by Unknown
He held out the flagon, a knife in his other hand pointing toward the vein in her wrist when, suddenly, both wrist and arm dissolved into a white mist. A mist that expanded to include her whole body, swirling, flowing, now surrounding Sandor.
It echoed her words, “Not all my secrets,” as thousands and thousands of tiny droplets, each with its own tiny teeth, started the night’s feast.
James Dorr has two collections, Strange Mistresses: Tales Of Wonder And Romance and Darker Loves: Tales Of Mystery And Regret, (Dark Regions Press) and his all-Poetry Vamps (A Retrospective) (Sam’s Dot Publishing). He is an active member of SFWA and HWA with several hundred individual publications to his credit. Dorr invites readers to visit his site at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com for the latest information and news.
SKIPPING STONES
A. J. BROWN
“Flat stones, Cadence. You have to use flat stones.”
Remy ran his hand through the sediment just beneath the water’s surface. Sand washed away with the slight current of the river as he pulled his hand out. Four black rocks, smooth and flat, lay in the palm of his hand.
He looked out over the narrow neck of the river. Tree branches stretched across the water from both sides. Thick moss hung down like heavy strands of hair on a hag’s head. Remy had tied the target to one of the thicker branches so it would dangle close enough to the water.
Remy turned to his daughter, took in the eyes that were odd: one wide and one like a slit across her face. He took in the way one side of her lip pulled down, the scars on her face and arms where flames had licked her skin. His heart cracked and he clinched his teeth to bite back the anger welling up in his chest. He released a long breath, relaxed.
“You do it like this,” he said, and held his arm out to his side and at an angle. With a flick of his wrist he let the rock go. It skipped across the water, went into the air, skipped again. “Damn it, I missed. But, you get the picture, right?”
Cadence nodded, her once-curly blonde locks clung tight to her skull. The one good blue eye shimmered with excitement as she took a stone from Remy, held her arm at an angle and tossed the rock. It plopped into the water and sank.
“Ah man,” she said, lowering her head.
“Try again.”
The second rock sank as well.
Remy held the last rock out for her. “One more, kiddo.”
Cadence took the final rock, one a little bigger than the others.
Remy stepped behind her, took her elbow and steadied her arm. “Close your eyes, child. See the target in your mind, feel it in your soul as if it were pain. We don’t like pain, now do we?”
“No sir.”
He stepped back. “Go on ahead now. Hit the target.”
Cadence shut her eyes, stepped out with one foot and flicked her wrist. The rock skimmed the water’s surface three times before striking the woman dangling upside down from the overhanging tree limb. The woman let out a yelp of pain as she swayed from side to side. Blood flowed from the wound above her eye, seeping into her brown hair.
“Nice!” Remy cheered.
The child’s eyes grew wide, a smile stretched across her young face.
“Do you want to try again?”
“Yes!” she said, clapped her scarred hands together.
He rummaged through the sediment, came back up with several smooth rocks.
“Aim for the middle of the face next time. She’s still much too pretty. Remember how she looked at you? Remember how it made you feel?”
Cadence nodded, took another rock and closed her eyes and remembered.
A.J. Brown is a scribbler of words. Some of those words are decent enough to see the light of day. His scribbles have appeared in Necrotic Tissue, Allegory, Bards and Sages Quarterly and The Gloaming.
MUSH
LOGAN BRANJORD
Gales of snow-speckled wind pelted the faces of Stockton and his dogs. Mint and Vanilla nearly tore through the harnesses in their strain to pull the sled up an endless incline. Each time Stockton heard more panting than pushing, he took the whip and cracked them on their haunches. Deep gashes decorated their rumps. Mint’s fur had stopped growing back in places where Stockton had “encouraged” her most.
The racer wiped frost from his eyelashes and snot from his cheeks. With the blinding yellow disc of the sun, he couldn’t see well enough to steer. Crags jutted up beside them.
The path began to slope downward. When the dogs couldn’t keep up, the sled skidded out of control. At treacherous speed, the sled slammed into a boulder. Wood splintered and Stockton flew through the air. He felt a jabbing pain into his side when he collided with the boulder. Everything went dark.
When he awoke, Stockton found his shinbone protruding from the skin and his knee cap had slid out of place. He saw splinters of wood sticking out from his side with a trail of red gel melting through the snow. It was his blood.
His dogs had deserted him. He saw shreds of chewed-up harnesses laying everywhere. Mint’s fault, he thought. Mint was always a disobedient bitch. She barked, nipped, peed on his things and ran away every time she got the chance. Worse yet, Mint distracted the other dogs. So she had to have been behind this little “canine revolution” of the dogs. Stockton wished he’d thrown her in the river after all.
Stockton must have fallen asleep. He awoke again under a full white moon and with a dreadful wind from the north. His legs felt numb and lifeless. His left side was tingling.
He called to his dogs. “Vanilla!” he said, “Mint!” His words echoed back to him.
A set of hungry eyes appeared against the tree line. Stockton’s chest fluttered. Then he saw their shape and he prickled with recognition. That’s Mint!
“Mint!” he called, coughing violently, “Mint come!”
The eyes disappeared at the sound of his voice; very characteristic of Mint. Stockton fell asleep a half hour later.
Next time he awoke, his whole body was stiff. He could only move his neck and shoulders. His hips had frozen in place. Those eyes appeared again.
Stockton didn’t have the energy to call. He remembered his love for the dog now. He wanted her to come fall asleep on him. He craved to feel her warm breath against his cheek, despite her dog smell. As Stockton fell asleep he was vaguely aware of something warm massaging his legs.
Hours later, Stockton awoke, disappointed to find himself back in the bitter wind. His eyes were frozen shut. A crawling feeling went up and down his leg.
When he pried his eyelids apart he saw the bloody muzzle of Mint, standing over him, in the place where his leg should be.
Logan Theodore Branjord is a 27 year-old writer living in the Twin Cities, MN.
IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK
JACK NEALY
When she left I decided to take out the wall that separated our bedroom from the guestroom. My brother came over to help and together we tore down a chunk of drywall. Later, the police explained to us that the bodies we found stashed inside the wall had been there for over thirty years. After the detectives left, after we were assured we would not be facing any further investigation, and after they promised to have the bodies removed within the week, my brother called me to say he was too busy to come back and finish the wall-removal job. He never was good at lying.
“It’s fine,” I told him.
I was up late with an empty bottle when I called her to tell her I had decided to expand the room we used to share. I told her how glad I was that I would never have to spend another holiday with her mother in the extra bedroom. After I called her every name I had always wanted to call her when we were together, she hung up, sobbing. I sat in bed staring across the room at the hole in the wall. I had the whiskey in one hand and the phone still gripped tightly in the other, the dial tone blaring. I dropped both and approached the man-sized hole, and tore away the caution tape.
I peered sideways into the darkness; it had been a week, yet no one had come by to take the bodies. I crept inside carefully to get a
better look. There were three dusty, disarticulated bodies lying on the floor that I could see, but there might even be more, deeper in the space. There was just enough room within the wall for me to squeeze through, shuffling sideways over the unfortunate souls that had been abandoned there for decades. Stepping over bones I walked slowly, further and further into the wall with my arms held up high. I thought about what I said to her, the names, the stuff about her mom, and I started to laugh. I kept moving sideways into the space between the walls, laughing, and then began choking on the dust. I tried moving my arms down to cover my mouth instinctively, but there wasn’t enough room. That’s when I noticed the pain; I had been holding my arms up for twenty minutes. My feet were sore too, having been mashed awkwardly as I tried to walk through the wall. All at once I felt completely exhausted but I kept stepping over bodies and moving further.
Later, I awoke in total darkness. My head hurt. I tried to move back in the direction I had come, but it was impossible to position myself correctly; my body was sore from being in the same position for so long while I slept. A spider crawled down my face and bit me. I gasped in pain, but I couldn’t even swat it away. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel the hollow gaze of the forgotten skulls as they watched me, amused.
In the darkness between the walls I shouted franticly for help. In the darkness I waited.
I am still here.
Aspiring author Jack Nealy shares a birthday with horror movie legend Bela Lugosi and has harbored a lifelong fascination with all things horror and pulp. He grew up in Southern California where he happens to live two blocks from a cemetery. He is currently working towards a degree in Literature.
THE REAL WORLD
CYNDIE GOINS HOELSCHER
Never before had I experienced the oppressive darkness that gathered just beyond the lights of the midway my first night working at the circus. Clouds hovered chillingly close to the ground. A brisk wind twisted them into ghostly figures prophesying doom.
“What’s up buttercup?” Joshua called, walking to join me in looking up at the sky.
“I don’t know,” I hesitated, watching a cloud shift into a form and dissolve once again. “Do you see that?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I replied.
I suspiciously watched the clouds as they pirouetted around the Big Top. Fingers seemed to emerge, beckoning the fog to blanket the ground. I shifted nervously.
“You’re scared of fog?” Josh laughed at my expression. “Baby, it’s just clouds! Look, we can dance on the clouds tonight!
“Uh. What the . . . ?”
A grinning clown materialized out of the dense fog only a few feet away from us. His blue Mohawk and peeling pancake make-up made me take a step backward. His pursed lips were painted in a perpetual smile. But the clown’s eyes riveted me the most. Gray, like the fog around us, they didn’t reflect light.
“Hey man! You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” Josh yelled. He tried to push the clown back, but his hand sank into the clown’s torso with a sickening crunch.
Josh stared at his arm, now firmly lodged in the creature. Its grin sharpened into a sneer as Josh strained to free his arm.
“It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real!” I repeated to myself using the words my shrink had taught me to banish my recurring nightmares. How often had he smiled condescendingly and assured me that killer aliens, zombies and monsters didn’t really exist? My nightmares were figments of my over-active imagination and a brain that was basically undisciplined and dysfunctional. Once I secured a real job and walked around in the real world, I would have normal dreams like everyone else.
“It’s not real,” I repeated once more.
The zombie clown sank his teeth into Josh’s neck. The fog turned red as his blood spurted out around the clown’s mouth, fine red drops misting my face, slaughtering my mantra, leaving me helpless.
This is the real world, and there’s no such thing as nightmares.
A NEW SUIT
JOHN HUNT
Charles awoke with a start, naked and cold on a concrete floor. Laying in darkness, he could only make out vague, indistinct shadows. He tried to sit up but screamed when searing pain, sharper than any knife, radiated up his legs. His shriek echoed around him, high pitched—a stranger’s scream. He ran a tentative hand down his thigh, and recoiled when this light touch produced disproportionate pain. The strange lumps in his thighs suggested that his legs were broken. He realized he would have to crawl out of here, dragging the now-useless appendages behind him.
He’d picked a fight with a little guy in a bar. He recalled a fist connecting with his face followed by a blurred image of the barroom floor, wet with boot prints, rising up to meet him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost a fight; he was a big guy, six-feet-six and thick with muscle, who’d spent years cultivating a nasty image justified by his malicious actions. He’d even been incarcerated multiple times for his violent tendencies. He was the guy with the handlebar moustache, scruffy face, beady eyes and jailhouse tattoos—the guy no one ever dared to fuck with. Until now.
A blinding light snapped on, catching him in its spotlight like a broken beetle lying on its back. The dizzying illumination revealed old crumbling brick, and water sliding down the walls to collect in cracks on the floor. Charles realized he was in a derelict building, far from any help. He looked up when the shadow fell upon him, and was alarmed to see that the little guy was naked.
“I’m not into guys,” Charles stated.
“Neither am I,” the little guy growled.
“Then what do you want?”
“A new meat puppet . . . something that fits better than this bag of bones. I think you’ll do nicely.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’ll see.”
The little guy opened his mouth, and Charles heard a pop when the man’s jaw bone dislocated and his mouth grew impossibly wide. A sound like the buzzing of crickets filled the room. Black, hairy fingers resmbling spider legs sprouted from the little guy’s mouth and then folded back to grasp the distended cheeks. The fingers pushed outwards, stretching the skin like rubber until small lacerations began to form in the middle of the little guy’s lips. These lacerations became jagged rips, rupturing the flesh around the mouth, tearing apart the nose, splitting the chin, and slashing down the chest and stomach until the shredded body lay torn in half at Charles’ feet. Charles’ eyes fixed upon the grotesque pile of skin, muscle and viscera piled in front of him, which no longer resembled anything human. Then it stepped away from the slop.
Charles began to scream when the hairy monstrosity looked down at him with six fathomless black eyes and declared, “I always liked the feel of a new suit.”
A busy father of four, John Hunt is a published author who had not started writing until late 2009. Most of his writing is done during his spare time. He works and lives in the city of Guelph, Ontario, Canada with his family.
THE VOYEUR
RAN WALKER
The old man eased out from the shadows, his motions fluid and easy as he lifted his camcorder into the sunlight. He adjusted the zoom, aiming it at the top of the building as the child stepped into view. The flowing satin cape caught on the slight breeze, and damned if the kid didn’t really look like a superhero. The child placed his fists on either side of his waist and poked out his chest, taking in the moment. It was a thing of beauty, the old man thought.
The boy stepped to the edge of the roof, his golden locks shifting with the wind.
“You have to believe,” the old man whispered, adjusting his camcorder. He looked away for a moment at the group of children gathering below. They were doing just as he had instructed them. Now the real crowd would come.
A woman looked upward and screamed.
“Someone call 9-1-1!” a man yelled.
The old man quickly lowered his camcorder to get a shot of the growing crowd before returning his focus to the boy who
stood frozen like a statue atop the building. He could scarcely make out the boy’s face, but it was clear the boy’s posture and stance betrayed his ten-year-old body.
Then the boy moved. Just a slight step, but everyone, including the old man, gasped collectively. It was a delicious moment, this child flaunting his power over this world, proud in his ability to transcend gravity and give himself over to his dreams. The old man smiled, his hand perspiring behind the camcorder.
Without warning, the boy leapt off the building, his cape catching in the wind and trailing boldly behind him as he outstretched his arms so that his body became parallel with the earth. It was a beautiful sight, thought the old man, as he moved his camera with the child.
In the brief seconds after the boy’s commitment to flight, the man watched gravity wrap its heavy hands around the child, yanking him to the earth with such violent force that the boy seemed to disintegrate into bloody dust as his body slammed against the concrete.
When the old man later replayed the video, he admired that fleeting moment when the boy, prostrate against the wind and oblivious to the screams below, floated just off the roof of the building, his cape rippling perfectly behind him. The man hoped that the other children would be equally inspired. Surely there was one among them who viewed himself as bulletproof or capable of breathing under water.
Pausing the video just before the child hit the sidewalk below, the old man smiled at the intensity of the child’s expression.
That boy was determined to fly—even until the very end.
Ran Walker is a native of Mississippi and currently teaches creative writing at Hampton University. He can be reached at www.ranwalker.com.
THE SUMMING OF PARTS
