Blender Babies

by Jon Athan

A slop of liquefied brain, chunks of detached scalp, a crushed eyeball, and a severed ear were smeared on the asphalt. The man’s mangled legs were tangled together like a braided ponytail.

A small baby boy, no older than two months old, was stuffed into the blender’s pitcher. The blades sticking out of the mixer rod at the center of the pitcher cut into the boy’s flabby legs and abdomen. He was naked and unconscious.

He stuttered, “Wha–What is this?” “It’s a baby... in a blender.” “I can... I can see that. Where did you get him?”

“You didn’t kill your neighbor but you took her baby,” Brian said. “Okay. We’ve got that cleared up. So, why is that baby in that blender?” “Because he’s a... a blender baby.”

“It’s the latest craze. It’s like a drug but better. Powerful like fentanyl. Homemade like krokodil. Natural like the miracle of life. It–It–It... It is life.”

“It takes you so, so, so fucking high, man. Takes you through a–a universe of alternate dimensions. And it’s all in the baby’s blood. The adrenochrome, man, it does shit to you.”