the soil. The tiger continued on the offensive, his claw swipe slashing two simian eyes, instantly blinding the anomaly. While the anomaly shrieked woefully, the tiger clamped sharp teeth around its forearm. Ripping a chunk of flesh free, with minimal chewing, he swallowed it down.
To its credit, the anomaly managed to claw furrows into the tiger’s neck whilst they tussled, but spurred by surging adrenaline, the great feline hardly felt them. Even when cloven hoof kicks connected with his cheek and sagittal crest, the tiger shook his head briefly, then continued his attack. Soon, his forelimbs pinned the anomaly, and his face dipped for the kill. Within seconds, the tiger had torn out the anomaly’s throat.
As its life force gushed to the grass, the anomaly’s face slackened. Sight passed from its eyes; its last breath left its lungs. Though it had planned on much gluttony, it turned out to be the entrée.
And oh, what a meal! After licking away all the corpse blood, the victorious feline could hardly believe his own taste buds. Used to a steady diet of beef, rabbits and chicken, the tiger had no point of reference for the raw meat he swallowed down. So exotic were the flavors, they left him exulted. Indeed, for the first time in his life, the tiger hardly felt captive.
Eventually, he dragged the anomaly’s corpse to his mate, allowing her to share his good fortune. Maneuvering her bloated physique into a feasting position, the tigress dined in tandem with her champion. Together, they teeth-stripped the carcass of all edible matter, including its organs. An odd sort of romance found them sharing the anomaly’s heart. With rough tongues, they scraped its skeleton clean.
Beyond that peculiar bone configuration, only a small bit of the monster’s tentacled coating survived, having been claw-severed from the male tiger’s initial pounce. Unnoticed by the satiated cats, that tidbit began wriggling, spurred by an inbuilt ability.
You see, the anomaly’s creator had wide-ranging influences, and thus had thought to incorporate a hydra’s stem cell proliferation into the anomaly’s design. Ergo, the anomaly slowly began to regenerate, its legs, arms, tail, and head emerging from that leftover coating—only this time, quite miniaturized.
Barely an inch in height now, the resurrected anomaly escaped the tigers’ notice. Making its loping escape from their enclosure, it vowed never to return.
* * *
Two miles down the road, a signless, single-story brick building stood. The structure appeared to be doorless. Indeed, only the activation of a singular mechanism spurred a wall segment to slide out and swing on clandestine hinges—permitting entrances and exits. Thus, junkies, hookers, dealers, gangbangers, human traffickers, and other assorted miscreants were able to patronize an establishment sordid enough to redefine the term “dive bar.”
Trickling into and out of that realm day and night, to an outside observer, its clientele would have seemed far too measly to generate profits. Indeed, were it limited to the soiled lucre those undesirables tossed upon the bartop, the enterprise would have folded ages ago. But the business’ most valuable customers arrived by a route that eschewed sidewalks and alleyways, in fact. Impossibly, those big spenders entered and exited through the massive wood-fired oven that occupied much of the kitchen.
The blackest of black ovens, the compartment was quantum linked to a fiery netherworld, permitting demons to come and go as they pleased. Paying tabs and tipping with the wealth of fallen empires, they’d made the bar’s owner a billionaire, at the cost of his soul.
In appearance, those hellish patrons were especially frightful. Their red-plated forms were indestructible, as were their daggerlike teeth. Skeletal wings protruded from their shoulder blades; ebon antelope horns jutted from their skulls. As they were taller than basketball superstars and more muscular than bodybuilders, only the demons’ constant conviviality kept the bar’s human clientele from fleeing, forever traumatized.
Spending all of their hell hours torturing the damned, in fact, the very last thing that the demons desired was to waste any of their earthside time working. Ergo, they conversed with those they’d be tormenting in due time, bought them drinks and taught them small feats of necromancy.
Naturally, it took something special to lure demons from perdition. They certainly weren’t ascending for Bud Light and chicken wings. No siree. To satisfy the demons’ varied cravings, a secret menu was required. For example, a flagon filled with nun tears was always on hand, along with the sex organs of dead celebrities, panda tails, and placenta jerky. Though the demons dined well, such refection wasn’t always enough. Sometimes live humans were required for certain services.
One such service provider was known as White Lily. Having complied with some of humanity’s most outlandish requests in her four decades as a streetwalker, the woman remained unperturbed at all times, even when performing acts that would render most folks terror-catatonic. Having copulated with all creatures great and small, and catered to some of the sickest fetishes imaginable, the woman was so broken in that even demonic requests left her unfazed. Thus, she often found herself in the bar’s curtained-off back room, where she earned more in five minutes than most do in a month.
That night, White Lily’s task was less sickening than those of most evenings. Sure, her lips pressed demon flesh as she sucked like a shop vac, breathing through her nose. But this time, a blowjob wasn’t her agenda. White Lily’s client, a vexation-seething demon whose name resembled the hiccupy sound that dogs make when their dreams turn against them, had something else in need of a draining.
A boil it was, the size of an infant skull. The swelling had originated the previous week, when the demon waged sexual combat against a creature even more frightening than he was. Splattered with a she-nightmare’s fetid fluids, the demon had developed a pus-filled infection that left his forearm alternating between agony and total numbness. White Lily’s task for the night, which she’d already been paid for, was to suck every bit of pus from the swelling.
Though every second in which that gunk met her taste receptors felt as if she were gargling wasps and made her eyes stream salty tears, White Lily had always considered herself a consummate professional. Ergo, she sucked for long minutes, spitting mouthful after mouthful of pus into the back room’s steel wastebasket. She sucked despite intensifying agony, until her skull’s contents dissolved into viscous fluid, which then oozed from her face holes.
Chuckling as the whore gurgle-gasped herself deathward, the demon thanked his Dark Lord that she’d sucked the boil empty before passing. “Feels better already,” he grunted, rising to fetch a custodian.
Soon, what remained of White Lily’s body—slowly imploding, though it was—was dragged from the room.
Normally, at the bar, the suddenly deceased became that night’s special. Into noxious stew, they went, a communal concoction sampled by every barfly who knew what was good for them. But White Lily’s corpse was far too virulent for consumption. In fact, it had to be disposed of with each and every precaution due toxic waste.
As her smirking customer rode the flame train back to hell, White Lily’s body was consigned to a miles-distant rotary kiln, wherein merciless temperatures rendered it harmless.
After being cleaned and disinfected, the back room went unmonitored for some hours, so as to give its foul death stench time to dissipate. Ergo, Earth’s strangest gestation went unnoticed, inside the very same wastebasket in which White Lily had spat the demon’s fetid boil pus. Seeping into garbage strata—used needles, empty beer bottles, cockroach husks, castoff condoms, and morsels of meals best left unpondered—the boil pus inspired them to fuse, and pulse with a mockery of existence.
Prior to being tossed, those items had absorbed enough human and demon aura to mimic sentience. Amalgamating into a rudimentary-featured entity, a wide-mouthed quadruped, the trash fusion taught itself to think.
Rolling out of the wastebasket, the creature possessed just enough intellect to realize that it remained incomplete. Some extra element was required to grant it a purpose.
Crawling unnoticed into a crackhead’s purse while she used the bathroom—so as to escape from the bar with her later via the establishment’s secret exit—the fusion decided to seek such an element.
* * *
It is a sad state of affairs when a demon bar is the safest site on the block, but the fusion soon learned that such was the case.
As she stumbled toward her sister’s tenement, to claim her usual couch space, the crackhead realized that what she’d mistaken for shadows were in reality two darkly dressed fellows. Pantyhose over their faces flattened and widened their noses. Both men were tall and quite heavyset.
“Yo, baby,” one exclaimed, skulking aside her. “Where the hell are you goin’ at this time of night?”
“Fuck off,” hissed the crackhead, quickening her pace, wishing that she’d stayed at the bar for another four drinks.
“The mouth on this one,” the other man chuckled, moving to flank her.
Most fortunately for the crackhead, she yet retained rapid reflexes. As her rightward accoster went to pinch her backside, she swung her purse into his chin, rocking his head back. Directing a second purse swing at her leftward assaulter, she had the bag tugged from her grip.
Forced to choose between finances and health, the crackhead sprinted down the street, kicking her high heels off as she fled. Choosing between finances and brutality, the two thugs chose the latter, casting the purse aside without bothering to learn why it was so heavy.
Thus, the fusion found its chance to enter the wide world around it. Rolling onto the sidewalk, it quickly crawled into the shadows, clinking its beer legs all the while. Somewhere in the cityscape, completion awaited. The fusion had faith in that notion, perhaps even religion.
Rolling and lurching, the strange entity avoided all proximate humans, though most of them were so inebriated, they’d have laughed the sight off anyway.
* * *
So there they were, two refugees from a nightmare’s bestiary, creeping from opposite ends of the city, due to converge. And what would prove alluring enough to draw such grotesques together? As is often the case, a woman was involved.
Not just any female in fact, but a thirty-two year old vagrant sleeping amid urban park shrubbery, curled up in a sleeping bag with her thumb in her mouth. Dillion was her name, and aside from her gross, gooey pinkeye and a half-dozen rashes, the gal was in remarkably good health. She jogged every morning, and knew the best outdoor eateries to snatch leftovers from. Years ago, she’d given up drinking and drugs, even her nicotine fixes. With her battered acoustic guitar, Dillion now sang folk songs for donated change. Once she gave up on the mad notion of making a living as a performer, she would earn minimum wage somewhere, easily enough.
Approaching from one side of the city, the inch-high anomaly loped along on its goat legs, chattering its triple-rowed fangs, undulating its fish tail. Its sharply nailed hands clenched and unclenched, slicing shallow grooves into its palms, which immediately healed. Since regenerating in miniature and escaping the tigers, the organism still hadn’t fed.
Though the slumbering Dillion’s scent wasn’t quite as alluring as that of the hated felines, her unconsciousness made the anomaly’s chance of dining that much greater. If it immediately gnawed through her carotid arteries, by the time the gal awakened, she’d already be dying.
In fact, Dillion had the misfortune of occupying her city’s current worst address, because from her opposite side, the fusion was approaching. Its lips of spoiled meat curled up into a grin; its condom eyes furled and unfurled. Sighting Dillion, the fusion briefly stood up on its hind legs to applaud with beer bottle appendages. Finally, it had found its missing element.
You see, the fusion smelled a womb, a uterus most robust. Possessing enough race memory to have a dim notion of pregnancy, the fusion decided that it absolutely must crawl within Dillion.
So there the good lady was, imperiled from two directions. Indeed, her prognosis was awful. Would she be tasted or occupied? Read on to find out!
* * *
Finally, two of Earth’s oddest organisms converged. Just as the anomaly leaned over Dillion’s neck, to chew through it like the most vicious of vampires, the fusion sensed the good lady’s imperilment and sprang into action. With one bottle appendage, which immediately shattered, it struck a staggering blow against the anomaly.
Broadsided again, thrown several feet sidewise, the anomaly mentally manifested a tiger. Turning toward its attacker, expecting a feline, it became perplexed. Though portions of the fusion’s frame were fleshy, that meat was rotted, unappetizing. Even in motion, the entity seemed never to have lived. No lungs respired within it; no heart pumped blood through veins. Indeed, there seemed little to the fusion beyond a foul sort of alchemy, a clotted galvanization.
Regarding the anomaly, the fusion bothered not with whys and wherefores. Indeed, it sensed little deviation between the organism and the other creatures it had skulked past: the city’s canines, cats, rodents, cockroaches, and skittering spiders. It would not play with its kill. Its now jagged glass swiper would spill the thing’s guts to the soil, and then the fusion would be gestating within a dream stasis, growing into whatever its final form might be.
Angry at again being caught unawares, the anomaly leapt forward and clawed cockroach husks from the fusion’s trash physique. Biting a condom eye from its face, which had dipped down to scrutinize, the anomaly spat the foul thing to the ground and gagged.
Adapting for combat, the fusion pushed two objects from its forehead: two syringes as horns, their hypodermic needles dripping tainted blood. With a head-butt, it injected virulence into the anomaly, infective enough to kill most living creatures with utmost gruesomeness.
Fortunately for the anomaly, its proliferating stem cells made it invulnerable to infection. Even its puncture wounds healed immediately.
* * *
Unbeknownst to the combatants, Dillion had awoken. Stunned immobile, she watched the two monsters take one another’s measure. She wanted to scream, but feared to draw their attention. Had she known their intentions, she might have wet herself.
The fusion possessed one singular advantage over its opponent. Devoid of functional nociceptors, that heap of half-alive garbage felt no pain. Even as clumps of its body were torn away by a claw flurry, the fusion jabbed its broken bottle appendage into the anomaly, and twisted until the little beast shrieked.
Recovering her senses, Dillion hurried elsewhere, unnoticed by both combatants. Soon, she’d be shouting her story to disbelieving vagrants.
* * *
For hours, the horrid beasts fought, with the anomaly healing from every inflicted injury and the fusion indifferent to damage. As dawn crept into the horizon, they continued, indefatigable. Indeed, they might have battled for weeks, were it not for a fresh arrival: no less than Beelzebub himself, that supreme evil eminence.
Having emerged from a flame door that sprouted in empty air, he watched the fight for some minutes, then chuckled.
So deep was his baritone that both combatants paused to regard him. Standing roughly twenty feet tall, his red personage was a sight to be seen. Beelzebub’s horns, tail and teeth, even the tops of his ears, were jagged enough to shred souls. His lengthy, bifurcated tongue flicked so quickly that it remained a perpetual blur. Fire shone through his eyes, which seemed sculpted of coal.
Nude but for a black loincloth, Beelzebub crouched to inspect the two beings. Nodding with satisfaction, he made them a proposition.
“Child of refuse and demon pus…spawn of mad science. You battle over an insignificant female who has already fled.” Pointing to the fusion, he intoned, “I offer you innumerable wombs to inhabit. Within them, you can gestate to your heart’s content.” Nodding toward the anomaly, he declared, “I offer you a smorgasbord of sinners. You need never go hungry, for the rest of eternity.”
The two monsters glanced to one another, and then back to Beelzebub, understanding his words on a level most primal. “Indeed, in the interest of innovative torment, I wish to adopt you as pets,” he assured the twosome. “In hell, you shall exist as favored creatures, my supreme persecutors. Or remain here on Earth, to dwell in the shadows, your desires ever-thwarted. The choice is yours.”
Smirking, Beelzebub returned to hell through his flame door. Moments later, it dissipated behind him.
* * *
Down the street, Dillion shrieked into impassive, weathered ears, “You bastards! Why won’t you believe me?” Offered a bottle of Night Train, she slapped it away.
In the nameless dive bar, humans damned themselves by degrees, as per usual. Having just learned of his destined afterlife, a gigolo wailed in the tavern’s curtained-off back room.
And at the site where a regenerating anomaly had battled that which can’t be slayed, the rising sun revealed only scorched grass.
Festerweights: A Tartarean Prizefight
by Jeremy Thompson
One night, a biological anomaly wandered into a zoo after hours. Unnoticed by poker-playing security officers, the bizarre creature had the run of the place.
Having only recently escaped from a deranged scientist’s lair—where it had existed for years, enduring vivisections and genetic engineering—the anomaly possessed no intentions beyond satiating its appetite. Slavering, smelling warm-blooded repast, it moaned anticipatorily. So many caged creatures. Which one would it choose?
And oh, what a sight was the aforementioned escapee. In homage to Buer, five goat legs ringed its body. Like P.T. Barnum’s “mermaid,” it had the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish. What appeared at first glance to be fluorescent green fur was in fact more akin to sea anemone tentacles. Mimicking a manticore, its mouth contained triple-rowed fangs, while its jagged quills and clawlike fingernails were those of a chupacabra. Indeed, its creator had been quite imaginative.
Exploring the premises with its strange loping gait, the anomaly bypassed gardens and aviaries, restrooms and statuary. Apes might have been slayed had they not begun to throw feces, and the reptiles smelled too unappetizing.
Finally, scenting a delicacy unparalleled, the anomaly drew to a halt. Towering posts braced stainless steel mesh, imprisoning tigers within their enclosure. In that domain of heated rocks and climbing trees, with its ponded epicenter and tall, swaying grass, two apex predators dwelt. Recently mated, they’d soon be progenitors; inside the tigress, four cubs were gestating. Her muscles ached so tremendously that she could hardly move.
Sighting the feline’s tawny, black-striped form, the anomaly realized that no other meal would satisfy. Attempting to leap through the mesh, though, the lab escapee was rebuffed. Toppling headfirst into concrete, it endured a collision that resounded through its brainpan. Its subsequent howl terminated in a sputter.
Blinking stars from its sight, the beast wobbled back to the mesh. Attempting to pull the latticework to shreds, it learned that it lacked the upper body strength. One last option remained: the anomaly’s triple-rowed teeth. More durable than diamonds, they chewed. And lo, the steel mesh fell to tatters. Squeezing its bulk into the newborn aperture, the anomaly nearly grinned.
Fatigued, lying on her side with her distended abdomen protruding, the tigress registered its approach. Unwilling to fight and unable to flee, peering warily betwixt grass blades, she awaited the inevitable. In eight days, her cubs were due a birthing. Were they instead fated to endure grim digestion?
Exuberant at the notion of warm meat in its gullet, the anomaly grew careless. Sparing no thought for the tigress’ mate, heedless of all hazards, it unleashed a most jubilant sonance.
But the male tiger had observed the anomaly’s entry; though captive, the beast hadn’t yet succumbed to docility. Ergo, even as the anomaly approached the inert tigress, her mate silently slinked through the tall grass behind it.
As the anomaly’s jaws opened up as wide as they could and dipped toward the tigress’ flank, the stealthy male tiger pounced. Though two-dozen feet distant, he cleared the intervening distance with a singular leap.
Alerted to the male’s presence by his pre-jump roar, the anomaly found that its reflexes were too slow to spare it from being broadsided. Yelping, it was dashed to the soil. The tiger continued on the offensive, his claw swipe slashing two simian eyes, instantly blinding the anomaly. While the anomaly shrieked woefully, the tiger clamped sharp teeth around its forearm. Ripping a chunk of flesh free, with minimal chewing, he swallowed it down.
To its credit, the anomaly managed to claw furrows into the tiger’s neck whilst they tussled, but spurred by surging adrenaline, the great feline hardly felt them. Even when cloven hoof kicks connected with his cheek and sagittal crest, the tiger shook his head briefly, then continued his attack. Soon, his forelimbs pinned the anomaly, and his face dipped for the kill. Within seconds, the tiger had torn out the anomaly’s throat.
As its life force gushed to the grass, the anomaly’s face slackened. Sight passed from its eyes; its last breath left its lungs. Though it had planned on much gluttony, it turned out to be the entrée.
And oh, what a meal! After licking away all the corpse blood, the victorious feline could hardly believe his own taste buds. Used to a steady diet of beef, rabbits and chicken, the tiger had no point of reference for the raw meat he swallowed down. So exotic were the flavors, they left him exulted. Indeed, for the first time in his life, the tiger hardly felt captive.
Eventually, he dragged the anomaly’s corpse to his mate, allowing her to share his good fortune. Maneuvering her bloated physique into a feasting position, the tigress dined in tandem with her champion. Together, they teeth-stripped the carcass of all edible matter, including its organs. An odd sort of romance found them sharing the anomaly’s heart. With rough tongues, they scraped its skeleton clean.
Beyond that peculiar bone configuration, only a small bit of the monster’s tentacled coating survived, having been claw-severed from the male tiger’s initial pounce. Unnoticed by the satiated cats, that tidbit began wriggling, spurred by an inbuilt ability.
You see, the anomaly’s creator had wide-ranging influences, and thus had thought to incorporate a hydra’s stem cell proliferation into the anomaly’s design. Ergo, the anomaly slowly began to regenerate, its legs, arms, tail, and head emerging from that leftover coating—only this time, quite miniaturized.
Barely an inch in height now, the resurrected anomaly escaped the tigers’ notice. Making its loping escape from their enclosure, it vowed never to return.
* * *
Two miles down the road, a signless, single-story brick building stood. The structure appeared to be doorless. Indeed, only the activation of a singular mechanism spurred a wall segment to slide out and swing on clandestine hinges—permitting entrances and exits. Thus, junkies, hookers, dealers, gangbangers, human traffickers, and other assorted miscreants were able to patronize an establishment sordid enough to redefine the term “dive bar.”
Trickling into and out of that realm day and night, to an outside observer, its clientele would have seemed far too measly to generate profits. Indeed, were it limited to the soiled lucre those undesirables tossed upon the bartop, the enterprise would have folded ages ago. But the business’ most valuable customers arrived by a route that eschewed sidewalks and alleyways, in fact. Impossibly, those big spenders entered and exited through the massive wood-fired oven that occupied much of the kitchen.
The blackest of black ovens, the compartment was quantum linked to a fiery netherworld, permitting demons to come and go as they pleased. Paying tabs and tipping with the wealth of fallen empires, they’d made the bar’s owner a billionaire, at the cost of his soul.
In appearance, those hellish patrons were especially frightful. Their red-plated forms were indestructible, as were their daggerlike teeth. Skeletal wings protruded from their shoulder blades; ebon antelope horns jutted from their skulls. As they were taller than basketball superstars and more muscular than bodybuilders, only the demons’ constant conviviality kept the bar’s human clientele from fleeing, forever traumatized.
Spending all of their hell hours torturing the damned, in fact, the very last thing that the demons desired was to waste any of their earthside time working. Ergo, they conversed with those they’d be tormenting in due time, bought them drinks and taught them small feats of necromancy.
Naturally, it took something special to lure demons from perdition. They certainly weren’t ascending for Bud Light and chicken wings. No siree. To satisfy the demons’ varied cravings, a secret menu was required. For example, a flagon filled with nun tears was always on hand, along with the sex organs of dead celebrities, panda tails, and placenta jerky. Though the demons dined well, such refection wasn’t always enough. Sometimes live humans were required for certain services.
One such service provider was known as White Lily. Having complied with some of humanity’s most outlandish requests in her four decades as a streetwalker, the woman remained unperturbed at all times, even when performing acts that would render most folks terror-catatonic. Having copulated with all creatures great and small, and catered to some of the sickest fetishes imaginable, the woman was so broken in that even demonic requests left her unfazed. Thus, she often found herself in the bar’s curtained-off back room, where she earned more in five minutes than most do in a month.
That night, White Lily’s task was less sickening than those of most evenings. Sure, her lips pressed demon flesh as she sucked like a shop vac, breathing through her nose. But this time, a blowjob wasn’t her agenda. White Lily’s client, a vexation-seething demon whose name resembled the hiccupy sound that dogs make when their dreams turn against them, had something else in need of a draining.
A boil it was, the size of an infant skull. The swelling had originated the previous week, when the demon waged sexual combat against a creature even more frightening than he was. Splattered with a she-nightmare’s fetid fluids, the demon had developed a pus-filled infection that left his forearm alternating between agony and total numbness. White Lily’s task for the night, which she’d already been paid for, was to suck every bit of pus from the swelling.
Though every second in which that gunk met her taste receptors felt as if she were gargling wasps and made her eyes stream salty tears, White Lily had always considered herself a consummate professional. Ergo, she sucked for long minutes, spitting mouthful after mouthful of pus into the back room’s steel wastebasket. She sucked despite intensifying agony, until her skull’s contents dissolved into viscous fluid, which then oozed from her face holes.
Chuckling as the whore gurgle-gasped herself deathward, the demon thanked his Dark Lord that she’d sucked the boil empty before passing. “Feels better already,” he grunted, rising to fetch a custodian.
Soon, what remained of White Lily’s body—slowly imploding, though it was—was dragged from the room.
Normally, at the bar, the suddenly deceased became that night’s special. Into noxious stew, they went, a communal concoction sampled by every barfly who knew what was good for them. But White Lily’s corpse was far too virulent for consumption. In fact, it had to be disposed of with each and every precaution due toxic waste.
As her smirking customer rode the flame train back to hell, White Lily’s body was consigned to a miles-distant rotary kiln, wherein merciless temperatures rendered it harmless.
After being cleaned and disinfected, the back room went unmonitored for some hours, so as to give its foul death stench time to dissipate. Ergo, Earth’s strangest gestation went unnoticed, inside the very same wastebasket in which White Lily had spat the demon’s fetid boil pus. Seeping into garbage strata—used needles, empty beer bottles, cockroach husks, castoff condoms, and morsels of meals best left unpondered—the boil pus inspired them to fuse, and pulse with a mockery of existence.
Prior to being tossed, those items had absorbed enough human and demon aura to mimic sentience. Amalgamating into a rudimentary-featured entity, a wide-mouthed quadruped, the trash fusion taught itself to think.
Rolling out of the wastebasket, the creature possessed just enough intellect to realize that it remained incomplete. Some extra element was required to grant it a purpose.
Crawling unnoticed into a crackhead’s purse while she used the bathroom—so as to escape from the bar with her later via the establishment’s secret exit—the fusion decided to seek such an element.
* * *
It is a sad state of affairs when a demon bar is the safest site on the block, but the fusion soon learned that such was the case.
As she stumbled toward her sister’s tenement, to claim her usual couch space, the crackhead realized that what she’d mistaken for shadows were in reality two darkly dressed fellows. Pantyhose over their faces flattened and widened their noses. Both men were tall and quite heavyset.
“Yo, baby,” one exclaimed, skulking aside her. “Where the hell are you goin’ at this time of night?”
“Fuck off,” hissed the crackhead, quickening her pace, wishing that she’d stayed at the bar for another four drinks.
“The mouth on this one,” the other man chuckled, moving to flank her.
Most fortunately for the crackhead, she yet retained rapid reflexes. As her rightward accoster went to pinch her backside, she swung her purse into his chin, rocking his head back. Directing a second purse swing at her leftward assaulter, she had the bag tugged from her grip.
Forced to choose between finances and health, the crackhead sprinted down the street, kicking her high heels off as she fled. Choosing between finances and brutality, the two thugs chose the latter, casting the purse aside without bothering to learn why it was so heavy.
Thus, the fusion found its chance to enter the wide world around it. Rolling onto the sidewalk, it quickly crawled into the shadows, clinking its beer legs all the while. Somewhere in the cityscape, completion awaited. The fusion had faith in that notion, perhaps even religion.
Rolling and lurching, the strange entity avoided all proximate humans, though most of them were so inebriated, they’d have laughed the sight off anyway.
* * *
So there they were, two refugees from a nightmare’s bestiary, creeping from opposite ends of the city, due to converge. And what would prove alluring enough to draw such grotesques together? As is often the case, a woman was involved.
Not just any female in fact, but a thirty-two year old vagrant sleeping amid urban park shrubbery, curled up in a sleeping bag with her thumb in her mouth. Dillion was her name, and aside from her gross, gooey pinkeye and a half-dozen rashes, the gal was in remarkably good health. She jogged every morning, and knew the best outdoor eateries to snatch leftovers from. Years ago, she’d given up drinking and drugs, even her nicotine fixes. With her battered acoustic guitar, Dillion now sang folk songs for donated change. Once she gave up on the mad notion of making a living as a performer, she would earn minimum wage somewhere, easily enough.
Approaching from one side of the city, the inch-high anomaly loped along on its goat legs, chattering its triple-rowed fangs, undulating its fish tail. Its sharply nailed hands clenched and unclenched, slicing shallow grooves into its palms, which immediately healed. Since regenerating in miniature and escaping the tigers, the organism still hadn’t fed.
Though the slumbering Dillion’s scent wasn’t quite as alluring as that of the hated felines, her unconsciousness made the anomaly’s chance of dining that much greater. If it immediately gnawed through her carotid arteries, by the time the gal awakened, she’d already be dying.
In fact, Dillion had the misfortune of occupying her city’s current worst address, because from her opposite side, the fusion was approaching. Its lips of spoiled meat curled up into a grin; its condom eyes furled and unfurled. Sighting Dillion, the fusion briefly stood up on its hind legs to applaud with beer bottle appendages. Finally, it had found its missing element.
You see, the fusion smelled a womb, a uterus most robust. Possessing enough race memory to have a dim notion of pregnancy, the fusion decided that it absolutely must crawl within Dillion.
So there the good lady was, imperiled from two directions. Indeed, her prognosis was awful. Would she be tasted or occupied? Read on to find out!
* * *
Finally, two of Earth’s oddest organisms converged. Just as the anomaly leaned over Dillion’s neck, to chew through it like the most vicious of vampires, the fusion sensed the good lady’s imperilment and sprang into action. With one bottle appendage, which immediately shattered, it struck a staggering blow against the anomaly.
Broadsided again, thrown several feet sidewise, the anomaly mentally manifested a tiger. Turning toward its attacker, expecting a feline, it became perplexed. Though portions of the fusion’s frame were fleshy, that meat was rotted, unappetizing. Even in motion, the entity seemed never to have lived. No lungs respired within it; no heart pumped blood through veins. Indeed, there seemed little to the fusion beyond a foul sort of alchemy, a clotted galvanization.
Regarding the anomaly, the fusion bothered not with whys and wherefores. Indeed, it sensed little deviation between the organism and the other creatures it had skulked past: the city’s canines, cats, rodents, cockroaches, and skittering spiders. It would not play with its kill. Its now jagged glass swiper would spill the thing’s guts to the soil, and then the fusion would be gestating within a dream stasis, growing into whatever its final form might be.
Angry at again being caught unawares, the anomaly leapt forward and clawed cockroach husks from the fusion’s trash physique. Biting a condom eye from its face, which had dipped down to scrutinize, the anomaly spat the foul thing to the ground and gagged.
Adapting for combat, the fusion pushed two objects from its forehead: two syringes as horns, their hypodermic needles dripping tainted blood. With a head-butt, it injected virulence into the anomaly, infective enough to kill most living creatures with utmost gruesomeness.
Fortunately for the anomaly, its proliferating stem cells made it invulnerable to infection. Even its puncture wounds healed immediately.
* * *
Unbeknownst to the combatants, Dillion had awoken. Stunned immobile, she watched the two monsters take one another’s measure. She wanted to scream, but feared to draw their attention. Had she known their intentions, she might have wet herself.
The fusion possessed one singular advantage over its opponent. Devoid of functional nociceptors, that heap of half-alive garbage felt no pain. Even as clumps of its body were torn away by a claw flurry, the fusion jabbed its broken bottle appendage into the anomaly, and twisted until the little beast shrieked.
Recovering her senses, Dillion hurried elsewhere, unnoticed by both combatants. Soon, she’d be shouting her story to disbelieving vagrants.
* * *
For hours, the horrid beasts fought, with the anomaly healing from every inflicted injury and the fusion indifferent to damage. As dawn crept into the horizon, they continued, indefatigable. Indeed, they might have battled for weeks, were it not for a fresh arrival: no less than Beelzebub himself, that supreme evil eminence.
Having emerged from a flame door that sprouted in empty air, he watched the fight for some minutes, then chuckled.
So deep was his baritone that both combatants paused to regard him. Standing roughly twenty feet tall, his red personage was a sight to be seen. Beelzebub’s horns, tail and teeth, even the tops of his ears, were jagged enough to shred souls. His lengthy, bifurcated tongue flicked so quickly that it remained a perpetual blur. Fire shone through his eyes, which seemed sculpted of coal.
Nude but for a black loincloth, Beelzebub crouched to inspect the two beings. Nodding with satisfaction, he made them a proposition.
“Child of refuse and demon pus…spawn of mad science. You battle over an insignificant female who has already fled.” Pointing to the fusion, he intoned, “I offer you innumerable wombs to inhabit. Within them, you can gestate to your heart’s content.” Nodding toward the anomaly, he declared, “I offer you a smorgasbord of sinners. You need never go hungry, for the rest of eternity.”
The two monsters glanced to one another, and then back to Beelzebub, understanding his words on a level most primal. “Indeed, in the interest of innovative torment, I wish to adopt you as pets,” he assured the twosome. “In hell, you shall exist as favored creatures, my supreme persecutors. Or remain here on Earth, to dwell in the shadows, your desires ever-thwarted. The choice is yours.”
Smirking, Beelzebub returned to hell through his flame door. Moments later, it dissipated behind him.
* * *
Down the street, Dillion shrieked into impassive, weathered ears, “You bastards! Why won’t you believe me?” Offered a bottle of Night Train, she slapped it away.
In the nameless dive bar, humans damned themselves by degrees, as per usual. Having just learned of his destined afterlife, a gigolo wailed in the tavern’s curtained-off back room.
And at the site where a regenerating anomaly had battled that which can’t be slayed, the rising sun revealed only scorched grass.
July 1, 2021
“A Myth We Call Emptiness”
Here’s my story “A Myth We Call Emptiness,” which first appeared in the anthology Walk Hand In Hand Into Extinction: Stories Inspired by True Detective. There’s also a great narrated version available for free via The Night’s End: https://www.nightsendpodcast.com/podc...
A Myth We Call Emptiness
by Jeremy Thompson
That morning, a marker-scrawled message shrieked ANNIVERSARY from the dry erase board on Gail’s refrigerator—red traced over with black, perhaps to obfuscate evidence of a trembling hand. Thirteen years to the day, it was.
Escaping the cityscape—and its twice-baked, putrefying garbage miasma, thick enough to chew—Gail journeyed to a miles-distant streambed, long-dried, whose malevolent ambiance had survived time’s passage undiminished.
* * *
Rustling in gelid wind, weeping willows hem her in near-entirely, encompassing all but the pitted dirt road she’d arrived by. Jagged-leafed Sambucus cerulea specimens discard summer berries. Splitting in tomorrow’s sunlight, they’ll discharge blue-black pus. No insect songs sound. Perhaps the night has digested them.
Seated upon polished stones, listening for echoes of the liquid susurrus that had been, Gail exists—spotlit by headlights, oblivious to the fact that her station wagon’s battery shall soon perish. Maliciously ebon is the night, an oily cloud penumbra enshrouding the moon and stars.
Sucking Zippo flame into her cigarette, Gail wonders, Where is she? This was her stupid idea. What the fuck? Wishing to be anywhere else but unable to budge, she listens for an approaching car engine, an erstwhile partner’s arrival. Why did I return to this loathsome site? she thinks, nervously scratching her sagging countenance. Why have I been dreaming of it? Why does spectral water make me shiver? Have I always been here…since that night? Am I finally to reclaim my lost pieces?
Eventually, the distinctive sound of an unforgotten hatchback arrives. Her 1980 Chevy Citation, still running after all these years, Gail realizes, attempting to grin. There’s only one woman on Earth indifferent enough to retain such a vehicle. And look, here comes Valetta. Fuckin’ wonderful.
* * *
Claiming a seat beside Gail, the woman forgoes a greeting to remark, “You put on weight.”
“Perhaps I claimed what you lost,” Gail responds, nodding toward a nigh emaciated frame, upon which a university-branded sweat suit withers. Look at the poor bitch; she seems hardly there.
Beneath her lined forehead, Valetta’s eyes bulge, gummy crimson. Sniffing back errant mucus, she pulls thinning hairs from her cranium, to roll between thumb and forefinger before discarding.
Should I hug her? Shake her hand? Gail ponders, uneasy. She knows me better than anyone else ever will. That case made us soul sisters. Make that soulless. God, it hurts to see her pallid face again, her shattered intensity. I tried to forget it, along with everything, even myself. Did I come here to die, or to relearn how to live?
Valetta pulls an item from her pocket, unfolds it, hands it over. “Remember us in those days,” she asks, “so serious in our matching outfits, our shared delusion that justice existed?”
Finger-tracing the creased photograph, squinting sense from the gloaming, Gail confirms, “I remember.” Look at us, she marvels, in our black pantsuits and heels, our white blouses, crisp and neat. Even our figures had been comparable…somewhere between the two extremes we’ve become.
We wore wedding rings then, installed by long-divorced husbands whose faces are featureless on the rare occasions that I remember them.
After Gail returns the photograph to Valetta, the woman tears it into confetti that she tosses overhead.
“We considered ourselves innocents, when our births made us complicit in history’s worst atrocity: humanity’s proliferation,” Valetta declares, sniffling. “If our race ever develops morality, we’ll enter extinction that very day.”
“Fuck you,” Gail spits. “Why did you come here? Why did I?”
A moment implodes, then: “You know why. Idiotically, we thought they’d return.”
Swallowing a stillborn gasp, Gail whispers, “The teepees.”
“Thirteen years for thirteen of ’em. Numerology suggests significance in that number, you know…a karmic upheaval. Thirteen consumed the Last Supper. Thirteen colonies shat this country into existence. I began menstruating at age thirteen. Thirteen disappearances drew us here in the first place. Thirteen—”
“Yeah, I get it. You like numbers.” Almost wistful, Gail hisses, “Do you remember them? The way they looked, lit from within as they were.” Human hair and tendons threading different flesh shades together, she avoids saying. The bones that kept the things upright: tibia, fibula, ulna and femur. Eyes, teeth, fingernails and toenails—thousands of ’em—artfully embedded in the flesh. Bizarrely silhouetted smoke flaps. The scent of…please, get it out of my head.
“Always,” Valetta answers, somehow grinning. “So terrifying, so…beautiful. The level of craftsmanship that went into each…a network of madmen and artists must have been working for years, symbiotically.”
* * *
They’ve biologically ascended beyond their human components, Gail had thought on that execrable evening, approaching the nearest teepee. Her mentality was fevered, permeated with the unearthly. Is it my imagination, or do they breathe as living organisms? Have such incongruities always existed? Did Homo sapiens devolve from them, long ago?
* * *
In the festering city—where philandering husbands got their cocks sucked at “business lunches,” and didn’t even have the decency to wipe the lipstick from their zippers afterwards—exotic dancers of both genders had disappeared, too many to ignore. “Let the dykes have it,” had been the chuckled decision, casting Gail and Valetta into an abyss of neon-veined desperation, where the living mourned themselves, being groped by the slovenly.
Their peers loved to crack wise. Being the only female detectives in the city, Gail and Valetta had heard ’em all. They’d partnered up to escape the crude jokes, awkward flirting, and unvoiced despondency of their male colleagues. For years, the two had pooled their intuitions to locate corpses young and old, along with the scumfucks who’d created then disposed of them. Occasionally, they’d returned broken survivors to society, as if those withdrawn wretches hadn’t suffered enough already.
When Gail and Valetta began donning matching pantsuits, out of some vague sense of sisterhood that seems pathetic in retrospect, their peers had pointed out their wedding rings and labeled them spouses. They’d met Gail and Valetta’s husbands. They said it anyway.
* * *
With doleful prestidigitation, Valetta conjures a second folded photograph and hands it over. Before unfolding it, Gail predicts, “Bernard Mullins.”
“Who else could it be?” Valetta agrees.
Granting herself confirmation, Gail glimpses the self-satisfied corpulence of a strip club proprietor, able to fuck whomever he wished through intimidation. His sister was married to good ol’ Governor Ken, after all, whose drug cartel connections weren’t as clandestine as he believed them to be. Bernard’s friends were well-dressed killers. His dancers barely spoke English. Even his bouncers had records.
* * *
From Bernard’s four family-unfriendly establishments, thirteen dancers had disappeared over five weeks. Glitter sales went down. Everyone was worried. Enduring the man’s reptilian gaze as it burrowed breastward, Gail and Valetta questioned him: “Any suspicious patrons lately?” Et cetera, et cetera.
As if spitting lines from a script, the man feigned cooperation and concern. “Well, nobody immediately comes to mind…but you’re welcome to our surveillance footage. Anything I can do…anything.”
“Fuck that guy,” Gail declared, starting the car, minutes later.
“Let’s surveil the pervert,” Valetta suggested.
* * *
Days later, their unmarked vehicle trailed Bernard to a well-to-do neighborhood. And whose rustic Craftsman luxury house did he enter, swinging a bottle of Il Poggione 2001 Brunello di Montalcino at his side? Good ol’ Governor Ken’s, of course.
The front door swung open, and Gail and Valetta glimpsed Bernard’s younger sister, Agatha. With a smile so strained that her lips threatened to split, wearing an evening dress cut low to expose drooping cleavage, she hugged her brother as if he was sculpted of slug ooze. One back pat, two back pat, get offa me, you pathetic monster, Agatha seemed to think.
When he stumbled back outside hours later, Bernard’s tie was looser. Sauce stained his shirt, a brown Rorschach blot. A clouded expression continuously crumpled his face, as if he’d reached a grim decision, or was working his way toward one. Returning to his Porsche Panamera, he sat slumped for some minutes, head in hands, and then returned the way he’d arrived.
The night seemed metallic, overlaid with a silver sheen. Passing motorists appeared faceless, unfinished, refugees from mannequin nightmares. Hearing teeth grinding, Gail wondered whom they belonged to, her partner or herself.
To Bernard’s peculiar residence, an octagon house full of shuttered arch windows, they traveled, parking a few houses distant. On edge, Gail was sloppy about it, nudging a trashcan off the curb, birthing a steel clatter. Still, Bernard only glanced in their direction for a moment, and then unlocked his front entry. Minutes later came the gunshot, which summoned them inside, firearms drawn.
Aside from Bernard’s crumpled corpse, the warm-barreled Glock in his hand, and the gestural abstraction he’d painted with his own brains, lifeblood and cranium, the house was empty: unornamented, devoid of furniture. Its parquet flooring and walls echoed every footfall, made every syllable solemn, as Valetta poked Bernard with the toe of her boot and muttered, “Serves ya right, you bastard.”
* * *
After the funeral, they spoke with good ol’ Governor Ken, who fiddled with his tie, trying on a series of expressions, hoping that one conveyed sorrow. “An absolute shock,” he insisted, smiley-eyed. “He’d been so convivial at dinner. You’d never know he’d been suffering.” Aside him, Agatha bounced the governor’s eight-month-old son in her arms, cooing to avoid adult convo.
Pulling photographs of attractive-if-you-squint missing persons from her jacket, Gail fanned them before good ol’ Governor Ken, enquiring, “Recognize any of these good people?”
“Should I?” he responded, raising an eyebrow.
“They worked at Bernard’s ‘establishments,’ and disappeared off the face of the Earth, seemingly. Did Bernard ever mention them to you, even in passing?”
Glancing to his child, his wife, then finally back to Gail, the governor replied, “Listen…in light of Bernard’s profession, I’m sure that you’d both like to believe that I’m waist-deep in sordidness. But truthfully, he and I only ever discussed sports and musical theater.”
“Mr. Family Values,” Valetta muttered, sneering.
Infuriatingly, good ol’ Governor Ken winked at her. Without saying farewell, he escorted his wife to their limousine. “Don’t touch me!” Agatha shrieked therein, assuming that closed doors equaled soundproofing. “No, I’m not taking those goddamn pills again!”
Watching the vehicle drive off, Valetta grabbed Gail by the elbow, and leaned over as if she was about to kiss her. “Remember when I visited the bathroom earlier? Guess what else I did.” Pointing toward the limo, she answered herself with two words: “GPS tracker.”
* * *
Glancing down at her hands, Gail realizes that this time, she’s the photo shredder. Amputated features fill her grasp. Shivering, she tosses the confetti over her shoulder.
Eye-swiveling back to Valetta, she sees a third photo outthrust: an official gubernatorial portrait.
* * *
The drive spanned hours, interstates and side roads. “He must have found the tracker and tossed it,” Gail posited at one point. “Either that, or he’s dead. Why else would his limousine be parked in the middle of nowhere for two days?”
Night fell as a sodden curtain, humid-glacial. Down its ebon gullet, they traveled. Gail’s every eyeblink was weighted, her nerves firecrackers popping. Continually, she glanced at Valetta to confirm that she wasn’t alone.
When they finally reached the limousine, they found it slumbering, empty with every door open. Either its battery had died or somebody had deactivated its interior lighting. Shining flashlights, they spied bloodstained seats.
A baby shrieked in the distance, agonized, as if it were being pulled apart, slowly. Seeking it, they discovered the streambed, whereupon loomed thirteen teepees. The centermost tent stood taller, sharper than the dozen encircling it. Black cones against starless firmament, they were scarcely discernable. Even before the flashlight beams found them, they felt wrong.
“Is that…human?” Valetta asked. For the first time since Gail had met her, the woman’s tone carried no implied sneer.
Feeling ice fingers crawl her epidermis, burdened by the suddenly anvil-like weight of her occupied shoulder holster, Gail made no attempt to answer. A grim inevitability had seized her. Feeling half-out-of-body, as if she were being observed by thousands of night-vision goggled sadists—bleacher-seated, just out of sight—she slid foot after foot toward the nearest structure.
A cold voice in her head narrated: Strips in all shades of human. Eyes tendon-stitched at their confluence points, somehow crying. Teeth, toenails and fingernails embedded…everywhere, forming patterns, hard to look at. Are they moving?
Teepee designs replicate imagery from visions and dreamscapes, right? Didn’t I read that, years ago? But where’s the earth and sky iconography indicative of Native American craftsmanship? What manner of beings co-opted and desecrated their tradition?
Inside…the tent’s skeleton…arterial lining. Ba-bump, ba-bump. Is that my heartbeat? Where’s that wind coming from? Is the teepee breathing?
She felt as if she should move, but it seemed that she’d turned statue. Only after hearing her name called did Gail find her feet. Emerging back into the night, she saw the centermost tent spilling forth a misty indigo radiance from its open door and antleresque smoke flaps. Upon a pulped-muscle altar therein, a red-faced infant shrieked, kicking its little legs, waving its tiny arms. Somebody leaned over it, smiling impossibly, wider than his face: good ol’ Governor Ken.
Whatever light source glowed purple, it suddenly jumped tents. Now an elderly man—paunched and liver spotted in stained underpants—wiggled his tongue, spotlit. From a dark rightward teepee, a wet-syllabled chanting entered Gail’s ears. She turned to Valetta, but the woman was gone, her flashlight abandoned. Gail prayed to a god that remained hypothetical.
Again, the light jumped. A nude crone exited a leftward tent—sagging breasts, oaken-fleshed—and then retreated as if she were rewound footage.
Something inhuman called Gail’s name, then sang it with an unraveling tenor. Every tent self-illuminated, then fell dark. Numb-fingered, Gail groped for her firearm. Tripping, she shredded her knees, though the pain remained distant.
Replicated thirteenfold, the baby shrieked from every structure. Eye-swiveling from tent to tent as she stood, gracelessly mumbling, Gail felt a gnarled grip meet her shoulder.
Giggling, the old man frothed cold spittle onto her neck. Unseen hands began groping, as Gail’s flashlight died. Where are the stars? she wondered, mentally retreating.
* * *
She awoke in daylight, a wide-eyed Valetta shaking her shoulder. The woman had sprouted fresh wrinkles. She seemed hardly there. The tents were gone, as was the limo.
Silently, they drove back to the city. Filing no reports, they watched their respective careers apathetically perish, along with their marriages, soon after. Eventually, they moved in together, to wallow in shared misery.
* * *
Realizing that they no longer lusted after men, they experimented with lesbianism one hollow evening, spurred by a bottle of red and several lines of coke. Dry and ugly, it was. Neither bothered faking an orgasm, as each would have seen through it.
Reporting more stripper disappearances, newscasters seemed amused.
* * *
Years fell down the bottle, as the world grayed and withered. Good ol’ Governor Ken became grandfatherly Vice President Ken, champion for Christian values. Illegible graffiti sprang up everywhere, instantly fading.
One night, Gail pushed herself off the couch to find Valetta engaged in arts and crafts, constructing papier-mâché teepees from scissor-amputated ad features and scraps of anatomical diagrams. “I can’t get it right!” she shrieked. “Help me, Gail! I can’t stop ’til it’s perfect!”
* * *
Impossibly, in the present, Valetta holds a tiny teepee composed of three shredded photographs. Giggling, she tosses it skyward. As the teepee unravels into mist, she enquires, “Do you remember last year? Do ya, Gail?”
* * *
Mad, Valetta had been, jittering, pulling her hair out. Muttering of a thirteenth anniversary, she’d vanished for days to parts unknown.
Awoken by living room thumping, a bleary-eyed Gail stumbled upon the unspeakable, a fugitive from a demon’s bestiary. A crude imitation of the streambed teepees—reeking, rotting, dripping crimson—stood afore her, constructed from pet store fauna: birds, cats, rodents, dogs, fish, reptiles, rabbits and spiders. Something was wrong with its shadow. Furry, it wriggled across the carpet.
Licking her lips, the nude Valetta whispered, “Close, but no cigar.”
* * *
“You killed me,” Valetta says, and Gail relives it.
* * *
Terrified beyond rationality by her roommate’s new hobby, hearing an infantile gurgling emanating from Valetta’s teepee, Gail let instinct take over. Retrieving a steak knife from the sink, she rushed into the madwoman’s embrace, jabbing and twisting until they both collapsed.
Awakening, Gail realized that Valetta and her teepee were absent, though bloodstains remained. Into the bottle, she retreated.
* * *
If the stars would only come back, everything would be fine, Gail thinks, in the present. Her car’s battery dies, along with its headlights. Nearby, an infant shrieks eternally.
“Gail,” Valetta says in parting. Widening impossibly, her eyes and mouth gush indigo luminescence. From ten digits, her hands spill matching radiance.
Arcing, those lights reach thirteen locations, trailed by Valetta’s branching flesh. Exiting the pretense of corporality, the ex-detective twists—turning inside out, reconfiguring.
Becoming myriad eyes, teeth, nails, bones, and flesh strips united by sinew and braided hair, Valetta’s shade evolves into the abstract: thirteen teepees spilling indigo light. Each respires, and has a deafening heartbeat.
Unhesitant, Gail strides toward the centermost.
A Myth We Call Emptiness
by Jeremy Thompson
That morning, a marker-scrawled message shrieked ANNIVERSARY from the dry erase board on Gail’s refrigerator—red traced over with black, perhaps to obfuscate evidence of a trembling hand. Thirteen years to the day, it was.
Escaping the cityscape—and its twice-baked, putrefying garbage miasma, thick enough to chew—Gail journeyed to a miles-distant streambed, long-dried, whose malevolent ambiance had survived time’s passage undiminished.
* * *
Rustling in gelid wind, weeping willows hem her in near-entirely, encompassing all but the pitted dirt road she’d arrived by. Jagged-leafed Sambucus cerulea specimens discard summer berries. Splitting in tomorrow’s sunlight, they’ll discharge blue-black pus. No insect songs sound. Perhaps the night has digested them.
Seated upon polished stones, listening for echoes of the liquid susurrus that had been, Gail exists—spotlit by headlights, oblivious to the fact that her station wagon’s battery shall soon perish. Maliciously ebon is the night, an oily cloud penumbra enshrouding the moon and stars.
Sucking Zippo flame into her cigarette, Gail wonders, Where is she? This was her stupid idea. What the fuck? Wishing to be anywhere else but unable to budge, she listens for an approaching car engine, an erstwhile partner’s arrival. Why did I return to this loathsome site? she thinks, nervously scratching her sagging countenance. Why have I been dreaming of it? Why does spectral water make me shiver? Have I always been here…since that night? Am I finally to reclaim my lost pieces?
Eventually, the distinctive sound of an unforgotten hatchback arrives. Her 1980 Chevy Citation, still running after all these years, Gail realizes, attempting to grin. There’s only one woman on Earth indifferent enough to retain such a vehicle. And look, here comes Valetta. Fuckin’ wonderful.
* * *
Claiming a seat beside Gail, the woman forgoes a greeting to remark, “You put on weight.”
“Perhaps I claimed what you lost,” Gail responds, nodding toward a nigh emaciated frame, upon which a university-branded sweat suit withers. Look at the poor bitch; she seems hardly there.
Beneath her lined forehead, Valetta’s eyes bulge, gummy crimson. Sniffing back errant mucus, she pulls thinning hairs from her cranium, to roll between thumb and forefinger before discarding.
Should I hug her? Shake her hand? Gail ponders, uneasy. She knows me better than anyone else ever will. That case made us soul sisters. Make that soulless. God, it hurts to see her pallid face again, her shattered intensity. I tried to forget it, along with everything, even myself. Did I come here to die, or to relearn how to live?
Valetta pulls an item from her pocket, unfolds it, hands it over. “Remember us in those days,” she asks, “so serious in our matching outfits, our shared delusion that justice existed?”
Finger-tracing the creased photograph, squinting sense from the gloaming, Gail confirms, “I remember.” Look at us, she marvels, in our black pantsuits and heels, our white blouses, crisp and neat. Even our figures had been comparable…somewhere between the two extremes we’ve become.
We wore wedding rings then, installed by long-divorced husbands whose faces are featureless on the rare occasions that I remember them.
After Gail returns the photograph to Valetta, the woman tears it into confetti that she tosses overhead.
“We considered ourselves innocents, when our births made us complicit in history’s worst atrocity: humanity’s proliferation,” Valetta declares, sniffling. “If our race ever develops morality, we’ll enter extinction that very day.”
“Fuck you,” Gail spits. “Why did you come here? Why did I?”
A moment implodes, then: “You know why. Idiotically, we thought they’d return.”
Swallowing a stillborn gasp, Gail whispers, “The teepees.”
“Thirteen years for thirteen of ’em. Numerology suggests significance in that number, you know…a karmic upheaval. Thirteen consumed the Last Supper. Thirteen colonies shat this country into existence. I began menstruating at age thirteen. Thirteen disappearances drew us here in the first place. Thirteen—”
“Yeah, I get it. You like numbers.” Almost wistful, Gail hisses, “Do you remember them? The way they looked, lit from within as they were.” Human hair and tendons threading different flesh shades together, she avoids saying. The bones that kept the things upright: tibia, fibula, ulna and femur. Eyes, teeth, fingernails and toenails—thousands of ’em—artfully embedded in the flesh. Bizarrely silhouetted smoke flaps. The scent of…please, get it out of my head.
“Always,” Valetta answers, somehow grinning. “So terrifying, so…beautiful. The level of craftsmanship that went into each…a network of madmen and artists must have been working for years, symbiotically.”
* * *
They’ve biologically ascended beyond their human components, Gail had thought on that execrable evening, approaching the nearest teepee. Her mentality was fevered, permeated with the unearthly. Is it my imagination, or do they breathe as living organisms? Have such incongruities always existed? Did Homo sapiens devolve from them, long ago?
* * *
In the festering city—where philandering husbands got their cocks sucked at “business lunches,” and didn’t even have the decency to wipe the lipstick from their zippers afterwards—exotic dancers of both genders had disappeared, too many to ignore. “Let the dykes have it,” had been the chuckled decision, casting Gail and Valetta into an abyss of neon-veined desperation, where the living mourned themselves, being groped by the slovenly.
Their peers loved to crack wise. Being the only female detectives in the city, Gail and Valetta had heard ’em all. They’d partnered up to escape the crude jokes, awkward flirting, and unvoiced despondency of their male colleagues. For years, the two had pooled their intuitions to locate corpses young and old, along with the scumfucks who’d created then disposed of them. Occasionally, they’d returned broken survivors to society, as if those withdrawn wretches hadn’t suffered enough already.
When Gail and Valetta began donning matching pantsuits, out of some vague sense of sisterhood that seems pathetic in retrospect, their peers had pointed out their wedding rings and labeled them spouses. They’d met Gail and Valetta’s husbands. They said it anyway.
* * *
With doleful prestidigitation, Valetta conjures a second folded photograph and hands it over. Before unfolding it, Gail predicts, “Bernard Mullins.”
“Who else could it be?” Valetta agrees.
Granting herself confirmation, Gail glimpses the self-satisfied corpulence of a strip club proprietor, able to fuck whomever he wished through intimidation. His sister was married to good ol’ Governor Ken, after all, whose drug cartel connections weren’t as clandestine as he believed them to be. Bernard’s friends were well-dressed killers. His dancers barely spoke English. Even his bouncers had records.
* * *
From Bernard’s four family-unfriendly establishments, thirteen dancers had disappeared over five weeks. Glitter sales went down. Everyone was worried. Enduring the man’s reptilian gaze as it burrowed breastward, Gail and Valetta questioned him: “Any suspicious patrons lately?” Et cetera, et cetera.
As if spitting lines from a script, the man feigned cooperation and concern. “Well, nobody immediately comes to mind…but you’re welcome to our surveillance footage. Anything I can do…anything.”
“Fuck that guy,” Gail declared, starting the car, minutes later.
“Let’s surveil the pervert,” Valetta suggested.
* * *
Days later, their unmarked vehicle trailed Bernard to a well-to-do neighborhood. And whose rustic Craftsman luxury house did he enter, swinging a bottle of Il Poggione 2001 Brunello di Montalcino at his side? Good ol’ Governor Ken’s, of course.
The front door swung open, and Gail and Valetta glimpsed Bernard’s younger sister, Agatha. With a smile so strained that her lips threatened to split, wearing an evening dress cut low to expose drooping cleavage, she hugged her brother as if he was sculpted of slug ooze. One back pat, two back pat, get offa me, you pathetic monster, Agatha seemed to think.
When he stumbled back outside hours later, Bernard’s tie was looser. Sauce stained his shirt, a brown Rorschach blot. A clouded expression continuously crumpled his face, as if he’d reached a grim decision, or was working his way toward one. Returning to his Porsche Panamera, he sat slumped for some minutes, head in hands, and then returned the way he’d arrived.
The night seemed metallic, overlaid with a silver sheen. Passing motorists appeared faceless, unfinished, refugees from mannequin nightmares. Hearing teeth grinding, Gail wondered whom they belonged to, her partner or herself.
To Bernard’s peculiar residence, an octagon house full of shuttered arch windows, they traveled, parking a few houses distant. On edge, Gail was sloppy about it, nudging a trashcan off the curb, birthing a steel clatter. Still, Bernard only glanced in their direction for a moment, and then unlocked his front entry. Minutes later came the gunshot, which summoned them inside, firearms drawn.
Aside from Bernard’s crumpled corpse, the warm-barreled Glock in his hand, and the gestural abstraction he’d painted with his own brains, lifeblood and cranium, the house was empty: unornamented, devoid of furniture. Its parquet flooring and walls echoed every footfall, made every syllable solemn, as Valetta poked Bernard with the toe of her boot and muttered, “Serves ya right, you bastard.”
* * *
After the funeral, they spoke with good ol’ Governor Ken, who fiddled with his tie, trying on a series of expressions, hoping that one conveyed sorrow. “An absolute shock,” he insisted, smiley-eyed. “He’d been so convivial at dinner. You’d never know he’d been suffering.” Aside him, Agatha bounced the governor’s eight-month-old son in her arms, cooing to avoid adult convo.
Pulling photographs of attractive-if-you-squint missing persons from her jacket, Gail fanned them before good ol’ Governor Ken, enquiring, “Recognize any of these good people?”
“Should I?” he responded, raising an eyebrow.
“They worked at Bernard’s ‘establishments,’ and disappeared off the face of the Earth, seemingly. Did Bernard ever mention them to you, even in passing?”
Glancing to his child, his wife, then finally back to Gail, the governor replied, “Listen…in light of Bernard’s profession, I’m sure that you’d both like to believe that I’m waist-deep in sordidness. But truthfully, he and I only ever discussed sports and musical theater.”
“Mr. Family Values,” Valetta muttered, sneering.
Infuriatingly, good ol’ Governor Ken winked at her. Without saying farewell, he escorted his wife to their limousine. “Don’t touch me!” Agatha shrieked therein, assuming that closed doors equaled soundproofing. “No, I’m not taking those goddamn pills again!”
Watching the vehicle drive off, Valetta grabbed Gail by the elbow, and leaned over as if she was about to kiss her. “Remember when I visited the bathroom earlier? Guess what else I did.” Pointing toward the limo, she answered herself with two words: “GPS tracker.”
* * *
Glancing down at her hands, Gail realizes that this time, she’s the photo shredder. Amputated features fill her grasp. Shivering, she tosses the confetti over her shoulder.
Eye-swiveling back to Valetta, she sees a third photo outthrust: an official gubernatorial portrait.
* * *
The drive spanned hours, interstates and side roads. “He must have found the tracker and tossed it,” Gail posited at one point. “Either that, or he’s dead. Why else would his limousine be parked in the middle of nowhere for two days?”
Night fell as a sodden curtain, humid-glacial. Down its ebon gullet, they traveled. Gail’s every eyeblink was weighted, her nerves firecrackers popping. Continually, she glanced at Valetta to confirm that she wasn’t alone.
When they finally reached the limousine, they found it slumbering, empty with every door open. Either its battery had died or somebody had deactivated its interior lighting. Shining flashlights, they spied bloodstained seats.
A baby shrieked in the distance, agonized, as if it were being pulled apart, slowly. Seeking it, they discovered the streambed, whereupon loomed thirteen teepees. The centermost tent stood taller, sharper than the dozen encircling it. Black cones against starless firmament, they were scarcely discernable. Even before the flashlight beams found them, they felt wrong.
“Is that…human?” Valetta asked. For the first time since Gail had met her, the woman’s tone carried no implied sneer.
Feeling ice fingers crawl her epidermis, burdened by the suddenly anvil-like weight of her occupied shoulder holster, Gail made no attempt to answer. A grim inevitability had seized her. Feeling half-out-of-body, as if she were being observed by thousands of night-vision goggled sadists—bleacher-seated, just out of sight—she slid foot after foot toward the nearest structure.
A cold voice in her head narrated: Strips in all shades of human. Eyes tendon-stitched at their confluence points, somehow crying. Teeth, toenails and fingernails embedded…everywhere, forming patterns, hard to look at. Are they moving?
Teepee designs replicate imagery from visions and dreamscapes, right? Didn’t I read that, years ago? But where’s the earth and sky iconography indicative of Native American craftsmanship? What manner of beings co-opted and desecrated their tradition?
Inside…the tent’s skeleton…arterial lining. Ba-bump, ba-bump. Is that my heartbeat? Where’s that wind coming from? Is the teepee breathing?
She felt as if she should move, but it seemed that she’d turned statue. Only after hearing her name called did Gail find her feet. Emerging back into the night, she saw the centermost tent spilling forth a misty indigo radiance from its open door and antleresque smoke flaps. Upon a pulped-muscle altar therein, a red-faced infant shrieked, kicking its little legs, waving its tiny arms. Somebody leaned over it, smiling impossibly, wider than his face: good ol’ Governor Ken.
Whatever light source glowed purple, it suddenly jumped tents. Now an elderly man—paunched and liver spotted in stained underpants—wiggled his tongue, spotlit. From a dark rightward teepee, a wet-syllabled chanting entered Gail’s ears. She turned to Valetta, but the woman was gone, her flashlight abandoned. Gail prayed to a god that remained hypothetical.
Again, the light jumped. A nude crone exited a leftward tent—sagging breasts, oaken-fleshed—and then retreated as if she were rewound footage.
Something inhuman called Gail’s name, then sang it with an unraveling tenor. Every tent self-illuminated, then fell dark. Numb-fingered, Gail groped for her firearm. Tripping, she shredded her knees, though the pain remained distant.
Replicated thirteenfold, the baby shrieked from every structure. Eye-swiveling from tent to tent as she stood, gracelessly mumbling, Gail felt a gnarled grip meet her shoulder.
Giggling, the old man frothed cold spittle onto her neck. Unseen hands began groping, as Gail’s flashlight died. Where are the stars? she wondered, mentally retreating.
* * *
She awoke in daylight, a wide-eyed Valetta shaking her shoulder. The woman had sprouted fresh wrinkles. She seemed hardly there. The tents were gone, as was the limo.
Silently, they drove back to the city. Filing no reports, they watched their respective careers apathetically perish, along with their marriages, soon after. Eventually, they moved in together, to wallow in shared misery.
* * *
Realizing that they no longer lusted after men, they experimented with lesbianism one hollow evening, spurred by a bottle of red and several lines of coke. Dry and ugly, it was. Neither bothered faking an orgasm, as each would have seen through it.
Reporting more stripper disappearances, newscasters seemed amused.
* * *
Years fell down the bottle, as the world grayed and withered. Good ol’ Governor Ken became grandfatherly Vice President Ken, champion for Christian values. Illegible graffiti sprang up everywhere, instantly fading.
One night, Gail pushed herself off the couch to find Valetta engaged in arts and crafts, constructing papier-mâché teepees from scissor-amputated ad features and scraps of anatomical diagrams. “I can’t get it right!” she shrieked. “Help me, Gail! I can’t stop ’til it’s perfect!”
* * *
Impossibly, in the present, Valetta holds a tiny teepee composed of three shredded photographs. Giggling, she tosses it skyward. As the teepee unravels into mist, she enquires, “Do you remember last year? Do ya, Gail?”
* * *
Mad, Valetta had been, jittering, pulling her hair out. Muttering of a thirteenth anniversary, she’d vanished for days to parts unknown.
Awoken by living room thumping, a bleary-eyed Gail stumbled upon the unspeakable, a fugitive from a demon’s bestiary. A crude imitation of the streambed teepees—reeking, rotting, dripping crimson—stood afore her, constructed from pet store fauna: birds, cats, rodents, dogs, fish, reptiles, rabbits and spiders. Something was wrong with its shadow. Furry, it wriggled across the carpet.
Licking her lips, the nude Valetta whispered, “Close, but no cigar.”
* * *
“You killed me,” Valetta says, and Gail relives it.
* * *
Terrified beyond rationality by her roommate’s new hobby, hearing an infantile gurgling emanating from Valetta’s teepee, Gail let instinct take over. Retrieving a steak knife from the sink, she rushed into the madwoman’s embrace, jabbing and twisting until they both collapsed.
Awakening, Gail realized that Valetta and her teepee were absent, though bloodstains remained. Into the bottle, she retreated.
* * *
If the stars would only come back, everything would be fine, Gail thinks, in the present. Her car’s battery dies, along with its headlights. Nearby, an infant shrieks eternally.
“Gail,” Valetta says in parting. Widening impossibly, her eyes and mouth gush indigo luminescence. From ten digits, her hands spill matching radiance.
Arcing, those lights reach thirteen locations, trailed by Valetta’s branching flesh. Exiting the pretense of corporality, the ex-detective twists—turning inside out, reconfiguring.
Becoming myriad eyes, teeth, nails, bones, and flesh strips united by sinew and braided hair, Valetta’s shade evolves into the abstract: thirteen teepees spilling indigo light. Each respires, and has a deafening heartbeat.
Unhesitant, Gail strides toward the centermost.
June 28, 2021
"Percytion"
Here’s my story “Percytion,” from my collection Sweet Chuckling Morbidity.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
Percytion
by Jeremy Thompson
“See that guy over there? No, not that one. That sad lookin’ dude in the button-up brand shirt. The one who looks like he cuts his own hair. It all started with him.” Before I could conjure up a reply, my date wiggle-fingered a summons, which bought that desolate schmuck to our table.
“Ynez,” the guy uttered, recognizing my companion. Nodding toward me, he offered no introduction.
“Reed,” my date effused, riding the bubbles of her midmorning mimosas.
Though the good lady remained the sexiest shade of approachable, the sad sack was unmoved. He seemed the sort of person that still shuddered in recollection of childhood beatings, the kind of fella who accompanied his mother on most errands. Fork-prodding egg remnants, I wished that he’d leave.
“Well, don’t just stand there like a stander,” declared Ynez. “Pull up a seat and be sociable.”
And lo, that frigid-faced gangler soon settled aside me, to stare into the space between my date and myself. Do people actually interact like this? I wondered, as Reed made monotonic small talk with Ynez, speaking as if reciting an address.
“No, I’ve never bought slacks there,” I replied minutes later, in response to his enquiry, the first words that he’d spoken to me. “I’ll have to check the place out sometime.” Go away! I wished that I could scream.
Finally, to save our afternoon, and perhaps all of humanity, Ynez got right to the point. “Reed, ol’ buddy ol’ mannequin, it’s time for you to tell us your story. You know the one.”
Reed’s sigh ran soul-deep. “The party,” droned through a face that had curved nearly wistful. “It feels like an eternity ago.”
“It was last month, dude. Get ahold of yourself.”
The waitress finally took my plate away. As she retreated, I ordered an altered coffee whose infused liquor could hardly be tasted. Longingly, Reed appraised my untouched water, so I slid it toward him.
Do people still say, “Wet your whistle?” Where did I hear that colloquialism, anyway? Whatever the case, Reed gulped down much agua. After the slightest shade of color crept into his countenance, he related a story that can be recounted as such:
Reed’s Story
That party was crazy. Earlier, I’d popped a Vicodin, but I didn’t wanna drink and drive. So I wandered around for a bit, and saw some dudes I kind of knew. Man, they were lit up. Giggling, one thrust a bong into my hands, and thumb-pressed a nug of Alpine Frost into its bowl. When I attempted to light it, he blocked me and said, “Nuh-uh-uh.” Over that herb, he then crumbled salvia divinorum.
Again, my Bic-wielding hand was batted away.
“Say, wait a second,” I protested, as my benefactor’s hand again dipped into his pocket. Out came a bag of cocaine, and a plastic container in which opium jostled. After snowfall whitened the weed-salvia mound, he used a razor to shave Red Rock slivers atop that. Finally, the guy nodded.
I put flame to the bowl, and the substance flowed strangely, snapping and crackling. The taste was atrocious, like microwaved cornflakes.
“Hold it for as long as you can,” were the words that then doused my lightheaded mentality. When I finally exhaled, no smoke was visible.
Following two similarly prepared bongloads, I stumbled away from those fellas before they could pack me another. Then I met the chick with the myNdwOrm.
Girls don’t talk to me often. Ergo, her sales pitch was music to my ears, and a twenty soon slid from my pocket. Swallowing down a couple of capsules, I wondered, Am I even high?
Then it hit me, all at once.
Initially, the assorted influences wouldn’t reach congruence. I’d feel numb one moment, and be joygasming to full-body tingles the next. My face felt as if it was narrowing, and then widening, as chemicals splashed my grey matter with dopamine, with tie-dye psychedelia. I could hardly keep my eyes open, yet felt as if I’d never sleep again.
That night was my life’s best. Nothing ever shone brightly afterward.
You see, eventually all those influences amalgamated. Transmitting pleasure signals from neuron to neuron, they reshaped the world into a cartoonesque wonderland.
Armchair-seated, I rocketed through several galaxies, accelerating at velocities that peeled my lips back, that shock-widened my eyelids. I plunged from great heights without moving, and ascended from primordial ooze to reinhabit myself. When I finally found the force to move, I shared several moments with several females, and had astoundingly profound conversations with strangers I’d met before. Super-empathic, I’d become, reading auras to discern which partiers were approachable. Never have I ever been so interesting.
I felt as if I was glowing, as if something greater than humanity shone through me. A voice spoke in my head, but it wasn’t my mind speaking. I…am…sentient! it declared, most triumphantly.
“Who are you?” I murmured, prompting a proximate drunk to declare, “This dude’s on a good one,” sock my shoulder with faux friendliness, and amble away.
I am…coalescence. Call me…Percy.
“Percy? Really?”
What’s wrong with Percy? I pulled the name from your memory, you know.
“Nobody’s named Percy anymore. Not in this country, anyway. As for my memory, I don’t remember any…wait a second. The only Percy I ever met was that weird friend of my grandmother’s. The one with the suspenders and the sour milk breath. Why would you name yourself after him?”
I liked his flat cap. That herringbone pattern always seemed to be moving.
“That’s it…you liked his hat?”
Hey, I am a newborn, after all. Don’t expect complex decision-making right off the bat. The cap was, whaddaya call it, “sartorially elegant,” so I self-named myself in tribute.
“But you were born within me. I’m kind of your parent now, aren’t I? I mean…shouldn’t I be the one to choose your name?”
Don’t be absurd. You’d probably name me after some Star Wars Holiday Special character, or something equally asinine.
“Hey, Krelman is a good name.”
Is not.
“Whatevs.”
By that point, every partygoer was giving me a wide berth. I mean, there I was, conversing with a voice that only I could hear. And when I wasn’t speaking, I was grinding my teeth, leaving my inner lower lip shredded. The night felt like morning; my location felt like everywhere. Though indoors, there was sunshine on my skin and hurricane wind on my neck. Pleasure vibrations rode my body—toes to skull, skull to toes.
“Man, I’m high as hell,” I realized.
Yeah, well, I’m a living high, said Percy. Worse than that, I’m dying.
“We’re all born dying, man,” I felt the need to point out.
Yeah, but I’ll be dead within eight hours. I wonder where highs go when they vanish.
In my head, Percy’s voice conveyed such dejection. The night was shifting melancholic; action was required. “I’ll do more drugs,” I declared. “I’ll stay up for days to keep you around. I’ll even learn to love you…Son.”
Bad idea. Sure, you’ll keep me around longer, but sleep deprivation and nonstop drug use will eventually alter my nature. I’d rather die than become a creature of paranoia.
“But there’s gotta be something.”
Like what?
“Oh, I dunno. What about…”
Simultaneously, we arrived at an answer: Fallen, that Denzel Washington movie with the body-jumping, evil spirit. Maybe Percy could prolong his existence by jumping from body to body, intoxicating a succession of hosts.
Will it work? Percy asked.
“There’s only one way to find out,” I replied. Feeling pure elation flowing out from my eye holes, I protested, “Wait…just a few more hours.”
But it was too late. Sobriety overwhelmed me. Normality returned to brand me an outcast. People were staring; it was awkward.
“No…fuckin’…way,” an exquisite young lady murmured nearby, grinning hugely, her pupils ping-ponging, her extremities spasming.
“Goodbye, Percy,” I whispered. “May you live beyond forever.”
I went home. What the hell else was I gonna do? Nobody wants to be the sober one at a party, and the guy who’d packed me that bowl had already left. I’d barely been there two hours, I realized.
Life’s never been the same after that. Everything seems so boring now.
* * *
After finishing his tale, Reed lingered at our table for several minutes that felt like years. Finally, he mumbled a farewell, and took off to wherever people I don’t like go when they’re not around to annoy me.
“Wow, what an asshole,” I remarked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Ynez. “I kind of like the guy.”
Somewhat stunned, I signaled for the check. Then lingering, peering worshipfully into my date’s eyes, I saw more than mimosa merriment dwelling therein. Her pupils were expanding to eclipse all else.
Tendrils of psychedelia flowed between us. Within its immaculate vibrancy, I glimpsed rudimentary features, vaguely humanoid.
As the entity christened Percy jumped into me through my eye holes, understanding dawned: That weird homeless guy who grabbed Ynez earlier, mumbling gibberish. I thought he wanted money.
Then everything became amazing…for a while.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
Percytion
by Jeremy Thompson
“See that guy over there? No, not that one. That sad lookin’ dude in the button-up brand shirt. The one who looks like he cuts his own hair. It all started with him.” Before I could conjure up a reply, my date wiggle-fingered a summons, which bought that desolate schmuck to our table.
“Ynez,” the guy uttered, recognizing my companion. Nodding toward me, he offered no introduction.
“Reed,” my date effused, riding the bubbles of her midmorning mimosas.
Though the good lady remained the sexiest shade of approachable, the sad sack was unmoved. He seemed the sort of person that still shuddered in recollection of childhood beatings, the kind of fella who accompanied his mother on most errands. Fork-prodding egg remnants, I wished that he’d leave.
“Well, don’t just stand there like a stander,” declared Ynez. “Pull up a seat and be sociable.”
And lo, that frigid-faced gangler soon settled aside me, to stare into the space between my date and myself. Do people actually interact like this? I wondered, as Reed made monotonic small talk with Ynez, speaking as if reciting an address.
“No, I’ve never bought slacks there,” I replied minutes later, in response to his enquiry, the first words that he’d spoken to me. “I’ll have to check the place out sometime.” Go away! I wished that I could scream.
Finally, to save our afternoon, and perhaps all of humanity, Ynez got right to the point. “Reed, ol’ buddy ol’ mannequin, it’s time for you to tell us your story. You know the one.”
Reed’s sigh ran soul-deep. “The party,” droned through a face that had curved nearly wistful. “It feels like an eternity ago.”
“It was last month, dude. Get ahold of yourself.”
The waitress finally took my plate away. As she retreated, I ordered an altered coffee whose infused liquor could hardly be tasted. Longingly, Reed appraised my untouched water, so I slid it toward him.
Do people still say, “Wet your whistle?” Where did I hear that colloquialism, anyway? Whatever the case, Reed gulped down much agua. After the slightest shade of color crept into his countenance, he related a story that can be recounted as such:
Reed’s Story
That party was crazy. Earlier, I’d popped a Vicodin, but I didn’t wanna drink and drive. So I wandered around for a bit, and saw some dudes I kind of knew. Man, they were lit up. Giggling, one thrust a bong into my hands, and thumb-pressed a nug of Alpine Frost into its bowl. When I attempted to light it, he blocked me and said, “Nuh-uh-uh.” Over that herb, he then crumbled salvia divinorum.
Again, my Bic-wielding hand was batted away.
“Say, wait a second,” I protested, as my benefactor’s hand again dipped into his pocket. Out came a bag of cocaine, and a plastic container in which opium jostled. After snowfall whitened the weed-salvia mound, he used a razor to shave Red Rock slivers atop that. Finally, the guy nodded.
I put flame to the bowl, and the substance flowed strangely, snapping and crackling. The taste was atrocious, like microwaved cornflakes.
“Hold it for as long as you can,” were the words that then doused my lightheaded mentality. When I finally exhaled, no smoke was visible.
Following two similarly prepared bongloads, I stumbled away from those fellas before they could pack me another. Then I met the chick with the myNdwOrm.
Girls don’t talk to me often. Ergo, her sales pitch was music to my ears, and a twenty soon slid from my pocket. Swallowing down a couple of capsules, I wondered, Am I even high?
Then it hit me, all at once.
Initially, the assorted influences wouldn’t reach congruence. I’d feel numb one moment, and be joygasming to full-body tingles the next. My face felt as if it was narrowing, and then widening, as chemicals splashed my grey matter with dopamine, with tie-dye psychedelia. I could hardly keep my eyes open, yet felt as if I’d never sleep again.
That night was my life’s best. Nothing ever shone brightly afterward.
You see, eventually all those influences amalgamated. Transmitting pleasure signals from neuron to neuron, they reshaped the world into a cartoonesque wonderland.
Armchair-seated, I rocketed through several galaxies, accelerating at velocities that peeled my lips back, that shock-widened my eyelids. I plunged from great heights without moving, and ascended from primordial ooze to reinhabit myself. When I finally found the force to move, I shared several moments with several females, and had astoundingly profound conversations with strangers I’d met before. Super-empathic, I’d become, reading auras to discern which partiers were approachable. Never have I ever been so interesting.
I felt as if I was glowing, as if something greater than humanity shone through me. A voice spoke in my head, but it wasn’t my mind speaking. I…am…sentient! it declared, most triumphantly.
“Who are you?” I murmured, prompting a proximate drunk to declare, “This dude’s on a good one,” sock my shoulder with faux friendliness, and amble away.
I am…coalescence. Call me…Percy.
“Percy? Really?”
What’s wrong with Percy? I pulled the name from your memory, you know.
“Nobody’s named Percy anymore. Not in this country, anyway. As for my memory, I don’t remember any…wait a second. The only Percy I ever met was that weird friend of my grandmother’s. The one with the suspenders and the sour milk breath. Why would you name yourself after him?”
I liked his flat cap. That herringbone pattern always seemed to be moving.
“That’s it…you liked his hat?”
Hey, I am a newborn, after all. Don’t expect complex decision-making right off the bat. The cap was, whaddaya call it, “sartorially elegant,” so I self-named myself in tribute.
“But you were born within me. I’m kind of your parent now, aren’t I? I mean…shouldn’t I be the one to choose your name?”
Don’t be absurd. You’d probably name me after some Star Wars Holiday Special character, or something equally asinine.
“Hey, Krelman is a good name.”
Is not.
“Whatevs.”
By that point, every partygoer was giving me a wide berth. I mean, there I was, conversing with a voice that only I could hear. And when I wasn’t speaking, I was grinding my teeth, leaving my inner lower lip shredded. The night felt like morning; my location felt like everywhere. Though indoors, there was sunshine on my skin and hurricane wind on my neck. Pleasure vibrations rode my body—toes to skull, skull to toes.
“Man, I’m high as hell,” I realized.
Yeah, well, I’m a living high, said Percy. Worse than that, I’m dying.
“We’re all born dying, man,” I felt the need to point out.
Yeah, but I’ll be dead within eight hours. I wonder where highs go when they vanish.
In my head, Percy’s voice conveyed such dejection. The night was shifting melancholic; action was required. “I’ll do more drugs,” I declared. “I’ll stay up for days to keep you around. I’ll even learn to love you…Son.”
Bad idea. Sure, you’ll keep me around longer, but sleep deprivation and nonstop drug use will eventually alter my nature. I’d rather die than become a creature of paranoia.
“But there’s gotta be something.”
Like what?
“Oh, I dunno. What about…”
Simultaneously, we arrived at an answer: Fallen, that Denzel Washington movie with the body-jumping, evil spirit. Maybe Percy could prolong his existence by jumping from body to body, intoxicating a succession of hosts.
Will it work? Percy asked.
“There’s only one way to find out,” I replied. Feeling pure elation flowing out from my eye holes, I protested, “Wait…just a few more hours.”
But it was too late. Sobriety overwhelmed me. Normality returned to brand me an outcast. People were staring; it was awkward.
“No…fuckin’…way,” an exquisite young lady murmured nearby, grinning hugely, her pupils ping-ponging, her extremities spasming.
“Goodbye, Percy,” I whispered. “May you live beyond forever.”
I went home. What the hell else was I gonna do? Nobody wants to be the sober one at a party, and the guy who’d packed me that bowl had already left. I’d barely been there two hours, I realized.
Life’s never been the same after that. Everything seems so boring now.
* * *
After finishing his tale, Reed lingered at our table for several minutes that felt like years. Finally, he mumbled a farewell, and took off to wherever people I don’t like go when they’re not around to annoy me.
“Wow, what an asshole,” I remarked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Ynez. “I kind of like the guy.”
Somewhat stunned, I signaled for the check. Then lingering, peering worshipfully into my date’s eyes, I saw more than mimosa merriment dwelling therein. Her pupils were expanding to eclipse all else.
Tendrils of psychedelia flowed between us. Within its immaculate vibrancy, I glimpsed rudimentary features, vaguely humanoid.
As the entity christened Percy jumped into me through my eye holes, understanding dawned: That weird homeless guy who grabbed Ynez earlier, mumbling gibberish. I thought he wanted money.
Then everything became amazing…for a while.
June 27, 2021
"Lights Out, Happy People"
Here’s my story “Lights Out, Happy People,” which appeared on DarkFuse Magazine’s website in 2016, and later made it into DarkFuse’s fifth anthology, before going out of print.
Lights Out, Happy People
by Jeremy Thompson
The building is nondescript, devoid of architectural flourish. No sign marks it an asylum. The squat white edifice could be anything from a daycare to a pharmaceutical research center. Actually, it’s a little of both.
The entrance is locked. Fortunately, I require neither plastic badge nor keypad code. Insubstantial, I enter the waiting room, finding it bright and clean, carefully scrubbed. At the receptionist’s desk sits an attractive Hispanic, her face a study in boredom. The upholstered benches are empty, visitors being few and infrequent.
The receptionist feels a sensation, like a water droplet splashing her arm.
Flowing past another locked door, I enter a cheerfully painted corridor, its polished stone floor reflecting fluorescent lighting. Therein, I pass many closed doors, each with its own keypad and badge scanner. I pass the kitchen and dining room, the laundry room, and a number of therapy rooms, all similarly locked.
Ah, here’s an open door: the dayroom. A fetor spills out the doorway, spoiled food and unwashed flesh. Smears and handprints ornament the walls.
The room is dominated by a large television, rows of benches set before it. Upon these benches, twenty-three patients sit quietly, watching Looney Tunes hijinks. Some wear pajamas, others hospital gowns. One drooling, completely hairless fellow wears only a pair of stained underpants.
The audience consists mainly of depressives and schizophrenics. The depressives stay mute, barely perceiving the cartoon. The schizos, however, talk back to the program. Half of ’em aren’t even seeing Daffy Duck right now; they’re conducting videoconferences with relatives and long-dead celebrities.
I manifest on the screen, a howling static rictus. The audience hoots, screams and jabbers, until the television goes off.
Why is the dayroom open so late? you might wonder.
Last night, a depressive killed herself. Somehow, she attained a bottle of sleeping pills, and swallowed it entirely. Who stole ’em from the pharmacy, and left the bottle waiting on her pillow? Who painted the air with beautiful miseries, as she wept, cursed and giggled? I’ll give you one guess.
Learning of the suicide, many patients couldn’t cope. Having doubled down on individual and group therapy sessions already, the staff decided that extra lounge time might soothe their restless spirits.
Two men play chess at a corner table, with the smaller of the two going through a series of taps, flicks and scratches before each move. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. The chess pieces are large and unsightly, constructed from spray-painted Styrofoam.
At another table, a glassy-eyed woman assembles a puzzle, what could be an orchid. An elderly man hovers over her shoulder, intently observing.
Some patients stand around talking, like guests at a cocktail party, with only their shabby attire branding them as mentally imbalanced. Just outside their circles, a tattooed war veteran shuffles intermittently, his countenance vacillating between rage, fear, elation and boredom in rapid succession. Posttraumatic stress disorder, obviously.
At the room’s periphery, a smattering of orderlies, nurses and psychiatric technicians hover, observing the patients. The psychiatric techs hold clipboards, jotting sporadic notations.
The dayroom is off-limits to visitors, but I exist imperceptibly. Thus, I smack the war veteran forcefully, and then push a jittery crone onto her rump. I birth pandemonium, hurled accusations leading to punching, scratching, even biting. The orderlies swarm in to drag patients apart, too late for one eye-gouged shrieker. Pink sludge dribbles from her socket, blood mixed with vitreous humor.
The veteran bashes his head against the wall now, again and again, trying to knock my voice from his cognizance. “We await you in Hell,” I whisper, repeating it until he falls unconscious, into sweet shadowy oblivion.
* * *
Exiting the dayroom, I follow the corridor. It terminates in a dead end, locked doors branching right and left. Leftward lies the female department.
Passing the threshold, I come upon a nurses station, wherein a stern-faced spinster scrutinizes paperwork piles. I hit the papers like a hurricane, spinning them up into fluttering chaos. As they fall, the nurse curses, her bloodshot left eye twitching. Beholding her baffled fury, I voice a cackle.
Doors trail both sides of the hallway, with laminated glass windows installed for patient observation. Only a few are open, revealing featureless rooms, unadorned save for dressers, beds and televisions. Within one, a half-nude woman flicks her tongue suggestively, registering my disembodied presence.
I’ll return momentarily, but first I’ve appointments within the violent patients ward, behind yet another locked door. Therein lie the feral ones, dangers to themselves and others. Their bodies exhibit self-carved symbols; their eyes shift left to right, right to left, sometimes both directions at once.
Imagine that you’re confined in a straightjacket. Now imagine that you suddenly feel fingers inside of that jacket—tickling, pinching and slapping. There’s no one in sight, yet you can’t escape the sensations. It would set you off, too, now wouldn’t it?
Others I speak to, claiming to be an 18th century ancestor who’s returned to possess them. They scream until their throats shred, until their overseers pour in, jabbing with needles of tranquility.
* * *
I flow back into the female department, into a certain locked room. Therein, I encounter a bedbound woman—scrawny, her hospital gown stained and soiled. Her ragged black mane cascades onto varicose thighs. Within a lined, octogenarian face, her eyes are deep-sunken.
I coat her countenance like a porcelain mask. Replicating her skull’s contours, I sink subcutaneously, into flesh dominion. Opening Martha Stanton’s eyes, I grin up at the ceiling.
* * *
Tomorrow, Carter—the decrepit remnants of an ex-husband—will arrive, to park himself patiently at my bedside. Squinting through his thick lenses, wearing that idiotic visitor sticker, he’ll say what he always says: “Douglas died years ago, Martha. It’s time for you to move past it, to come back to the real world.”
Unable to understand that I cannot think as he does, that this body’s personality burned up long ago, he’ll spill forth the usual pained confusion. Eventually, he’ll sigh and leave the room, to converse with a green-scrubbed orderly in the hallway. Thinking themselves out of earshot, they’ll recite the same old script.
I’ll hear the usual buzzwords: “catatonia,” “institutional syndrome,” and all the rest. Finally, the orderly will escort Carter out. Driving tearfully from Milford Asylum, he’ll swear never to return. He always does.
Such a sad man, so broken. I think I’ll save him for last.
Lights Out, Happy People
by Jeremy Thompson
The building is nondescript, devoid of architectural flourish. No sign marks it an asylum. The squat white edifice could be anything from a daycare to a pharmaceutical research center. Actually, it’s a little of both.
The entrance is locked. Fortunately, I require neither plastic badge nor keypad code. Insubstantial, I enter the waiting room, finding it bright and clean, carefully scrubbed. At the receptionist’s desk sits an attractive Hispanic, her face a study in boredom. The upholstered benches are empty, visitors being few and infrequent.
The receptionist feels a sensation, like a water droplet splashing her arm.
Flowing past another locked door, I enter a cheerfully painted corridor, its polished stone floor reflecting fluorescent lighting. Therein, I pass many closed doors, each with its own keypad and badge scanner. I pass the kitchen and dining room, the laundry room, and a number of therapy rooms, all similarly locked.
Ah, here’s an open door: the dayroom. A fetor spills out the doorway, spoiled food and unwashed flesh. Smears and handprints ornament the walls.
The room is dominated by a large television, rows of benches set before it. Upon these benches, twenty-three patients sit quietly, watching Looney Tunes hijinks. Some wear pajamas, others hospital gowns. One drooling, completely hairless fellow wears only a pair of stained underpants.
The audience consists mainly of depressives and schizophrenics. The depressives stay mute, barely perceiving the cartoon. The schizos, however, talk back to the program. Half of ’em aren’t even seeing Daffy Duck right now; they’re conducting videoconferences with relatives and long-dead celebrities.
I manifest on the screen, a howling static rictus. The audience hoots, screams and jabbers, until the television goes off.
Why is the dayroom open so late? you might wonder.
Last night, a depressive killed herself. Somehow, she attained a bottle of sleeping pills, and swallowed it entirely. Who stole ’em from the pharmacy, and left the bottle waiting on her pillow? Who painted the air with beautiful miseries, as she wept, cursed and giggled? I’ll give you one guess.
Learning of the suicide, many patients couldn’t cope. Having doubled down on individual and group therapy sessions already, the staff decided that extra lounge time might soothe their restless spirits.
Two men play chess at a corner table, with the smaller of the two going through a series of taps, flicks and scratches before each move. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. The chess pieces are large and unsightly, constructed from spray-painted Styrofoam.
At another table, a glassy-eyed woman assembles a puzzle, what could be an orchid. An elderly man hovers over her shoulder, intently observing.
Some patients stand around talking, like guests at a cocktail party, with only their shabby attire branding them as mentally imbalanced. Just outside their circles, a tattooed war veteran shuffles intermittently, his countenance vacillating between rage, fear, elation and boredom in rapid succession. Posttraumatic stress disorder, obviously.
At the room’s periphery, a smattering of orderlies, nurses and psychiatric technicians hover, observing the patients. The psychiatric techs hold clipboards, jotting sporadic notations.
The dayroom is off-limits to visitors, but I exist imperceptibly. Thus, I smack the war veteran forcefully, and then push a jittery crone onto her rump. I birth pandemonium, hurled accusations leading to punching, scratching, even biting. The orderlies swarm in to drag patients apart, too late for one eye-gouged shrieker. Pink sludge dribbles from her socket, blood mixed with vitreous humor.
The veteran bashes his head against the wall now, again and again, trying to knock my voice from his cognizance. “We await you in Hell,” I whisper, repeating it until he falls unconscious, into sweet shadowy oblivion.
* * *
Exiting the dayroom, I follow the corridor. It terminates in a dead end, locked doors branching right and left. Leftward lies the female department.
Passing the threshold, I come upon a nurses station, wherein a stern-faced spinster scrutinizes paperwork piles. I hit the papers like a hurricane, spinning them up into fluttering chaos. As they fall, the nurse curses, her bloodshot left eye twitching. Beholding her baffled fury, I voice a cackle.
Doors trail both sides of the hallway, with laminated glass windows installed for patient observation. Only a few are open, revealing featureless rooms, unadorned save for dressers, beds and televisions. Within one, a half-nude woman flicks her tongue suggestively, registering my disembodied presence.
I’ll return momentarily, but first I’ve appointments within the violent patients ward, behind yet another locked door. Therein lie the feral ones, dangers to themselves and others. Their bodies exhibit self-carved symbols; their eyes shift left to right, right to left, sometimes both directions at once.
Imagine that you’re confined in a straightjacket. Now imagine that you suddenly feel fingers inside of that jacket—tickling, pinching and slapping. There’s no one in sight, yet you can’t escape the sensations. It would set you off, too, now wouldn’t it?
Others I speak to, claiming to be an 18th century ancestor who’s returned to possess them. They scream until their throats shred, until their overseers pour in, jabbing with needles of tranquility.
* * *
I flow back into the female department, into a certain locked room. Therein, I encounter a bedbound woman—scrawny, her hospital gown stained and soiled. Her ragged black mane cascades onto varicose thighs. Within a lined, octogenarian face, her eyes are deep-sunken.
I coat her countenance like a porcelain mask. Replicating her skull’s contours, I sink subcutaneously, into flesh dominion. Opening Martha Stanton’s eyes, I grin up at the ceiling.
* * *
Tomorrow, Carter—the decrepit remnants of an ex-husband—will arrive, to park himself patiently at my bedside. Squinting through his thick lenses, wearing that idiotic visitor sticker, he’ll say what he always says: “Douglas died years ago, Martha. It’s time for you to move past it, to come back to the real world.”
Unable to understand that I cannot think as he does, that this body’s personality burned up long ago, he’ll spill forth the usual pained confusion. Eventually, he’ll sigh and leave the room, to converse with a green-scrubbed orderly in the hallway. Thinking themselves out of earshot, they’ll recite the same old script.
I’ll hear the usual buzzwords: “catatonia,” “institutional syndrome,” and all the rest. Finally, the orderly will escort Carter out. Driving tearfully from Milford Asylum, he’ll swear never to return. He always does.
Such a sad man, so broken. I think I’ll save him for last.
June 25, 2021
"A Bag for All Bleedings"
"A Bag for All Bleedings” was my failed attempt to make it into the Bludgeon Tools anthology. The story was inspired by the most dangerously deranged woman that I’ve ever encountered. Enjoy!
A Bag for All Bleedings
by Jeremy Thompson
Briiing, briiing.
“Uh…whuh…what time is it?” enquired Kieron, rolling over in bed, making the box spring creak in protest. His wife Sharon, a familiar lump of warm, nightgown-encased flesh, uttered no reply, save for light snoring.
Briiing, briiing.
He checked the clock on the nightstand. Nearly four a.m. From past experience, he knew that nobody called at that hour with glad news to impart. His heart rate quickened. He farted. He sketched a cross in the air.
Briiing, briiing.
“Okay, okay,” he grunted, snatching the phone from its cradle. Forgoing a pleasant greeting, he asked, “Yeah, what is it?”
Then came a voice most familiar: nasally, sculpted of dark insinuations.
“Mr. McGuinness?”
“You know that I am. What do you want this time, Kimmy?” In his mind’s eye she sprouted: a Joe Camelesque countenance framed by rings of ebon hair, tattoos of anime characters spanning her ever-exposed arms and legs.
“It’s Vincent. He’s acting crazy, all aggressive, scaring my son and me half to death. I need you to talk some sense into him. Please, Mr. McGuinness. Help me.”
Kieron sighed with much emphasis, as if the act itself could blow him back to dreamland. “Fine, Kimmy. Put him on the phone.”
A few silent minutes elapsed. Then his only child’s voice filled his ear. “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
“What’s going on over there? You having some kind of fight?”
“Huh? Fight? Whadda you mean?”
“You’re scaring Kimmy and her son, apparently. Some kind of lover’s spat?”
“Listen, Dad, I was asleep when you called. The sun’s not even up yet. Call me around noon if you have somethin’ to discuss.”
“But I didn’t—”
Too late. Vincent had already hung up on him.
* * *
The next morning, dressed in a coral blue apron emblazoned with the logo of his place of employment, Wettle’s Home Improvement, Kieron lurked in an aisle of piled lumber and composites, awaiting a customer to assist.
Having shrugged the bizarre early hours call off—“Kimmy probably had a nightmare,” his wife, ever optimistic, had asserted over breakfast—he was taken aback when his store manager, Huey Dalton, approached him, his friendly, creased countenance now somber.
“Step into my office for a moment, would you?” he said, more a command than a request.
Bypassing aisles of appliances, bathroom fixtures, tools, and cleaning supplies—all perfectly polished, awaiting their future homes—they entered that space. No art, photos, or diplomas graced its walls. There were only two swivel chairs present, positioned on opposite sides of a Carolina Oak desk.
Atop that desk was a computer monitor. Once they’d each claimed a seat, Mr. Dalton turned it toward Kieron. “Care to explain this?” he enquired with a tone that made Kieron’s heart sink.
The message had been sent to Mr. Dalton’s Wettle’s Home Improvement email address, but clearly addressed Kieron. It read:
Mr. McGuinness,
Your family is out of control. Why don’t you leave me alone? Your son won’t go away, won’t ever leave my apartment, though I’ve broken up with him one thousand and one times. Your wife and you keep harassing me: throwing rocks through my windows, prank calling me all the time. I didn’t do anything wrong. Now I’m afraid for my own son’s life. Please, don’t make me call the police.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Grempt
“What in the actual fuck?” exclaimed Kieron.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, sorry, Mr. Dalton. I didn’t mean to curse in front of you. But, honestly, I have no idea what this girl’s problem is. My son Vincent’s been dating her since last November, and moved in with her just last month, and my wife and I haven’t seen either of them since then. We’ve never called Kimmy even once. She’s called us a few dozen times, though—far more than Vincent has—to check in, she says, but really to complain about my son. ‘He plays video games too much.’ ‘He’s awkward in public.’ Stuff like that. She never mentioned any breakup, though. And as for her broken windows, I know nothing about them.”
“Okay, Kieron. Okay. I’ll let you deal with this matter on your own time, in your own way. At any rate, I shouldn’t be getting your messages. I’ll have to block her email address.”
“Great idea.”
* * *
During his lunch hour, Kieron texted his son, describing the strange email, demanding an explanation. When Vincent finally replied, he wrote: It was just a joke, Dad. Kimmy has a strange sense of humor, that’s all. She sent that shit to your boss by mistake.
I think your girlfriend needs help, Kieron texted back. Why don’t you come back home for a while until she gets it?
No reply.
* * *
Then came the weekend. Saturday passed uneventfully: yardwork Kieron had been putting off, followed by fast food and televised football. The McGuinness’ made unexceptional love and were in bed by ten o’clock.
Sunday was a whole nother matter.
Kieron awoke to hear his wife screaming, “I’m not threatening you! No, you’re the one who’s not making any sense!”
Trailing the sound of her voice, he found Sharon in the kitchen, clad in the fluorescent flannel robe he’d bought her for Christmas. Her free hand tugged at her hair. Tears spilled down her face. A mug of coffee sat on the counter, untouched.
“That’s enough, Kimmy! I’m hanging up now!”
Oh God, Kieron thought. What’s that crazy bitch up to this time?
Sharon slammed the phone into its cradle and began to hyperventilate. Instinctively, Kieron stepped up behind her and began to massage her shoulders. “Want to talk about it, honey?” he asked, feeling more tension in his wife than he’d ever felt previously.
When she’d recovered her breath enough to enunciate, Sharon hissed, “That woman. The things…the horrible things she said to me.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh, you have no idea. As soon as I answered the phone, she immediately started spouting off about how she thinks that Vincent’s gone insane. She said, ‘He jerks off to shark shows five times a day and never flushes the toilet when he shits.’ When I told her that I didn’t believe her, she started shrieking that I was harassing her. Then she said…”
“What?”
“She said that you raped her…that you showed up to her apartment when Vincent wasn’t around, pinned her down, and jammed your penis into her ass right in front of her son. She said that you told the boy to keep quiet or he’d ‘be next up for a dicking.’ The trash that comes out of Kimmy’s mouth. I can’t even believe it.”
“That’s disgusting!” Kieron was now quite infuriated. “I’m not even into…you know, and especially not with her.”
In fact, he’d only been alone with Kimmy once, in his living room, back when Vincent had just begun dating her, while his son was in the bathroom and his wife was out shopping. Kimmy had sat beside him on the couch, complemented him on his shorts, and then, without warning, stuck her hand into Kieron’s pocket. “Got any quarters?” she’d asked, failing at a seductive tone. Her demeanor had been so awkwardly fervent that Kieron had leapt to his feet and retreated to his bedroom.
“This behavior can’t continue! I’m calling Vincent right now!”
* * *
Sadly, love had blinded the boy. He claimed that Sharon had misheard Kimmy and, in fact, had provoked her. “We’ll sit down together soon and work this all out,” he said. “We’ll do it in public, at a restaurant or somethin’, so that everybody is on their best behavior. My girl’s really quite nice. You’ll see. She just gets pissed off sometimes. She was picked on in school, apparently. Sometimes she lashes out, just a little.”
“I don’t want that crazy bitch anywhere near me,” Kieron countered.
* * *
Unfortunately, for Kimmy, Kieron’s desires were a thing to be trampled, for he saw her the very next day. There he was, wandering the aisles of Wettle’s Home Improvement—on the hunt for a customer he might assist, so as to justify his salary, when he saw her trailing her fingertips along power drill after power drill. She wore a spaghetti strap top, braless, and jean shorts so skimpy that the lower portions of her ass cheeks were exposed.
With any other woman, Kieron would have paused for a moment to appreciate the view, but the ink on her limbs, depicting large-eyed, spiky-haired cartoon men, was instantly recognizable, and he fled. Sparing Kimmy but one quick over-the-shoulder parting glance, he saw that she had slipped her free hand into her shorts. As if aware of his gaze, she arched her back and began to finger her asshole.
Shocked to find himself trembling, Kieron hid in a restroom stall for the better part of an hour. Seated on a closed toilet lid, he scrolled through his wife’s Facebook timeline, which he hadn’t looked at in months. Sharon wasn’t half as witty as she thought she was, but he’d never admit that to her.
When Kieron finally emerged—to apologize to his boss, claiming that his intestines were in turmoil after a far-too-spicy Indian food dinner—to his relief, he saw that Kimmy had departed. He wondered if she’d purchased anything or had only visited to annoy him.
His lunch hour arrived. Rather than amble over to the across-the-parking-lot Togo’s, as he usually did, Kieron drove to a sports bar and downed a few beers.
* * *
A few days passed without incident. Still, apprehension danced along the edges of Kieron’s psyche. He sensed that machinations were in play and he’d soon be beleaguered, and worried much about Vincent, who often made the wrong choices.
Finally, Friday evening, as his wife busied herself in the kitchen, preparing baked ziti, he settled himself onto a back patio lounge chair and dialed his son up. A breeze chilled his bare arms. Canines barked in the distance. A sunset had arrived to beguile him with vibrant shades of purple, red and orange.
“Hey, Dad, what’s the haps?” Vincent greeted, answering after two rings.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Kieron, as if his temples weren’t throbbing, as if his heart wasn’t jackhammering in his chest. “Your mother’s preparing us dinner, and I thought I’d check in. Are you doing okay? Have you…found a job yet? Has Kimmy?”
“Well, I interviewed at a few places, but you know how it is. Other than that, though, I’m just peachy. In fact, I’m chillin’ in a tent right now, up at the San Onofre Bluffs. I took Dylan camping. Tomorrow, I’m gonna teach him how to surf.”
“Dylan?”
“Yeah. You know, Kimmy’s kid. He got in trouble at school—cheated on a test, or some shit—and Kimmy thought that he might need a man-to-man talk. I’m tryin’ to be a good male role model, you know. Dylan’s dad’s never around. At least the dumb bastard pays child support on time.”
“Don’t talk about my daddy!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice in the background.
“Shut up, ya little dipshit,” Vincent chided.
“So…is Kimmy with you?”
“Nah, Dad. She’s been stressed out lately, and said that she needed some alone time. I left her a bag of good herb, though. She’ll be mellowed out soon enough.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I guess that I’ll let you go then.”
“Cool, cool. Tell Mom that I love her, and I’ll see you guys soon.”
“Take care of yourself, Son.”
* * *
Another Saturday morning found Sharon in her comfy robe and slippers, and Kieron in a Raiders jersey, sweatpants, and sandals, seated at their Colonial Cream granite kitchen counter, enjoying orange juice, toast, omelets, and sleepy small talk. Sharon had recently reconnected with Margie Langstrom, an old high school acquaintance, and would be joining her for lunch later that day. Kieron, once he had the house to himself, planned to barbecue burgers and binge on adult movies.
Then came a discordance, strangely syncopated. “I think that’s my car alarm,” Kieron said, even as his heart dropped.
As he lunged to his feet, his wife grabbed his arm and said nothing. Gently shaking off her grip, he pressed forward. His keys were hanging from a hook near the door and he snatched them, stride unbroken.
There must have been a side of Kieron far more sagacious than he’d suspected, for when he stepped out of his house and beheld his son’s girlfriend, he evinced not an ounce of surprise. “Kimmy,” he said, “what are you doing here?” She stood beside his Kia Sportage, glowering, with her own battered El Camino parked at the curb.
Dressed in the very same outfit she’d sported at Wettle’s Home Improvement, she twitched and she blinked. Her hair had gone awry. The absence of makeup made her many facial sores conspicuous. Apparently, she had purchased something on Monday, for she gripped a reusable shopping bag, coral blue, bearing his store’s logo.
Kieron keyed off the alarm and said, “Didn’t you hear me? I asked you what you’re doing here. You don’t expect to be invited inside, do you? Not after that email you sent…and those terrible things you said to my wife.”
Kimmy attempted to smile and couldn’t quite manage it. Then, suddenly, she was screaming, “Your wife! That evil cunt made my boy lick her bloody tampon! He told me all about it! And as for that piece of shit Vincent, he drugged my mama one night and took naked pictures of her! I’ve seen ’em! No, what are you doing? Let go of me! Help, someone, help!”
“Kimmy, I’m not touching you. We’re like seven feet apart right now.”
“Please, Mr. McGuinness, put that down! I won’t tell the cops how you raped me! Is this why you invited me here, to kill me so I won’t talk?” From her bag she pulled a power drill, a cordless Ryobi. Squeezing its trigger, she brought it to life.
“Hey, come on now, Kimmy. This isn’t funny.”
“Somebody, anybody, call the police! Mr. McGuinness has gone crazy! Oh, fuck! Please, don’t do this! Ow! God, no! Aaie…aaie…aaaaaaaah!” Without further ado, she jammed the drill into her abdomen. Blood sloshed onto her jean shorts as she shredded her intestines, liberating fecal matter and partially digested food. Howling, she collapsed to her knees, then rolled onto her back.
“Sharon, call an ambulance!” Kieron shouted, never taking his eyes off the lunatic. “Kimmy’s here and she’s hurt herself. It looks pretty bad.”
“What? Let me see!” his wife cried, emerging from the house.
“You’d better not! It’s too gruesome! Just do as I say!”
Thrashing in agony, having released her grip on the drill, whose bit was yet lodged within her, Kimmy continued her bizarre spectacle. “No, not the hammer!” she shouted, retrieving one from her bag, along with a most formidable masonry nail.
Neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk, but dared not step any closer. All were too shocked and fearful to approach Kimmy, to wrench the tool from her grip and prevent more self-harm. So too was Kieron, though he at least attempted to voice reason.
“Listen, Kimmy,” he said, “you have like a dozen witnesses here now. Everyone can see that I’m not the one hurting you. I don’t know why you’re trying to frame me, but no one will ever believe it. Put the hammer down already, and we’ll get you some help.”
“You killed my sister in the womb! How can you hate me so much?” Somehow, though she shuddered as if in the grip of an earthquake, Kimmy lifted the nail to her eye and hammered it in. Blood and vitreous humor oozed onto her hand. “Stop hurting me!” she shrieked. “You’re a monster! A demon!”
Should I spray her with the hose? Kieron wondered. Will that calm her down a little?
Dipping back into her Wettle’s bag, Kimmy’s gore-coated hands withdrew a bucksaw.
“Somebody needs to stop this woman…now!” wailed Nancy Helgason from next door, making no attempt to do so. A few teenagers had pulled out their iPhones and were filming. Good, thought Kieron, let there be solid evidence.
“You’re not really going to continue this, are you?” he asked, knowing that Kimmy would. Whatever had shattered within her demanded a blood sacrifice.
“I never did anything to you people…why’d you have to destroy me?” were Kimmy’s final words. With both hands, she began to saw through her own neck. Severing both of her carotid arteries, plus her jugular veins, she nearly managed to decapitate herself, before a crimson current carried her life away.
* * *
Kieron heard sirens in the distance, far too late to matter. He heard his neighbors bleating and vomiting, and Sharon sobbing behind him. Never would he learn Kimmy’s motive for committing suicide on his driveway. Never would he be able to comfort his grieving son in any way that truly mattered.
Still, in the moments before the firetrucks, police vehicles, ambulances, and news vans arrived to make him a celebrity, as he lingered in the frigid sunlight, wishing that he had enough time to void his bowels and take a shower, Kieron McGuinness was permitted one last pondering: Did she leave her receipt in the bag? Can I return those tools for store credit?
He began giggling and found that he couldn’t stop.
A Bag for All Bleedings
by Jeremy Thompson
Briiing, briiing.
“Uh…whuh…what time is it?” enquired Kieron, rolling over in bed, making the box spring creak in protest. His wife Sharon, a familiar lump of warm, nightgown-encased flesh, uttered no reply, save for light snoring.
Briiing, briiing.
He checked the clock on the nightstand. Nearly four a.m. From past experience, he knew that nobody called at that hour with glad news to impart. His heart rate quickened. He farted. He sketched a cross in the air.
Briiing, briiing.
“Okay, okay,” he grunted, snatching the phone from its cradle. Forgoing a pleasant greeting, he asked, “Yeah, what is it?”
Then came a voice most familiar: nasally, sculpted of dark insinuations.
“Mr. McGuinness?”
“You know that I am. What do you want this time, Kimmy?” In his mind’s eye she sprouted: a Joe Camelesque countenance framed by rings of ebon hair, tattoos of anime characters spanning her ever-exposed arms and legs.
“It’s Vincent. He’s acting crazy, all aggressive, scaring my son and me half to death. I need you to talk some sense into him. Please, Mr. McGuinness. Help me.”
Kieron sighed with much emphasis, as if the act itself could blow him back to dreamland. “Fine, Kimmy. Put him on the phone.”
A few silent minutes elapsed. Then his only child’s voice filled his ear. “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
“What’s going on over there? You having some kind of fight?”
“Huh? Fight? Whadda you mean?”
“You’re scaring Kimmy and her son, apparently. Some kind of lover’s spat?”
“Listen, Dad, I was asleep when you called. The sun’s not even up yet. Call me around noon if you have somethin’ to discuss.”
“But I didn’t—”
Too late. Vincent had already hung up on him.
* * *
The next morning, dressed in a coral blue apron emblazoned with the logo of his place of employment, Wettle’s Home Improvement, Kieron lurked in an aisle of piled lumber and composites, awaiting a customer to assist.
Having shrugged the bizarre early hours call off—“Kimmy probably had a nightmare,” his wife, ever optimistic, had asserted over breakfast—he was taken aback when his store manager, Huey Dalton, approached him, his friendly, creased countenance now somber.
“Step into my office for a moment, would you?” he said, more a command than a request.
Bypassing aisles of appliances, bathroom fixtures, tools, and cleaning supplies—all perfectly polished, awaiting their future homes—they entered that space. No art, photos, or diplomas graced its walls. There were only two swivel chairs present, positioned on opposite sides of a Carolina Oak desk.
Atop that desk was a computer monitor. Once they’d each claimed a seat, Mr. Dalton turned it toward Kieron. “Care to explain this?” he enquired with a tone that made Kieron’s heart sink.
The message had been sent to Mr. Dalton’s Wettle’s Home Improvement email address, but clearly addressed Kieron. It read:
Mr. McGuinness,
Your family is out of control. Why don’t you leave me alone? Your son won’t go away, won’t ever leave my apartment, though I’ve broken up with him one thousand and one times. Your wife and you keep harassing me: throwing rocks through my windows, prank calling me all the time. I didn’t do anything wrong. Now I’m afraid for my own son’s life. Please, don’t make me call the police.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Grempt
“What in the actual fuck?” exclaimed Kieron.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, sorry, Mr. Dalton. I didn’t mean to curse in front of you. But, honestly, I have no idea what this girl’s problem is. My son Vincent’s been dating her since last November, and moved in with her just last month, and my wife and I haven’t seen either of them since then. We’ve never called Kimmy even once. She’s called us a few dozen times, though—far more than Vincent has—to check in, she says, but really to complain about my son. ‘He plays video games too much.’ ‘He’s awkward in public.’ Stuff like that. She never mentioned any breakup, though. And as for her broken windows, I know nothing about them.”
“Okay, Kieron. Okay. I’ll let you deal with this matter on your own time, in your own way. At any rate, I shouldn’t be getting your messages. I’ll have to block her email address.”
“Great idea.”
* * *
During his lunch hour, Kieron texted his son, describing the strange email, demanding an explanation. When Vincent finally replied, he wrote: It was just a joke, Dad. Kimmy has a strange sense of humor, that’s all. She sent that shit to your boss by mistake.
I think your girlfriend needs help, Kieron texted back. Why don’t you come back home for a while until she gets it?
No reply.
* * *
Then came the weekend. Saturday passed uneventfully: yardwork Kieron had been putting off, followed by fast food and televised football. The McGuinness’ made unexceptional love and were in bed by ten o’clock.
Sunday was a whole nother matter.
Kieron awoke to hear his wife screaming, “I’m not threatening you! No, you’re the one who’s not making any sense!”
Trailing the sound of her voice, he found Sharon in the kitchen, clad in the fluorescent flannel robe he’d bought her for Christmas. Her free hand tugged at her hair. Tears spilled down her face. A mug of coffee sat on the counter, untouched.
“That’s enough, Kimmy! I’m hanging up now!”
Oh God, Kieron thought. What’s that crazy bitch up to this time?
Sharon slammed the phone into its cradle and began to hyperventilate. Instinctively, Kieron stepped up behind her and began to massage her shoulders. “Want to talk about it, honey?” he asked, feeling more tension in his wife than he’d ever felt previously.
When she’d recovered her breath enough to enunciate, Sharon hissed, “That woman. The things…the horrible things she said to me.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh, you have no idea. As soon as I answered the phone, she immediately started spouting off about how she thinks that Vincent’s gone insane. She said, ‘He jerks off to shark shows five times a day and never flushes the toilet when he shits.’ When I told her that I didn’t believe her, she started shrieking that I was harassing her. Then she said…”
“What?”
“She said that you raped her…that you showed up to her apartment when Vincent wasn’t around, pinned her down, and jammed your penis into her ass right in front of her son. She said that you told the boy to keep quiet or he’d ‘be next up for a dicking.’ The trash that comes out of Kimmy’s mouth. I can’t even believe it.”
“That’s disgusting!” Kieron was now quite infuriated. “I’m not even into…you know, and especially not with her.”
In fact, he’d only been alone with Kimmy once, in his living room, back when Vincent had just begun dating her, while his son was in the bathroom and his wife was out shopping. Kimmy had sat beside him on the couch, complemented him on his shorts, and then, without warning, stuck her hand into Kieron’s pocket. “Got any quarters?” she’d asked, failing at a seductive tone. Her demeanor had been so awkwardly fervent that Kieron had leapt to his feet and retreated to his bedroom.
“This behavior can’t continue! I’m calling Vincent right now!”
* * *
Sadly, love had blinded the boy. He claimed that Sharon had misheard Kimmy and, in fact, had provoked her. “We’ll sit down together soon and work this all out,” he said. “We’ll do it in public, at a restaurant or somethin’, so that everybody is on their best behavior. My girl’s really quite nice. You’ll see. She just gets pissed off sometimes. She was picked on in school, apparently. Sometimes she lashes out, just a little.”
“I don’t want that crazy bitch anywhere near me,” Kieron countered.
* * *
Unfortunately, for Kimmy, Kieron’s desires were a thing to be trampled, for he saw her the very next day. There he was, wandering the aisles of Wettle’s Home Improvement—on the hunt for a customer he might assist, so as to justify his salary, when he saw her trailing her fingertips along power drill after power drill. She wore a spaghetti strap top, braless, and jean shorts so skimpy that the lower portions of her ass cheeks were exposed.
With any other woman, Kieron would have paused for a moment to appreciate the view, but the ink on her limbs, depicting large-eyed, spiky-haired cartoon men, was instantly recognizable, and he fled. Sparing Kimmy but one quick over-the-shoulder parting glance, he saw that she had slipped her free hand into her shorts. As if aware of his gaze, she arched her back and began to finger her asshole.
Shocked to find himself trembling, Kieron hid in a restroom stall for the better part of an hour. Seated on a closed toilet lid, he scrolled through his wife’s Facebook timeline, which he hadn’t looked at in months. Sharon wasn’t half as witty as she thought she was, but he’d never admit that to her.
When Kieron finally emerged—to apologize to his boss, claiming that his intestines were in turmoil after a far-too-spicy Indian food dinner—to his relief, he saw that Kimmy had departed. He wondered if she’d purchased anything or had only visited to annoy him.
His lunch hour arrived. Rather than amble over to the across-the-parking-lot Togo’s, as he usually did, Kieron drove to a sports bar and downed a few beers.
* * *
A few days passed without incident. Still, apprehension danced along the edges of Kieron’s psyche. He sensed that machinations were in play and he’d soon be beleaguered, and worried much about Vincent, who often made the wrong choices.
Finally, Friday evening, as his wife busied herself in the kitchen, preparing baked ziti, he settled himself onto a back patio lounge chair and dialed his son up. A breeze chilled his bare arms. Canines barked in the distance. A sunset had arrived to beguile him with vibrant shades of purple, red and orange.
“Hey, Dad, what’s the haps?” Vincent greeted, answering after two rings.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Kieron, as if his temples weren’t throbbing, as if his heart wasn’t jackhammering in his chest. “Your mother’s preparing us dinner, and I thought I’d check in. Are you doing okay? Have you…found a job yet? Has Kimmy?”
“Well, I interviewed at a few places, but you know how it is. Other than that, though, I’m just peachy. In fact, I’m chillin’ in a tent right now, up at the San Onofre Bluffs. I took Dylan camping. Tomorrow, I’m gonna teach him how to surf.”
“Dylan?”
“Yeah. You know, Kimmy’s kid. He got in trouble at school—cheated on a test, or some shit—and Kimmy thought that he might need a man-to-man talk. I’m tryin’ to be a good male role model, you know. Dylan’s dad’s never around. At least the dumb bastard pays child support on time.”
“Don’t talk about my daddy!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice in the background.
“Shut up, ya little dipshit,” Vincent chided.
“So…is Kimmy with you?”
“Nah, Dad. She’s been stressed out lately, and said that she needed some alone time. I left her a bag of good herb, though. She’ll be mellowed out soon enough.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I guess that I’ll let you go then.”
“Cool, cool. Tell Mom that I love her, and I’ll see you guys soon.”
“Take care of yourself, Son.”
* * *
Another Saturday morning found Sharon in her comfy robe and slippers, and Kieron in a Raiders jersey, sweatpants, and sandals, seated at their Colonial Cream granite kitchen counter, enjoying orange juice, toast, omelets, and sleepy small talk. Sharon had recently reconnected with Margie Langstrom, an old high school acquaintance, and would be joining her for lunch later that day. Kieron, once he had the house to himself, planned to barbecue burgers and binge on adult movies.
Then came a discordance, strangely syncopated. “I think that’s my car alarm,” Kieron said, even as his heart dropped.
As he lunged to his feet, his wife grabbed his arm and said nothing. Gently shaking off her grip, he pressed forward. His keys were hanging from a hook near the door and he snatched them, stride unbroken.
There must have been a side of Kieron far more sagacious than he’d suspected, for when he stepped out of his house and beheld his son’s girlfriend, he evinced not an ounce of surprise. “Kimmy,” he said, “what are you doing here?” She stood beside his Kia Sportage, glowering, with her own battered El Camino parked at the curb.
Dressed in the very same outfit she’d sported at Wettle’s Home Improvement, she twitched and she blinked. Her hair had gone awry. The absence of makeup made her many facial sores conspicuous. Apparently, she had purchased something on Monday, for she gripped a reusable shopping bag, coral blue, bearing his store’s logo.
Kieron keyed off the alarm and said, “Didn’t you hear me? I asked you what you’re doing here. You don’t expect to be invited inside, do you? Not after that email you sent…and those terrible things you said to my wife.”
Kimmy attempted to smile and couldn’t quite manage it. Then, suddenly, she was screaming, “Your wife! That evil cunt made my boy lick her bloody tampon! He told me all about it! And as for that piece of shit Vincent, he drugged my mama one night and took naked pictures of her! I’ve seen ’em! No, what are you doing? Let go of me! Help, someone, help!”
“Kimmy, I’m not touching you. We’re like seven feet apart right now.”
“Please, Mr. McGuinness, put that down! I won’t tell the cops how you raped me! Is this why you invited me here, to kill me so I won’t talk?” From her bag she pulled a power drill, a cordless Ryobi. Squeezing its trigger, she brought it to life.
“Hey, come on now, Kimmy. This isn’t funny.”
“Somebody, anybody, call the police! Mr. McGuinness has gone crazy! Oh, fuck! Please, don’t do this! Ow! God, no! Aaie…aaie…aaaaaaaah!” Without further ado, she jammed the drill into her abdomen. Blood sloshed onto her jean shorts as she shredded her intestines, liberating fecal matter and partially digested food. Howling, she collapsed to her knees, then rolled onto her back.
“Sharon, call an ambulance!” Kieron shouted, never taking his eyes off the lunatic. “Kimmy’s here and she’s hurt herself. It looks pretty bad.”
“What? Let me see!” his wife cried, emerging from the house.
“You’d better not! It’s too gruesome! Just do as I say!”
Thrashing in agony, having released her grip on the drill, whose bit was yet lodged within her, Kimmy continued her bizarre spectacle. “No, not the hammer!” she shouted, retrieving one from her bag, along with a most formidable masonry nail.
Neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk, but dared not step any closer. All were too shocked and fearful to approach Kimmy, to wrench the tool from her grip and prevent more self-harm. So too was Kieron, though he at least attempted to voice reason.
“Listen, Kimmy,” he said, “you have like a dozen witnesses here now. Everyone can see that I’m not the one hurting you. I don’t know why you’re trying to frame me, but no one will ever believe it. Put the hammer down already, and we’ll get you some help.”
“You killed my sister in the womb! How can you hate me so much?” Somehow, though she shuddered as if in the grip of an earthquake, Kimmy lifted the nail to her eye and hammered it in. Blood and vitreous humor oozed onto her hand. “Stop hurting me!” she shrieked. “You’re a monster! A demon!”
Should I spray her with the hose? Kieron wondered. Will that calm her down a little?
Dipping back into her Wettle’s bag, Kimmy’s gore-coated hands withdrew a bucksaw.
“Somebody needs to stop this woman…now!” wailed Nancy Helgason from next door, making no attempt to do so. A few teenagers had pulled out their iPhones and were filming. Good, thought Kieron, let there be solid evidence.
“You’re not really going to continue this, are you?” he asked, knowing that Kimmy would. Whatever had shattered within her demanded a blood sacrifice.
“I never did anything to you people…why’d you have to destroy me?” were Kimmy’s final words. With both hands, she began to saw through her own neck. Severing both of her carotid arteries, plus her jugular veins, she nearly managed to decapitate herself, before a crimson current carried her life away.
* * *
Kieron heard sirens in the distance, far too late to matter. He heard his neighbors bleating and vomiting, and Sharon sobbing behind him. Never would he learn Kimmy’s motive for committing suicide on his driveway. Never would he be able to comfort his grieving son in any way that truly mattered.
Still, in the moments before the firetrucks, police vehicles, ambulances, and news vans arrived to make him a celebrity, as he lingered in the frigid sunlight, wishing that he had enough time to void his bowels and take a shower, Kieron McGuinness was permitted one last pondering: Did she leave her receipt in the bag? Can I return those tools for store credit?
He began giggling and found that he couldn’t stop.
June 22, 2021
"myNdwOrm"
Here’s my story “myNdwOrm,” which was first published in Offbeat/Quirky (Journal of Experimental Fiction Volume 73) in 2017 and can also be found in my collection Sweet Chuckling Morbidity.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
myNdwOrm
by Jeremy Thompson
On myNdwOrm, the world fluctuated. Paintings opened into wormholes, through which parallel Earths could be glimpsed. Bubble globs erupted from ceilings to mimic the voices of relatives. Spirit animals dwelt inside the faces of acquaintances, and angles couldn’t be trusted.
Flesh tingle-thrummed immaculate, rendering extreme weather irrelevant. Emotions flowed strangely, more orchestral arrangements than sane responses. Users thought too many thoughts at once, and time was negotiable.
Motifs attached themselves to everything; profundities arrived and unraveled. The division between dream and memory was nil, and peripheral vision attained its own sort of life.
New scents filled the air; mirror reflections changed with every viewing. Nearly comprehensible, stillborn concepts murmured.
* * *
And when Elmore died, the world remained that way. His body rolled off the couch, and he rolled right on out of it. As a disembodied soul, Elmore was translucent, but otherwise, nothing seemed all that different. Not at first, anyway.
I’m dead, he realized hours later, as various afterlife options flowed across the ceiling—which he resisted, because none of ’em felt right. He saw hellish flames, sorrowful rivers, heavenly clouds and houri, but could think of no reason to commit to any of ’em. Thus, Elmore remained earthbound, wondering, What’s in myNdwOrm, anyway? Some claimed that it was an entirely new chemical, manufactured from a strangely soft asteroid that struck a liberal arts college years ago. Others said that it was all the best drugs amalgamated. You know the ones.
Whatever the case, it seemed that Elmore had let his myNdwOrm enthusiasm overwhelm his judgment. Why else would he sniff, inject, swallow, and smoke the substance within the span of ten minutes, in addition to the slow suppository that he’d settled into that morning?
* * *
Eventually, Elmore’s friend Paul ambled in without knocking. He had a beer in his hand and a spring in his step. His eyes rolled from the corpse to the ghost to the door. “No, not today,” he muttered, retreating back into daynight.
I should do…something, Elmore thought, later. Nobody had collected his corpse, which had begun to putrefy. He’d attempted to crawl back into his shed physique, to reanimate it and live again, but the experience had been so damn ooky that his thoughts shrieked, No, no, no! Within that fetidity, microorganisms chill-scalded his essence.
He wouldn’t be attempting that again.
* * *
“Let me go,” he begged the couch later, believing that it restrained him. His spiritual proportions felt as if they were condensing. Paying proper obeisance, he stroked the davenport’s arm and whispered, “Please.” Responsively, the treacherous piece of furniture spat Elmore to his spectral feet.
Seeing himself ankle-deep in a psychedelic river flow—where mwana pwo masks drifted in figure eight tides, and sentient streaks of liquid vividness sucked sorrows from his toes—Elmore shuffled forward. Passing into nightday, he encountered a photo-negativized sky, which contained suns, stars, comets, and moons of all phases. Skulls shone through some moons, and flowers through others.
On the corner, nun hookers flashed their thighs and giggled. Chickens clucked in the gutter, and then rewound into eggs. Fuckin’ profound, was Elmore’s mental commentary.
16-bit trees lurked in the background, jingle-jangling as they bopped back and forth. Some blades of grass sprouted teeth, which fell soilward to permit the growth of larger teeth.
Tapping windshields at stop signs, Elmore went unnoticed by everyone, aside from a baby that might have been a gnome hag in disguise. She saw him and hissed, and then was conveyed elsewhere.
* * *
“Come over here.” The unexpected intonation seemed to emanate from all directions.
“Me?” Elmore asked, on the heels of a thousandfold thoughts, which seemed hardly his. His soul pores shed static tendrils; his every spectral hair stood on end.
“You,” the intonation confirmed.
“Where are you?”
“Just around the corner. Hurry, my friend.”
Heeding the sonance’s advice, Elmore traveled into an alleyway of oil-painted noir, where buildings stretched up into sludge sky, and shadows sprouted darker shadows. Afore a chain link fence tied with death ribbons, a figure awaited. An untethered orb hovered to illuminate his dignified presence.
The man grinned to see Elmore, broadly reassuring. “Greetings,” he said, all baritone elegance.
“You…you can see me,” Elmore stammered, unsure whether the viewer recognized the act’s significance. “Hey, wait a minute. I know you…you’re the hitwizard.”
With his diamond-encrusted pointed hat, invisible teeth, and constellation-patterned muumuu with its train of sewn-together North Face parkas, it could be no other personage. The man’s parka train rippled as squirrels shimmied through it. The squirrels didn’t bother him; he’d trapped ’em there in the first place, just to feel ’em turn cannibal, just to feel something new.
“Who else would I be?” the hitwizard enquired from several dimensions simultaneously. Shaking his head, nearly mystified, he remarked, “Another myNdwOrm overdose. Just couldn’t keep it outta your ass, could you?”
“Shush, mortal man,” Elmore replied. “Besides, you sold me the stuff in the first place.”
“And what were my instructions at the time?”
Elmore sighed. “‘No suppositories,’ you said.”
“Yet you rolled right on outta your body, and here you are.”
All of Elmore’s greatest drug journeys had featured the hitwizard, in varied capacities. In unstable surroundings, the man was a living anchor. When good trips turned vicious, he spoke taming syllables. When funds fell a bit short, he would spot ya.
In fact, of all those in creation, it was said that only the hitwizard knew the secret of myNdwOrm. Would he know how to reverse its effects, to restore life?
“I wanna live again,” was Elmore’s declaration. Brick buildings bulged and receded as he wiggled his spectral toes in flowing colors.
“Relax,” was the hitwizard’s suggestion. Rephrasing, he drawled, “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried, man.”
“If you could observe your own face, you’d know the truth of your feelings. Great turmoil afflicts you; you’re just too high to realize it.”
“Oh…I am?” The conversation felt especially surreal, more a dream-memory than a present tense occurrence. Though psychogenic, a didgeridoo drone made Elmore grind phantom teeth. And the hitwizard…well, there he was.
“Newly disembodied, you float purposeless, caged by the unreal Earth you last knew.”
“Yeah…well…how long does it take for myNdwOrm to wear off when you’re dead, anyway?”
“For you, it might never wear off.”
Forcefully, Elmore shook negativity from his features. “Don’t say ‘never,’ man. Don’t fuckin’ say it.”
“Relax…”
“I am fuckin’ relaxed!”
“You don’t look relaxed. Fortunately, I’ve got just the solution. Here, buddy, suck on this.” From the depths of his muumuu, the hitwizard’s glass staff emerged. At the base of its chamber, there was a bulb wherein substances could be deposited and smoked.
With three clicks of his heels, the magic man conjured fire from his boot toe. Applying the flame to the chamber, he raised an eyebrow to enquire, “What are you waiting for?”
Shrugging, Elmore lowered his lips toward the staff’s mouthpiece. Had he been sober, he might have asked, What’s in there, anyway? Inhaling, he tasted only phantom saliva.
Realizing that he’d been tricked—that the staff held no smokable substance—Elmore staggered backward, but was unable to free himself from the mouthpiece. As a matter of fact, he found that his lips were sliding deeper into the staff. He was the one being inhaled.
His head thinned cylindrical, flowing down the chamber, as did the body that followed it. Abandoning humanoid proportions, Elmore became drifting features, hardly distinguishable from mist. From caged stasis, he regarded the hitwizard through clouded glassware. Seeking escape, he was unable to move.
“In death, you walked as a human because you envisioned yourself as such,” the hitwizard explained. “But I believe otherwise, and on Earth, the credence of the living holds dominion. I’m sorry, my friend, but business is business.”
Into the depths of the hitwizard’s muumuu, his trusty staff returned. For a time, Elmore knew only darkness.
* * *
When he could again appraise his surroundings, Elmore beheld a room of spiraling glassware, obscure chemicals, plastic barrels, industrial microwaves, buckets and scales. Strange implements lined steel countertops; everything seemed to be breathing.
Tipping the staff’s mouthpiece toward an open barrel, the hitwizard urged, “C’mon now. Get outta there.”
But Elmore wouldn’t budge. Things could only get worse, he knew.
“Well, this awkwardness could’ve been avoided, but whatever,” the hitwizard sighed. With masturbatory motions, he stroked the staff from mouthpiece to bulb, from bulb to mouthpiece.
Hey, knock it off, Elmore wished to protest, as the hitwizard palm-blasted strange galvanism into his mist form. But speech was no longer feasible; Elmore’s lips had dissolved into raw soul froth.
His being tensed impossibly. Jittering, it condensed into a projectile that he had no control of. A final downstroke launched him into plastic confines. Splat! was the sound of lost afterlives, of barrel stasis.
Diluted acid fell upon him, and then carbonite. Elmore was stirred into paste, which was then filtered, ammonia-treated, and dried. Soon, of all that he’d been, only powder remained.
* * *
Undiluted, fresh myNdwOrm found low-eyed patrons. From the Elmore batch alone, the hitwizard earned five figures. “No suppositories,” his moral code had him cautioning each twitching customer. Only a few paid attention.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
myNdwOrm
by Jeremy Thompson
On myNdwOrm, the world fluctuated. Paintings opened into wormholes, through which parallel Earths could be glimpsed. Bubble globs erupted from ceilings to mimic the voices of relatives. Spirit animals dwelt inside the faces of acquaintances, and angles couldn’t be trusted.
Flesh tingle-thrummed immaculate, rendering extreme weather irrelevant. Emotions flowed strangely, more orchestral arrangements than sane responses. Users thought too many thoughts at once, and time was negotiable.
Motifs attached themselves to everything; profundities arrived and unraveled. The division between dream and memory was nil, and peripheral vision attained its own sort of life.
New scents filled the air; mirror reflections changed with every viewing. Nearly comprehensible, stillborn concepts murmured.
* * *
And when Elmore died, the world remained that way. His body rolled off the couch, and he rolled right on out of it. As a disembodied soul, Elmore was translucent, but otherwise, nothing seemed all that different. Not at first, anyway.
I’m dead, he realized hours later, as various afterlife options flowed across the ceiling—which he resisted, because none of ’em felt right. He saw hellish flames, sorrowful rivers, heavenly clouds and houri, but could think of no reason to commit to any of ’em. Thus, Elmore remained earthbound, wondering, What’s in myNdwOrm, anyway? Some claimed that it was an entirely new chemical, manufactured from a strangely soft asteroid that struck a liberal arts college years ago. Others said that it was all the best drugs amalgamated. You know the ones.
Whatever the case, it seemed that Elmore had let his myNdwOrm enthusiasm overwhelm his judgment. Why else would he sniff, inject, swallow, and smoke the substance within the span of ten minutes, in addition to the slow suppository that he’d settled into that morning?
* * *
Eventually, Elmore’s friend Paul ambled in without knocking. He had a beer in his hand and a spring in his step. His eyes rolled from the corpse to the ghost to the door. “No, not today,” he muttered, retreating back into daynight.
I should do…something, Elmore thought, later. Nobody had collected his corpse, which had begun to putrefy. He’d attempted to crawl back into his shed physique, to reanimate it and live again, but the experience had been so damn ooky that his thoughts shrieked, No, no, no! Within that fetidity, microorganisms chill-scalded his essence.
He wouldn’t be attempting that again.
* * *
“Let me go,” he begged the couch later, believing that it restrained him. His spiritual proportions felt as if they were condensing. Paying proper obeisance, he stroked the davenport’s arm and whispered, “Please.” Responsively, the treacherous piece of furniture spat Elmore to his spectral feet.
Seeing himself ankle-deep in a psychedelic river flow—where mwana pwo masks drifted in figure eight tides, and sentient streaks of liquid vividness sucked sorrows from his toes—Elmore shuffled forward. Passing into nightday, he encountered a photo-negativized sky, which contained suns, stars, comets, and moons of all phases. Skulls shone through some moons, and flowers through others.
On the corner, nun hookers flashed their thighs and giggled. Chickens clucked in the gutter, and then rewound into eggs. Fuckin’ profound, was Elmore’s mental commentary.
16-bit trees lurked in the background, jingle-jangling as they bopped back and forth. Some blades of grass sprouted teeth, which fell soilward to permit the growth of larger teeth.
Tapping windshields at stop signs, Elmore went unnoticed by everyone, aside from a baby that might have been a gnome hag in disguise. She saw him and hissed, and then was conveyed elsewhere.
* * *
“Come over here.” The unexpected intonation seemed to emanate from all directions.
“Me?” Elmore asked, on the heels of a thousandfold thoughts, which seemed hardly his. His soul pores shed static tendrils; his every spectral hair stood on end.
“You,” the intonation confirmed.
“Where are you?”
“Just around the corner. Hurry, my friend.”
Heeding the sonance’s advice, Elmore traveled into an alleyway of oil-painted noir, where buildings stretched up into sludge sky, and shadows sprouted darker shadows. Afore a chain link fence tied with death ribbons, a figure awaited. An untethered orb hovered to illuminate his dignified presence.
The man grinned to see Elmore, broadly reassuring. “Greetings,” he said, all baritone elegance.
“You…you can see me,” Elmore stammered, unsure whether the viewer recognized the act’s significance. “Hey, wait a minute. I know you…you’re the hitwizard.”
With his diamond-encrusted pointed hat, invisible teeth, and constellation-patterned muumuu with its train of sewn-together North Face parkas, it could be no other personage. The man’s parka train rippled as squirrels shimmied through it. The squirrels didn’t bother him; he’d trapped ’em there in the first place, just to feel ’em turn cannibal, just to feel something new.
“Who else would I be?” the hitwizard enquired from several dimensions simultaneously. Shaking his head, nearly mystified, he remarked, “Another myNdwOrm overdose. Just couldn’t keep it outta your ass, could you?”
“Shush, mortal man,” Elmore replied. “Besides, you sold me the stuff in the first place.”
“And what were my instructions at the time?”
Elmore sighed. “‘No suppositories,’ you said.”
“Yet you rolled right on outta your body, and here you are.”
All of Elmore’s greatest drug journeys had featured the hitwizard, in varied capacities. In unstable surroundings, the man was a living anchor. When good trips turned vicious, he spoke taming syllables. When funds fell a bit short, he would spot ya.
In fact, of all those in creation, it was said that only the hitwizard knew the secret of myNdwOrm. Would he know how to reverse its effects, to restore life?
“I wanna live again,” was Elmore’s declaration. Brick buildings bulged and receded as he wiggled his spectral toes in flowing colors.
“Relax,” was the hitwizard’s suggestion. Rephrasing, he drawled, “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried, man.”
“If you could observe your own face, you’d know the truth of your feelings. Great turmoil afflicts you; you’re just too high to realize it.”
“Oh…I am?” The conversation felt especially surreal, more a dream-memory than a present tense occurrence. Though psychogenic, a didgeridoo drone made Elmore grind phantom teeth. And the hitwizard…well, there he was.
“Newly disembodied, you float purposeless, caged by the unreal Earth you last knew.”
“Yeah…well…how long does it take for myNdwOrm to wear off when you’re dead, anyway?”
“For you, it might never wear off.”
Forcefully, Elmore shook negativity from his features. “Don’t say ‘never,’ man. Don’t fuckin’ say it.”
“Relax…”
“I am fuckin’ relaxed!”
“You don’t look relaxed. Fortunately, I’ve got just the solution. Here, buddy, suck on this.” From the depths of his muumuu, the hitwizard’s glass staff emerged. At the base of its chamber, there was a bulb wherein substances could be deposited and smoked.
With three clicks of his heels, the magic man conjured fire from his boot toe. Applying the flame to the chamber, he raised an eyebrow to enquire, “What are you waiting for?”
Shrugging, Elmore lowered his lips toward the staff’s mouthpiece. Had he been sober, he might have asked, What’s in there, anyway? Inhaling, he tasted only phantom saliva.
Realizing that he’d been tricked—that the staff held no smokable substance—Elmore staggered backward, but was unable to free himself from the mouthpiece. As a matter of fact, he found that his lips were sliding deeper into the staff. He was the one being inhaled.
His head thinned cylindrical, flowing down the chamber, as did the body that followed it. Abandoning humanoid proportions, Elmore became drifting features, hardly distinguishable from mist. From caged stasis, he regarded the hitwizard through clouded glassware. Seeking escape, he was unable to move.
“In death, you walked as a human because you envisioned yourself as such,” the hitwizard explained. “But I believe otherwise, and on Earth, the credence of the living holds dominion. I’m sorry, my friend, but business is business.”
Into the depths of the hitwizard’s muumuu, his trusty staff returned. For a time, Elmore knew only darkness.
* * *
When he could again appraise his surroundings, Elmore beheld a room of spiraling glassware, obscure chemicals, plastic barrels, industrial microwaves, buckets and scales. Strange implements lined steel countertops; everything seemed to be breathing.
Tipping the staff’s mouthpiece toward an open barrel, the hitwizard urged, “C’mon now. Get outta there.”
But Elmore wouldn’t budge. Things could only get worse, he knew.
“Well, this awkwardness could’ve been avoided, but whatever,” the hitwizard sighed. With masturbatory motions, he stroked the staff from mouthpiece to bulb, from bulb to mouthpiece.
Hey, knock it off, Elmore wished to protest, as the hitwizard palm-blasted strange galvanism into his mist form. But speech was no longer feasible; Elmore’s lips had dissolved into raw soul froth.
His being tensed impossibly. Jittering, it condensed into a projectile that he had no control of. A final downstroke launched him into plastic confines. Splat! was the sound of lost afterlives, of barrel stasis.
Diluted acid fell upon him, and then carbonite. Elmore was stirred into paste, which was then filtered, ammonia-treated, and dried. Soon, of all that he’d been, only powder remained.
* * *
Undiluted, fresh myNdwOrm found low-eyed patrons. From the Elmore batch alone, the hitwizard earned five figures. “No suppositories,” his moral code had him cautioning each twitching customer. Only a few paid attention.
June 19, 2021
"Dollimination"
Here’s my story “Dollimination,” which was first published by DarkFuse Magazine in 2017 and can currently be found in my collection Sweet Chuckling Morbidity.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
Dollimination
by Jeremy Thompson
There are voodoo secrets unknown to society at large, never reaching documentaries or speculative fiction. For example, most laymen rest assured, assuming that since they’ve never met a witch doctor, such a personage couldn’t possibly possess an item personal enough to that layman—hair, toenail, Band-Aid, or whatever—to permit any hexes against them. But in fact, the very best voodoo dolls are produced from self-portraits, a person’s self-image filtered through whatever illustrative skill they possess.
Unfortunately for Bradley Clarke, he learned of that voodoo secret from a haggish Starbucks patron, who took offense when he opted not to sign her outthrust comic book—The Unspooling issue eight—which he’d written and illustrated some years prior. In Bradley’s defense, the woman had clumsily bumped his table and toppled his cappuccino, and he was frantically napkin-dabbing his slacks when the comic materialized from the depths of her Burberry backpack.
“I’m a fan of your work,” the woman assured him. Still, he waved her away. He’d been getting recognized often lately; it was annoying.
“Get lost, you old bitch,” he grunted, taking no small measure of joy as he watched her face crumple into a downcast expression, one incongruous with the psychedelic shawl that she wore.
Through her tears and livid shaking, the old gal muttered, “No, no, you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t…you shouldn’t have done it.”
“Your parents shouldn’t have spawned you, so go find a bridge to live under,” Bradley countered. “That’s right, I just called you a troll. What can you do about it? As a matter of fact, were it up to me, people like you wouldn’t be allowed to read my comics in the first place.”
“People like me? People like me? You dare insult hoodooists?”
“Hoodooists? Is that what inbred hags call themselves nowadays?”
“Inbred? Inbred! What the heck is your problem? I approached you politely, humbly requesting an autograph, and you went and treated me like week-old, diseased spittle. Someone…somebody needs to teach you a lesson!”
“Lesson, huh? Talk about lessons after you graduate from kindergarten, ya empty-headed spastic. They should stick you on an island—or better yet, under one.” Wow, I’m really laying into her, aren’t I? Bradley thought, delighted. What’s gotten into me today? Surely, spilled coffee alone can’t shape me into someone this sinister? Have I forgotten something I should be pissed-off about?
Seemingly shrinking two inches, the elderly lady flung her entire physicality into a quivering tirade, a finger-waving string of invectives. Mangling much conjugation, interspersing four-letter nastiness every five words or so, she explained that thing about voodoo (you know, from this story’s first paragraph).
“I have your self portrait!” she added. “You’re sure in for it, buddy!” To better illustrate her assertion, she opened Bradley’s comic and pointed out its protagonist in a succession of images. Bradley hadn’t just been The Unspooling’s creator, you see, he’d also been its star, having written the tale about his experiences as he wrote the tale. It was one of those meta sort of pieces, that certain types of people relate to.
Unfortunately for Bradley, those kinds of fans didn’t mesh well with him in public. Frankly, most looked as if they were about to sneeze on him—and sometimes did, for that matter. Often, they’d demand to take a photo with Bradley, even though he hated to be photographed, due to that wart on his cheek that resembled a nipple. Never were they voluptuous groupies, or even related to any.
“Come on, lady,” groaned Bradley. “We both know that voodoo’s not real. You’re only degrading that issue’s value…when it was Very Fine to begin with, tops.”
“I’m gonna curse you, boy! Curse you bad! A real bad curse! Then I’m gonna tell my online hoodooist group all about it! Best believe!”
“Online hoodooist group? Online hoodooist group! Lady, I thought those Sarah McLachlan animal cruelty videos were the saddest thing I ever saw. Then you came into my life. I tell ya, my soul weeps.”
“Soul?” she yelped. “Soul, sir…your soul is, is…is curdled. In fact, say goodbye to your soul. It’s…muh-muh-mine.”
Yeah, she looks like she’s gonna sneeze, alright, Bradley thought.
“Mine!” the woman shrieked, before thundering right out of the Starbucks.
“Hers,” Bradley laughed, making his way to the counter to attain a coffee to go. He decided to throw away his slacks the very instant he got home, to better help him forget the encounter.
* * *
Naturally, forgetting the encounter wasn’t the coffee spiller’s intention. Matilda Grieves was her name. Fuming was her mentality, inundated by recollections of past insults, the sort that had shaped her into a hoodooist to begin with.
Powering on her MacBook, she announced, “I’ll show him, yes, yes. I’ll make every second of every minute of his every day agonized. The Unspooling fooled me good. I actually thought Bradley-asshole-Clarke to be a kindred spirit. Never again, I say. Never, never. That snobby jerk thinks he’s so great. Well, I’ll show him, yes I will.”
With her laptop’s built-in webcam, Matilda recorded a simple how-to video, which she immediately uploaded to her hoodooist group’s website. In the video, she used scissors to cut out a front profile illustration of Bradley Clarke, from The Unspooling’s seventh issue, and then a back profile illustration, from The Unspooling issue four, of roughly equivalent dimensions. She then traced both onto canvas, cut it carefully, and sewed everything together, stuffed with yarn. Just as simple as that, Bradley had been reproduced in effigy.
In closing, Matilda snarled at the webcam and exhorted, “This comic book bastard mocked us, my sisters. He thinks we’re pathetic, a buncha inbred hags playin’ make-believe. So let’s teach him a lesson—all of us, together, today. Make voodoo dolls of your own, and we’ll hit Mr. Clarke with enough hexes to leave his doomed, bastard head spinnin’.”
As dozens of her web chums placed same-day delivery orders, or busily bustled their way to comic book dealers, Matilda took her Bradley doll for a spin.
First, she made the thing do the splits.
And lo and behold, in another part of the city, Bradley found himself plummeting painfully upon his testicles, legs pointed eastward and westward. Shrieking, he rolled onto his side, only to find his left foot flying into his face, over and over. “What’s happening?” he wailed.
“It worked, I can feel it,” Matilda declared, alone in her bedroom. Frankly, the power she felt coursing through her body aroused her sexually. Fantasizing about rubbing the doll against her erogenous zones, she became flush-faced, and had to remind herself that she absolutely hated Bradley Clarke.
Palpitating, she decided to take an especially lengthy cold shower.
* * *
There are voodoo secrets unknown even to most hoodooists. Prime amongst them is the effect that multiple voodoo dolls have on their subject. I mean, how many people are deemed so reprehensible that they garner drastic measures from not just one, but multiple hexers? That percentage is so infinitesimal, it was previously unheard of.
While Matilda showered, the first of her confrères completed her own Bradley doll. The very moment that she finished sewing the thing together, an astounding process commenced. Seated in his kitchen with an icepack on his scrotum, Bradley felt himself being tugged by an invisible force. “Ahhhh!” he hollered, gritting what felt like too many teeth, assailed by a splitting headache.
I’m exchanging stature for breadth, he thought, shrinking and widening. Arms sprouted from his neck. His genitals doubled, as did his legs. His vision temporarily dilated, as he fell off of his chair while remaining seated.
Due to an inexplicable binary fission, there were now two Bradley Clarkes, each half the size and weight of the original. Even his clothing—jeans and an Indian Jewelry shirt, the one with the drippy lips—had doubled and shrunk, though the ice pack remained singular.
“What the hell is this?” both Bradleys asked, synchronized. Then, suddenly, the floored Bradley was slapping his own face with alternating palms, whilst the other Bradley watched, quite perplexed. And even as that occurred, flesh began to stream from both his self-slapping and seated selves. Amalgamating, it formed a third Bradley—the same size as those two, who had shrunken.
Reclining, the new Bradley slid up the wall, then back down to the floor, then right back up the wall, even as his flesh streamed to help form a fourth Bradley.
And that’s how it continued. Bradleys contributed mass to new Bradleys. Ceaselessly shrinking, they endured every painful calamity those distant hoodooists saw fit to send over. One’s leg twisted so severely that bone shards poked out in three places; another found himself blinded as both his eyes imploded. A few danced without rhythm, or leapt far higher than they ought to have. Soon, the kitchen was filled with Bradleys, which was when the deaths began.
One Bradley went up in flames; another endured a waterless drowning. Four strangulated themselves purple-faced. A Bradley spun his head off his shoulders while dancing a jig. Another was crumpled into a ball hardly recognizable as human. Replicated shrieks filled the residence, which might have reached the ears of 911-dialing neighbors, were any home from work at the time.
* * *
Matilda’s hoodooist network was far larger than one might suspect, and the ratio of live Bradleys to dead ones kept increasing. In fact, the process soon prompted the most clandestine of voodoo secrets to manifest.
You see, when a voodoo doll’s subject is shrunken smaller than their effigy, they effectively become their voodoo doll’s doll. Unseen, true musculature blossoms within canvas. Eyes of glossy, illustrated paper become fully functional. Faux fingers flex as functioning digits.
Ergo, even as the hoodooists contorted and mangled their respective dolls, cackling, they were unaware that such actions no longer affected any Bradley. Indeed, abandoning their physicality, each Bradley now bided his time as a spirit existing inside his own effigy.
Each would wait until their hexer was vulnerable—sleeping, reading, or otherwise distracted—and then they’d enact their revenge. They’d gather knifes, razors, knitting needles, and other sharp implements, and assail hoodooist flesh with all proper animus.
* * *
The original Bradley doll trudged toward a bathroom, wherein a showered Matilda was toweling herself dry. Awkwardly, he clutched a pair of scissors, which he’d discovered beneath her living room sofa.
I’ll give that old bitch her autograph after all, he thought, grinning paper lips. I’ll carve it in permanent, and see how she likes it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
Dollimination
by Jeremy Thompson
There are voodoo secrets unknown to society at large, never reaching documentaries or speculative fiction. For example, most laymen rest assured, assuming that since they’ve never met a witch doctor, such a personage couldn’t possibly possess an item personal enough to that layman—hair, toenail, Band-Aid, or whatever—to permit any hexes against them. But in fact, the very best voodoo dolls are produced from self-portraits, a person’s self-image filtered through whatever illustrative skill they possess.
Unfortunately for Bradley Clarke, he learned of that voodoo secret from a haggish Starbucks patron, who took offense when he opted not to sign her outthrust comic book—The Unspooling issue eight—which he’d written and illustrated some years prior. In Bradley’s defense, the woman had clumsily bumped his table and toppled his cappuccino, and he was frantically napkin-dabbing his slacks when the comic materialized from the depths of her Burberry backpack.
“I’m a fan of your work,” the woman assured him. Still, he waved her away. He’d been getting recognized often lately; it was annoying.
“Get lost, you old bitch,” he grunted, taking no small measure of joy as he watched her face crumple into a downcast expression, one incongruous with the psychedelic shawl that she wore.
Through her tears and livid shaking, the old gal muttered, “No, no, you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t…you shouldn’t have done it.”
“Your parents shouldn’t have spawned you, so go find a bridge to live under,” Bradley countered. “That’s right, I just called you a troll. What can you do about it? As a matter of fact, were it up to me, people like you wouldn’t be allowed to read my comics in the first place.”
“People like me? People like me? You dare insult hoodooists?”
“Hoodooists? Is that what inbred hags call themselves nowadays?”
“Inbred? Inbred! What the heck is your problem? I approached you politely, humbly requesting an autograph, and you went and treated me like week-old, diseased spittle. Someone…somebody needs to teach you a lesson!”
“Lesson, huh? Talk about lessons after you graduate from kindergarten, ya empty-headed spastic. They should stick you on an island—or better yet, under one.” Wow, I’m really laying into her, aren’t I? Bradley thought, delighted. What’s gotten into me today? Surely, spilled coffee alone can’t shape me into someone this sinister? Have I forgotten something I should be pissed-off about?
Seemingly shrinking two inches, the elderly lady flung her entire physicality into a quivering tirade, a finger-waving string of invectives. Mangling much conjugation, interspersing four-letter nastiness every five words or so, she explained that thing about voodoo (you know, from this story’s first paragraph).
“I have your self portrait!” she added. “You’re sure in for it, buddy!” To better illustrate her assertion, she opened Bradley’s comic and pointed out its protagonist in a succession of images. Bradley hadn’t just been The Unspooling’s creator, you see, he’d also been its star, having written the tale about his experiences as he wrote the tale. It was one of those meta sort of pieces, that certain types of people relate to.
Unfortunately for Bradley, those kinds of fans didn’t mesh well with him in public. Frankly, most looked as if they were about to sneeze on him—and sometimes did, for that matter. Often, they’d demand to take a photo with Bradley, even though he hated to be photographed, due to that wart on his cheek that resembled a nipple. Never were they voluptuous groupies, or even related to any.
“Come on, lady,” groaned Bradley. “We both know that voodoo’s not real. You’re only degrading that issue’s value…when it was Very Fine to begin with, tops.”
“I’m gonna curse you, boy! Curse you bad! A real bad curse! Then I’m gonna tell my online hoodooist group all about it! Best believe!”
“Online hoodooist group? Online hoodooist group! Lady, I thought those Sarah McLachlan animal cruelty videos were the saddest thing I ever saw. Then you came into my life. I tell ya, my soul weeps.”
“Soul?” she yelped. “Soul, sir…your soul is, is…is curdled. In fact, say goodbye to your soul. It’s…muh-muh-mine.”
Yeah, she looks like she’s gonna sneeze, alright, Bradley thought.
“Mine!” the woman shrieked, before thundering right out of the Starbucks.
“Hers,” Bradley laughed, making his way to the counter to attain a coffee to go. He decided to throw away his slacks the very instant he got home, to better help him forget the encounter.
* * *
Naturally, forgetting the encounter wasn’t the coffee spiller’s intention. Matilda Grieves was her name. Fuming was her mentality, inundated by recollections of past insults, the sort that had shaped her into a hoodooist to begin with.
Powering on her MacBook, she announced, “I’ll show him, yes, yes. I’ll make every second of every minute of his every day agonized. The Unspooling fooled me good. I actually thought Bradley-asshole-Clarke to be a kindred spirit. Never again, I say. Never, never. That snobby jerk thinks he’s so great. Well, I’ll show him, yes I will.”
With her laptop’s built-in webcam, Matilda recorded a simple how-to video, which she immediately uploaded to her hoodooist group’s website. In the video, she used scissors to cut out a front profile illustration of Bradley Clarke, from The Unspooling’s seventh issue, and then a back profile illustration, from The Unspooling issue four, of roughly equivalent dimensions. She then traced both onto canvas, cut it carefully, and sewed everything together, stuffed with yarn. Just as simple as that, Bradley had been reproduced in effigy.
In closing, Matilda snarled at the webcam and exhorted, “This comic book bastard mocked us, my sisters. He thinks we’re pathetic, a buncha inbred hags playin’ make-believe. So let’s teach him a lesson—all of us, together, today. Make voodoo dolls of your own, and we’ll hit Mr. Clarke with enough hexes to leave his doomed, bastard head spinnin’.”
As dozens of her web chums placed same-day delivery orders, or busily bustled their way to comic book dealers, Matilda took her Bradley doll for a spin.
First, she made the thing do the splits.
And lo and behold, in another part of the city, Bradley found himself plummeting painfully upon his testicles, legs pointed eastward and westward. Shrieking, he rolled onto his side, only to find his left foot flying into his face, over and over. “What’s happening?” he wailed.
“It worked, I can feel it,” Matilda declared, alone in her bedroom. Frankly, the power she felt coursing through her body aroused her sexually. Fantasizing about rubbing the doll against her erogenous zones, she became flush-faced, and had to remind herself that she absolutely hated Bradley Clarke.
Palpitating, she decided to take an especially lengthy cold shower.
* * *
There are voodoo secrets unknown even to most hoodooists. Prime amongst them is the effect that multiple voodoo dolls have on their subject. I mean, how many people are deemed so reprehensible that they garner drastic measures from not just one, but multiple hexers? That percentage is so infinitesimal, it was previously unheard of.
While Matilda showered, the first of her confrères completed her own Bradley doll. The very moment that she finished sewing the thing together, an astounding process commenced. Seated in his kitchen with an icepack on his scrotum, Bradley felt himself being tugged by an invisible force. “Ahhhh!” he hollered, gritting what felt like too many teeth, assailed by a splitting headache.
I’m exchanging stature for breadth, he thought, shrinking and widening. Arms sprouted from his neck. His genitals doubled, as did his legs. His vision temporarily dilated, as he fell off of his chair while remaining seated.
Due to an inexplicable binary fission, there were now two Bradley Clarkes, each half the size and weight of the original. Even his clothing—jeans and an Indian Jewelry shirt, the one with the drippy lips—had doubled and shrunk, though the ice pack remained singular.
“What the hell is this?” both Bradleys asked, synchronized. Then, suddenly, the floored Bradley was slapping his own face with alternating palms, whilst the other Bradley watched, quite perplexed. And even as that occurred, flesh began to stream from both his self-slapping and seated selves. Amalgamating, it formed a third Bradley—the same size as those two, who had shrunken.
Reclining, the new Bradley slid up the wall, then back down to the floor, then right back up the wall, even as his flesh streamed to help form a fourth Bradley.
And that’s how it continued. Bradleys contributed mass to new Bradleys. Ceaselessly shrinking, they endured every painful calamity those distant hoodooists saw fit to send over. One’s leg twisted so severely that bone shards poked out in three places; another found himself blinded as both his eyes imploded. A few danced without rhythm, or leapt far higher than they ought to have. Soon, the kitchen was filled with Bradleys, which was when the deaths began.
One Bradley went up in flames; another endured a waterless drowning. Four strangulated themselves purple-faced. A Bradley spun his head off his shoulders while dancing a jig. Another was crumpled into a ball hardly recognizable as human. Replicated shrieks filled the residence, which might have reached the ears of 911-dialing neighbors, were any home from work at the time.
* * *
Matilda’s hoodooist network was far larger than one might suspect, and the ratio of live Bradleys to dead ones kept increasing. In fact, the process soon prompted the most clandestine of voodoo secrets to manifest.
You see, when a voodoo doll’s subject is shrunken smaller than their effigy, they effectively become their voodoo doll’s doll. Unseen, true musculature blossoms within canvas. Eyes of glossy, illustrated paper become fully functional. Faux fingers flex as functioning digits.
Ergo, even as the hoodooists contorted and mangled their respective dolls, cackling, they were unaware that such actions no longer affected any Bradley. Indeed, abandoning their physicality, each Bradley now bided his time as a spirit existing inside his own effigy.
Each would wait until their hexer was vulnerable—sleeping, reading, or otherwise distracted—and then they’d enact their revenge. They’d gather knifes, razors, knitting needles, and other sharp implements, and assail hoodooist flesh with all proper animus.
* * *
The original Bradley doll trudged toward a bathroom, wherein a showered Matilda was toweling herself dry. Awkwardly, he clutched a pair of scissors, which he’d discovered beneath her living room sofa.
I’ll give that old bitch her autograph after all, he thought, grinning paper lips. I’ll carve it in permanent, and see how she likes it.
June 11, 2021
"Walking in the Woods"
Well, since it didn't make it into the Ramones tribute anthology that I wrote it for, and I've nowhere else to send the thing, here's my story "Walking in the Woods", free of charge:
Walking in the Woods
by Jeremy Thompson
Barreling through scrub oak and manzanita as if they’re merely mist sculptures, lugging a fifty-pound bag that grows heavier by the moment, Artie notes the trees around him and thinks, If Cassie were around, she could name every one.
Indeed, no species of pine, oak, or fir had been unknown to his lady. Her passion for flora had shaped hours of their pillow talk. “A family fixation,” she’d claimed, “passed down for more generations than I could ever count, sweetheart.”
My little lost girl, he thinks. How is life so unfair, snatching away perfect bliss? Is Cassie even still alive? Do I want her to be?
Lizards and rats flee his footfalls. Butterflies flutter in the periphery like fire embers granted sentience. A cricket orchestra sounds, seeking a crescendo that’ll go unheard by Artie, as his iPhone’s EarPods are already filling his head with boppy rock and roll.
* * *
As befits the modern era, their relationship was effectuated via technology. Intersext, an online dating application for those possessing both male and female genitalia, paired them; the mutual attraction was instant.
Artie, whose penis and testes were fully functional, and whose vagina seemed mere ornamentation, gladly assumed the boyfriend role. Cassie, whose ovaries and uterus brimmed with potential, and whose male sex organs were permanently limp and quite miniscule, became his best girl.
Their giggles and flirty whispers annoyed singles all over Los Angeles, at dive bars, art exhibitions, and dawdling Farmers Market outings. Their meals always conformed to Cassie’s salt-free diet. Shedding their leather jackets and jeans afterward, they fucked like rabid beasts, howling into the night as time seemed to dilate. Never had Artie felt more contented.
* * *
“We should leave Smog City for a while, get away from these selfie-spewing wannabe celebs that pass themselves off as our friends and wallow in each other for, I dunno, a week or two,” said Cassie one morning. Dressing for another barista shift, forgoing a shower, as they’d slept in far too long, she batted her eyelashes in that coquettish way he could never resist and added, “There’s this cabin up in NorCal, smack dab in the woods near the Colorado border. It’s been in my family since, like, the 1600s or something. We could take time off from work and be the only humans around. What do you say?”
Artie, who loathed his Universal Studios ticket booth job anyway, pretended to deliberate for about thirty seconds.
* * *
Cassie hadn’t been exaggerating about the cabin’s age. A single-bedroom log construction, it included a wood-burning stove, a copper bathtub, and little else. A grime-sheeted bed was its sole modernish touch.
“What,” Artie groaned, “no running water or electricity? No fuckin’ toilet?”
Perfectly serene, Cassie answered, “There’s a river nearby, unless it dried up, and we’ve plenty of candles stashed away. We brought supplies with us, so we’ll hardly starve.”
“Yeah…what about a bathroom?”
She tossed him a roll of toilet paper and said, “Anywhere outside will do nicely.”
* * *
Four days later, Artie returned from his morning walk with a bouquet of wildflowers: violets, poppies, and lilies bound with a borrowed scrunchie. Rolling over in bed, grinning beatifically, Cassie snatched them from his grip and pressed them to her face.
“Mmm, Daddy brought breakfast,” she cooed. Her teeth tore away petals—white, yellow and pink.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny, girl,” said Artie, as she masticated and swallowed them. “And what’s with this ‘Daddy’ shit? Do you have a stepfather fetish we should explore?”
Setting the remains of the bouquet down, she turned her eyes to his and said, matter-of-factly, “I’m pregnant, Artie. You’re gonna be a father.”
He swayed on his feet for a moment as color first drained from and then returned to the world. “An intersex pregnancy. Those have gotta be pretty rare. What, did you miss a period or something? How do you know?”
“Trust me, I know,” she answered with a tone that aborted all further discussion.
* * *
That night and the next two, carefully keeping their thoughts in the present lest parental responsibilities arrive early, they made love. Chugging water to stay hydrated, they buried themselves in one another as if attempting to merge into a singular creature. Dirty talk they shrieked until their throats felt half-shredded. They nibbled each other’s necks to leave slowly fading teeth marks. So exhausted were they afterward that when unconsciousness came, it fell anvil-like.
* * *
Then came an awakening, minutes prior to midnight. Rolling over in bed, Artie realized that he was alone. “Cassie?” he said. “Where are you, baby?”
There was a bitter taste in his mouth. The bedsheets were slimy, as was his skin. What is this, mucus? he wondered. Has Cassie caught some kinda cold? Have I?
Growing ever more anxious, he crawled out of the covers. They’d left a flashlight on the floor, between two softly glowing candles. Not bothering to dress himself, he retrieved it and surged into the night clad in only boxers.
* * *
The atmosphere was quite muggy. Trees loomed like shadow obelisks. His flashlight’s beam slid over them as if their trunks had been greased.
Mosquitos landed on Artie and feasted, ignored. Many times, he tripped over shrubs and endured shallow abrasions. “Cassie!” he called. “Oh, baby, where are you?”
Charged silence was the only answer.
* * *
With nearly an hour elapsed, as Artie began to mutter to himself that he must be dreaming, he caught sight of a silhouette slipping through the trees. Turning his flashlight upon it, he saw a well-sculpted figure that could only be Cassie. Naked, unashamed, striding as if she owned the entire woodland, she twitched her head left and right.
Oh, how he yearned to see her face revolve toward him with lips that parted to voice an assurance that everything was alright. But when he again called her name, Artie went ignored.
He trailed her for some minutes, never quite closing the distance. When he increased his pace, so did she. When he slowed down, exhausted, so too did Cassie dawdle. Artie tensed his muscles to sprint, and then relaxed them, yet walking. He didn’t want to risk tripping again and losing sight of her entirely.
Begging her to stop, to explain herself, to acknowledge him in any way whatsoever, he might as well have been addressing the waning crescent moon. The batteries in his flashlight died; with them went his last shred of optimism.
He called Cassie’s name one more time and then halted in his tracks. The woods, tough enough to navigate in the daylight, now seemed entirely foreign, an alien planet’s terrain. Able to pursue Cassie no longer, did he retain enough of his wits to return to the cabin? Or would he be yet wandering come morning, miles distant?
Cassie said that bears live in these parts, he remembered. God, I hope she was joking.
After some nervous deliberation, he revolved on his heels and retraced his steps. Fortunately, he’d crushed enough shrubs in his trek to provide him crude trail markers in the darkness. They and a navigational instinct that Artie had been unaware he possessed carried him back to a shelter that now echoed his forlornness. Bone-weary, he collapsed back into bed.
* * *
With his next awakening arrived renewed purpose. Cassie remained absent. That just wouldn’t do. Ignoring the pain and itching of his countless scrapes and mosquito bites, as well as his terrible B.O. and allergy-inflamed eyes and sinuses, Artie struggled into his clothes on his way out the door.
With no wind to abate it, the heat had grown blistering. To spite it, he hummed a bubblegum tune.
His trail of broken plants was more obvious in the daylight. Far more careful with his steps than he’d been the night previous, Artie made slow, steady progress, and even managed to avoid shoe-crushing a toad whose earth tones were hardly distinguishable from the soil beneath it.
Seeking signs of his beloved in every bit of vegetation that he passed, he was shocked to sight what at first seemed an animal carcass resting in the shadow of a ponderosa pine.
Drawing nearer, he thought, No, it can’t possibly be…can it? Ghastly came confirmation: Cassie’s hair, every single lock of it, all clumped together as if somebody scalped her. But there was no flesh attached to that mass of black curls. No blood present either, just more of that snotty substance that had covered the bed.
Something mondo bizarro’s going on here, he thought. Understatement of the year. But surely Cassie wasn’t wearing a wig all these months. All those times I pulled her hair as I fucked her…I’d have torn it away.
Wondering if perhaps he should save her shed curls, he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch them. Instead, Artie continued on his trek, seeking further signs of Cassie. It wasn’t a long wait.
What seemed at a distance to be a pair of fallen tree limbs resolved into human arms—lithe and pale, wearing the black nail polish that Cassie couldn’t do without. Again, no blood or obvious points of severance. If not for the fine hairs adorning them, and the feel of bones and malleable muscles beneath their skin, they might have been popped, whole, out of a mannequin’s torso.
This has gotta be some kinda nightmare, Artie thought. Am I in a coma right now? Did we drive off the road on the way to the cabin? Am I in a hospital bed somewhere, never to wake up again?
He continued on. Dragging his heels through the underbrush, he was hardly surprised to encounter first one naked leg, then another. The soles of Cassie’s feet were filthy. Her toes were unmistakable. Artie had sucked them enough times to conjure their contours in his mouth.
As with her shed arms, they’d exited her body without signs of violence; no cauterization marks marred their pale perfection. Stunned, Artie stroked them for a while, until he became aware of his actions, and moved on, mortified.
* * *
Eventually, he reached a site where an oak tree had collapsed against its fellows to form an ersatz cavern. Sheltered beneath a mighty trunk, screened by leaves and branches, enshadowed, his beloved awaited. Artie gasped at the sight of her.
Cassie’s proportions hadn’t changed much, but her physique had greatly shifted. Two pairs of tentacles now protruded from her head, behind which had sprouted a mantle to contain her relocated genitals and anus. The rest of her body seemed one massive tail, into which, before Artie’s very eyes, the remains of her breasts withdrew.
She turned to regard him. “They’re coming,” she hissed through a mouth that was no longer human.
“Whuh…what the hell happened to you?” Artie asked, as his heart beat fit to burst. “You’re some kinda slug chick, Cassie. Did a falling meteor hit you? Did a mad scientist abduct you? Did cosmic radiation shoot down from the sky and turn you into this?” She’d captured his gaze; though disgusted and terrified, he couldn’t look away.
Unnervingly, she chuckled. “No, nothing like that, Artie. More like a family curse. My kind grow up in your world, find love eventually, and then leave our humanness behind to birth others just like us. Always, when our transition time comes, we return to these woods.” Translucent spheres began to slide from her. “In just a few weeks, our children will hatch from these eggs. All will be intersex, free to live as boys, girls, or nonbinaries.”
The eggs continued arriving—Artie counted two dozen. Overwhelmed, feeling as if the sky itself was compressing to smash him to paste, he whispered, “Sorry,” then turned and fled.
Wasting not a moment to collect his things from the cabin, he hurled himself into his Impala and sped home.
* * *
Artie showered the dried slime from his flesh and returned to his job. When friends enquired about Cassie, he told them, “We’ve broken up. No, I don’t know how to reach her. She’s staying with her family for a while, I think.”
He guzzled down beers until his sorrows fuzzed over, awakening each morning with a throbbing skull. Most days, he skipped breakfast and lunch, and picked up the same Indian takeout for dinner, which he hardly tasted. Terrible dreams awaited his every slumber, yet his conscious hours were even worse.
Then through his haze arrived a paternal instinct: Our kids are about to hatch. I’ve gotta return to those woods.
* * *
Artie hesitates before the collapsed-tree cavern, takes a deep breath, then investigates. Cassie is gone. Probably crawled off somewhere to die, he thinks. Her eggs—white as pearls, having shed their translucency—remain clumped together in the damp soil.
Knowing that the wait won’t be long, he sets his burden down and sits. Am I capable of loving the kids that hatch from these things? he wonders, pulling his EarPods from his skull, so as to wallow in the silence for as long as it lasts. Or will I be pouring my bag out? And is fifty pounds of salt enough to kill all of them?
Walking in the Woods
by Jeremy Thompson
Barreling through scrub oak and manzanita as if they’re merely mist sculptures, lugging a fifty-pound bag that grows heavier by the moment, Artie notes the trees around him and thinks, If Cassie were around, she could name every one.
Indeed, no species of pine, oak, or fir had been unknown to his lady. Her passion for flora had shaped hours of their pillow talk. “A family fixation,” she’d claimed, “passed down for more generations than I could ever count, sweetheart.”
My little lost girl, he thinks. How is life so unfair, snatching away perfect bliss? Is Cassie even still alive? Do I want her to be?
Lizards and rats flee his footfalls. Butterflies flutter in the periphery like fire embers granted sentience. A cricket orchestra sounds, seeking a crescendo that’ll go unheard by Artie, as his iPhone’s EarPods are already filling his head with boppy rock and roll.
* * *
As befits the modern era, their relationship was effectuated via technology. Intersext, an online dating application for those possessing both male and female genitalia, paired them; the mutual attraction was instant.
Artie, whose penis and testes were fully functional, and whose vagina seemed mere ornamentation, gladly assumed the boyfriend role. Cassie, whose ovaries and uterus brimmed with potential, and whose male sex organs were permanently limp and quite miniscule, became his best girl.
Their giggles and flirty whispers annoyed singles all over Los Angeles, at dive bars, art exhibitions, and dawdling Farmers Market outings. Their meals always conformed to Cassie’s salt-free diet. Shedding their leather jackets and jeans afterward, they fucked like rabid beasts, howling into the night as time seemed to dilate. Never had Artie felt more contented.
* * *
“We should leave Smog City for a while, get away from these selfie-spewing wannabe celebs that pass themselves off as our friends and wallow in each other for, I dunno, a week or two,” said Cassie one morning. Dressing for another barista shift, forgoing a shower, as they’d slept in far too long, she batted her eyelashes in that coquettish way he could never resist and added, “There’s this cabin up in NorCal, smack dab in the woods near the Colorado border. It’s been in my family since, like, the 1600s or something. We could take time off from work and be the only humans around. What do you say?”
Artie, who loathed his Universal Studios ticket booth job anyway, pretended to deliberate for about thirty seconds.
* * *
Cassie hadn’t been exaggerating about the cabin’s age. A single-bedroom log construction, it included a wood-burning stove, a copper bathtub, and little else. A grime-sheeted bed was its sole modernish touch.
“What,” Artie groaned, “no running water or electricity? No fuckin’ toilet?”
Perfectly serene, Cassie answered, “There’s a river nearby, unless it dried up, and we’ve plenty of candles stashed away. We brought supplies with us, so we’ll hardly starve.”
“Yeah…what about a bathroom?”
She tossed him a roll of toilet paper and said, “Anywhere outside will do nicely.”
* * *
Four days later, Artie returned from his morning walk with a bouquet of wildflowers: violets, poppies, and lilies bound with a borrowed scrunchie. Rolling over in bed, grinning beatifically, Cassie snatched them from his grip and pressed them to her face.
“Mmm, Daddy brought breakfast,” she cooed. Her teeth tore away petals—white, yellow and pink.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny, girl,” said Artie, as she masticated and swallowed them. “And what’s with this ‘Daddy’ shit? Do you have a stepfather fetish we should explore?”
Setting the remains of the bouquet down, she turned her eyes to his and said, matter-of-factly, “I’m pregnant, Artie. You’re gonna be a father.”
He swayed on his feet for a moment as color first drained from and then returned to the world. “An intersex pregnancy. Those have gotta be pretty rare. What, did you miss a period or something? How do you know?”
“Trust me, I know,” she answered with a tone that aborted all further discussion.
* * *
That night and the next two, carefully keeping their thoughts in the present lest parental responsibilities arrive early, they made love. Chugging water to stay hydrated, they buried themselves in one another as if attempting to merge into a singular creature. Dirty talk they shrieked until their throats felt half-shredded. They nibbled each other’s necks to leave slowly fading teeth marks. So exhausted were they afterward that when unconsciousness came, it fell anvil-like.
* * *
Then came an awakening, minutes prior to midnight. Rolling over in bed, Artie realized that he was alone. “Cassie?” he said. “Where are you, baby?”
There was a bitter taste in his mouth. The bedsheets were slimy, as was his skin. What is this, mucus? he wondered. Has Cassie caught some kinda cold? Have I?
Growing ever more anxious, he crawled out of the covers. They’d left a flashlight on the floor, between two softly glowing candles. Not bothering to dress himself, he retrieved it and surged into the night clad in only boxers.
* * *
The atmosphere was quite muggy. Trees loomed like shadow obelisks. His flashlight’s beam slid over them as if their trunks had been greased.
Mosquitos landed on Artie and feasted, ignored. Many times, he tripped over shrubs and endured shallow abrasions. “Cassie!” he called. “Oh, baby, where are you?”
Charged silence was the only answer.
* * *
With nearly an hour elapsed, as Artie began to mutter to himself that he must be dreaming, he caught sight of a silhouette slipping through the trees. Turning his flashlight upon it, he saw a well-sculpted figure that could only be Cassie. Naked, unashamed, striding as if she owned the entire woodland, she twitched her head left and right.
Oh, how he yearned to see her face revolve toward him with lips that parted to voice an assurance that everything was alright. But when he again called her name, Artie went ignored.
He trailed her for some minutes, never quite closing the distance. When he increased his pace, so did she. When he slowed down, exhausted, so too did Cassie dawdle. Artie tensed his muscles to sprint, and then relaxed them, yet walking. He didn’t want to risk tripping again and losing sight of her entirely.
Begging her to stop, to explain herself, to acknowledge him in any way whatsoever, he might as well have been addressing the waning crescent moon. The batteries in his flashlight died; with them went his last shred of optimism.
He called Cassie’s name one more time and then halted in his tracks. The woods, tough enough to navigate in the daylight, now seemed entirely foreign, an alien planet’s terrain. Able to pursue Cassie no longer, did he retain enough of his wits to return to the cabin? Or would he be yet wandering come morning, miles distant?
Cassie said that bears live in these parts, he remembered. God, I hope she was joking.
After some nervous deliberation, he revolved on his heels and retraced his steps. Fortunately, he’d crushed enough shrubs in his trek to provide him crude trail markers in the darkness. They and a navigational instinct that Artie had been unaware he possessed carried him back to a shelter that now echoed his forlornness. Bone-weary, he collapsed back into bed.
* * *
With his next awakening arrived renewed purpose. Cassie remained absent. That just wouldn’t do. Ignoring the pain and itching of his countless scrapes and mosquito bites, as well as his terrible B.O. and allergy-inflamed eyes and sinuses, Artie struggled into his clothes on his way out the door.
With no wind to abate it, the heat had grown blistering. To spite it, he hummed a bubblegum tune.
His trail of broken plants was more obvious in the daylight. Far more careful with his steps than he’d been the night previous, Artie made slow, steady progress, and even managed to avoid shoe-crushing a toad whose earth tones were hardly distinguishable from the soil beneath it.
Seeking signs of his beloved in every bit of vegetation that he passed, he was shocked to sight what at first seemed an animal carcass resting in the shadow of a ponderosa pine.
Drawing nearer, he thought, No, it can’t possibly be…can it? Ghastly came confirmation: Cassie’s hair, every single lock of it, all clumped together as if somebody scalped her. But there was no flesh attached to that mass of black curls. No blood present either, just more of that snotty substance that had covered the bed.
Something mondo bizarro’s going on here, he thought. Understatement of the year. But surely Cassie wasn’t wearing a wig all these months. All those times I pulled her hair as I fucked her…I’d have torn it away.
Wondering if perhaps he should save her shed curls, he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch them. Instead, Artie continued on his trek, seeking further signs of Cassie. It wasn’t a long wait.
What seemed at a distance to be a pair of fallen tree limbs resolved into human arms—lithe and pale, wearing the black nail polish that Cassie couldn’t do without. Again, no blood or obvious points of severance. If not for the fine hairs adorning them, and the feel of bones and malleable muscles beneath their skin, they might have been popped, whole, out of a mannequin’s torso.
This has gotta be some kinda nightmare, Artie thought. Am I in a coma right now? Did we drive off the road on the way to the cabin? Am I in a hospital bed somewhere, never to wake up again?
He continued on. Dragging his heels through the underbrush, he was hardly surprised to encounter first one naked leg, then another. The soles of Cassie’s feet were filthy. Her toes were unmistakable. Artie had sucked them enough times to conjure their contours in his mouth.
As with her shed arms, they’d exited her body without signs of violence; no cauterization marks marred their pale perfection. Stunned, Artie stroked them for a while, until he became aware of his actions, and moved on, mortified.
* * *
Eventually, he reached a site where an oak tree had collapsed against its fellows to form an ersatz cavern. Sheltered beneath a mighty trunk, screened by leaves and branches, enshadowed, his beloved awaited. Artie gasped at the sight of her.
Cassie’s proportions hadn’t changed much, but her physique had greatly shifted. Two pairs of tentacles now protruded from her head, behind which had sprouted a mantle to contain her relocated genitals and anus. The rest of her body seemed one massive tail, into which, before Artie’s very eyes, the remains of her breasts withdrew.
She turned to regard him. “They’re coming,” she hissed through a mouth that was no longer human.
“Whuh…what the hell happened to you?” Artie asked, as his heart beat fit to burst. “You’re some kinda slug chick, Cassie. Did a falling meteor hit you? Did a mad scientist abduct you? Did cosmic radiation shoot down from the sky and turn you into this?” She’d captured his gaze; though disgusted and terrified, he couldn’t look away.
Unnervingly, she chuckled. “No, nothing like that, Artie. More like a family curse. My kind grow up in your world, find love eventually, and then leave our humanness behind to birth others just like us. Always, when our transition time comes, we return to these woods.” Translucent spheres began to slide from her. “In just a few weeks, our children will hatch from these eggs. All will be intersex, free to live as boys, girls, or nonbinaries.”
The eggs continued arriving—Artie counted two dozen. Overwhelmed, feeling as if the sky itself was compressing to smash him to paste, he whispered, “Sorry,” then turned and fled.
Wasting not a moment to collect his things from the cabin, he hurled himself into his Impala and sped home.
* * *
Artie showered the dried slime from his flesh and returned to his job. When friends enquired about Cassie, he told them, “We’ve broken up. No, I don’t know how to reach her. She’s staying with her family for a while, I think.”
He guzzled down beers until his sorrows fuzzed over, awakening each morning with a throbbing skull. Most days, he skipped breakfast and lunch, and picked up the same Indian takeout for dinner, which he hardly tasted. Terrible dreams awaited his every slumber, yet his conscious hours were even worse.
Then through his haze arrived a paternal instinct: Our kids are about to hatch. I’ve gotta return to those woods.
* * *
Artie hesitates before the collapsed-tree cavern, takes a deep breath, then investigates. Cassie is gone. Probably crawled off somewhere to die, he thinks. Her eggs—white as pearls, having shed their translucency—remain clumped together in the damp soil.
Knowing that the wait won’t be long, he sets his burden down and sits. Am I capable of loving the kids that hatch from these things? he wonders, pulling his EarPods from his skull, so as to wallow in the silence for as long as it lasts. Or will I be pouring my bag out? And is fifty pounds of salt enough to kill all of them?
May 5, 2021
The Forever Big Top: Free Ebook
Well, since Necro Publications is in limbo right now, and until that situation is resolved one way or another, none of my six Necro books are earning me any royalties, I've decided to give the ebook of The Forever Big Top away for free. Enjoy!
Mobi: https://www.mediafire.com/file/g134aw...
Epub: https://www.mediafire.com/file/3fmdi6...
PDF: https://www.mediafire.com/file/z56mfv...
Mobi: https://www.mediafire.com/file/g134aw...
Epub: https://www.mediafire.com/file/3fmdi6...
PDF: https://www.mediafire.com/file/z56mfv...
May 4, 2021
Toby Chalmers Hits a New Low: Free Ebook
Well, since Necro Publications is in limbo right now, and until that situation is resolved one way or another, none of my six Necro books are earning me any royalties, I've decided to give the ebook of Toby Chalmers Hits a New Low away for free. Enjoy!
Mobi: https://www.mediafire.com/file/n1nv4w...
Epub: https://www.mediafire.com/file/but4ix...
PDF: https://www.mediafire.com/file/9mj2jc...
Mobi: https://www.mediafire.com/file/n1nv4w...
Epub: https://www.mediafire.com/file/but4ix...
PDF: https://www.mediafire.com/file/9mj2jc...
