Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology

by C. P. Dunphey

  With this bit of news, Freddy quickly put the vial back in the case and rubbed his hand on his jeans, then looked at Al with disbelief. “What the fuck, Al? I need drugs that are gonna get people high, not make them go crazy and cut their damn peckers off. Why do you think no one ever buys that bath salts shit anymore? A couple of zombie episodes and suddenly everyone thinks its gonna make you go crazy. You think I want that kinda reputation, you dumbass?” He raised his voice, not caring who heard. They were out in the middle of the goddamn desert after all.

  Al put his hands up placatingly. “Hey, hey, hey, dude, calm down, man. You didn’t let me finish. I got this guy right? He’s a dirty cop who runs shit for the mafia out in California and they swear by this stuff, man. The trick is you just have to take a very, very, verrrrrrry small amount. The potency is the problem, not the content. Sort of like old school black tar heads who blast up on fentanyl and overdose, cause that shit is a thousand times more potent than that garbage H they get off the street. The pharmaceutical industry, man, they know how to make their drugs, amigo, you know that yourself.

  “That’s why everyone’s out buying Adderall and Vyvanse from college kids with scripts instead of that bullshit crystal you tried to swing. Long lasting, and cheap, that’s what those kids want, and this shit right here?” Al gently tapped one of the vials. “Is right up that particular alley. One small drop of this shit is enough to blast someone off into a world of unending horniness and hallucinations so intense that you can’t tell what’s real and what’s your imagination. It’s not just a hallucinogen, it’s a deliriant, and it can last for up to twelve hours, man.”

  Freddy looked at him, amazed and a little skeptical. “Bullshit, one CC is barely a fuckin squirt. You tellin me that a itty bitty blotter of that can blast you off?”

  Al shook his head vehemently. “You betcha. It’s only been on the street for about two months now so the specifics are a little sketchy, you know everyone’s body is different and all that. But it’s the real deal, amigo. And what’s cool about it is that at smaller doses, if you can find a way to measure smaller than that, it’s more like a high than a trip. A lot of upper big ball swinging businessmen like it, say it’s like coke mixed with a really heavy hash high. But we’re talking like amounts you’d need a damn microscope to see.”

  “Jesus, that is crazy,” Freddy reflected. Convinced, he got down to business. “All right, how much for both cases?” he asked.

  Al smiled nervously and asked, “How does twelve K sound?”

  Freddy scowled his scarred face and shook his head.

  Despite the clearly high balled price, he reached into his pocket and handed over two thick rolls of hundred-dollar bills. “Now, how about this, you damn jew conman. Here’s six neat upfront, cause I still aint entirely sure about this. If it starts selling like you say it will I should have the other half to you in two weeks. Deal?”

  Al considered this for a moment, sighed and handed over the two cases, looking around nervously as he did so. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, as long as it’s off my ass. There’s only two guys in the whole world who are able to bring this stuff on the street and I know one of them directly and I’d be quite surprised if the government wasn’t already looking into him. They keep this shit heavily guarded in some evidence lab. And Freddy, look, man, if you don’t want a shit show on your hands, you need to listen to me carefully. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER give anyone a larger dose than four CCs. The tolerance for this shit builds up quick, which helps you in the long run, but man, even the most hardcore users short circuit after four CCs. There’s been two overdoses on it confirmed out in San Francisco where this shit is real hip with the artists and musicians. Remember, no more than four. No matter what, you got me?”

  Freddy shook his head. “Yeah sure, although it’s gonna be hard trying to convince people that such a small amount will do the trick. They got a name for this stuff? Something that will ring a bell?”

  Al was quickly putting up his little stash of boxes and looked up, smiling. “Yep. They call it Devil’s Tears on the street, cause you gotta drop that shit in your eyes.”

  Albert Weaver was in relatively good spirits until about thirty minutes ago. After the deal with Freddy went down a couple weeks back, he had taken a little vacation with the fat wad of cash the deal brought in. This was gonna be his last big run, his retirement from the game. He sold almost all of the Devil’s Tears, assuring plenty of easy living until he croaked or got killed, but he made sure to keep a small vial for himself. He had been hooked on the stuff for over a month now, and his tolerance was so high that he had been taking up to four CCs per trip in order to feel the most basic effects now, despite his own dire warnings he gave to Freddy about the nature of the drug. It just . . . felt so good.

  His addiction was taking its toll on him although he didn’t realize it. He had been masturbating excessively the past five days as he lay locked in his dingy trailer in a perpetual never-ending swirl of wonderful highs and crashing, disorienting lows. At least once every two hours he jerked off, and the bottom of his shaft where the urethra was located was bruised a dark yellow. The tip and meatus was a bright irritated red and was scabbed, bleeding along the corona as Al continued to throttle his member, helpless to stop the sexual urges that plagued him. Orgasms now hurt severely as his small wrinkled testicles, which resembled dried prunes, struggled to pump empty contractions into the man’s worn penis. His bed was covered in several dry crusts of semen stains, and some of these crusty deposits were tinged red with blood.

  Unable to slake his thirst with mere masturbation, he had been ordering hookers over the last two days. He had the money to blow on top shelf call girls, girls that were experienced and were willing to do just about anything you wanted if you could afford them. The last one that came by refused to do anything with Al, seeing his scabby, bleeding penis and thinking the man had a severe case of herpes or something.

  But his eyes were probably the worst part. He had put over twenty doses of L-Diamethaltriazamine into both eyes during the course of a bender unseen to the likes of conventional junkies. His eyes were almost completely stained a muddy burgundy color, so dark that you could barely make out the shape of the man’s extremely dilated pupils. To Albert Weaver, the whole world was one abstract purple nightmare, but that was all right. He had gotten used to the unending auditory and visual hallucinations, which went on even when he was coming off the drug. He bled from his eyes and ears, along with a gelatinous purple goo that now steadily leaked out of the corners of his eyes.

  When Candice “Candy Cane” Lane knocked on the double wide trailer’s door of Al’s run-down sanctum, she stumbled back in horror as something barely resembling a man opened the door for her. To Candice, he looked like one of those comic book gray aliens with a horrible mascara day. The man’s pale, almost translucent skin was waxy in the glow of the bare bulbs that adorned his living room. His thinning black hair hung in wild kinked curls above his scabbed head. “You must be . . . Cannnnnnnndy Cane, is that right, darlin?” he asked, and smiled a most terrible smile.

  The teeth she saw were little more than rotted husks, a case of meth mouth which had been accelerated by the dry Arizona air. She recoiled. “I uh . . . No, I’m sorry I must have the wrong place. I’m sorry I need to be—” but Al grabbed the beautiful voluptuous blonde by the arm. He made sure not to grab hard, he didn’t want to be threatening. He was just so desperate for human touch.

  “Wait, please!” he said in a feeble voice. He was as much addicted to the sex as he was to the Tears, despite how both physically pained when he’d indulge. He shoved a handful of hundred-dollar bills in front of her, the crumpled pieces of money smeared some sort of violet fluid. “I’m not infected with anything I swear I just . . . I got something in here that’ll change your life, honey. A drug you aint never seen before, a drug you can’t find anywhere else except here, and I guess I been hittin it a little hard, got some side effects as you can see,” he said, is
suing a shrill barking sound that was supposed to be laughter. “I’m just . . . so lonely, and I need you, baby. I’ll pay you whatever you want, and I’ll give you some of the Tears. It’ll be worth your while, sweet honey, just you see.”

  Candice stared down at the wad of bills for a long moment, thinking hard. She did need the money. She was trying to pay her way through an accounting degree and the tuition fees were kicking her ass. But god, this was so sketchy. She swallowed hard, and while gripping the bottle of mace she had stashed her in purse hard enough to turn her knuckles white, she reluctantly allowed herself to be led into this disgusting creature’s house, despite every feeling in her stomach telling her to get the fuck out of dodge.

  “Candy, honey, you gotta open the door, please. You got me worried out here, baby doll,” Al said gently through the door. A series of thick, labored grunts was all he got in response. “God fucking dammit, dumb cunt barely even got a hit,” Al muttered under his breath. Although this was not true. In his spun-out mental state, he had accidentally given Candice a four-CC dose of the devil’s tears. His blurred purple-tinged vision unable to see the small measurement markings on the side of the syringe he used.

  Finally losing his patience, he attempted to kick in the door. It was a flimsy particle board thing anyway, and he burst through easily enough. It wasn’t like he was getting his damage deposit back on the goddamn trailer anyway after all the meth he cooked in it. He became aware of two things at once. The sharp tang of ammonia in the air, and Candice, stark naked and half-crouching in the corner of his bathtub.

  He looked to his right and saw the bottle of ammonia he kept stashed under the sink, along with a bottle of bleach and Drano. They were all lying askew on the floor, some of the contents spilled. It took Al a long moment to register the dangerous effect of this combo.

  “Oh Candice, you sweet dumb fucking bitch. What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you—” His question was cut off with a loud moan, followed by a sizzling sound. A geyser of dark foam jetted from the back of Candice and she shivered.

  “There was . . . there was something inside me, something bad. I realize that . . . now. Something in me that’s been poisoning my body for years. And now . . . now I’m gonna kill it. Now I’m gonna poison it, the fucking parasite inside of me. Make it all end. It will all finally. . .” but then she yelled and a violent jet of foamy pink liquid rocketed out the back of her.

  Her belly had swollen as well and in Al’s distorted vision, it pulsated and continued to grow. She collapsed, forward, and Al saw her back.

  “Holy. Fucking. Shit,” he said in terrified awe as he realized the woman had given herself an enema using the contents he kept under the sink. As she lay twitching and yelling in the tub, pink jelly speckled with bits of dissolved intestine, fecal matter, and flesh erupted from her ruined orifice. Al tried to go over and help her but he stopped as he saw the ruined melted crater of her anus and vagina, dissolved together to form one bloody oozing maw of gore.

  To Al’s purple-tinged vision, his bathtub looked like the bottom of a jar of grape jelly. Smoke was rising from the wound, skin foaming up and dissolving around the edges of her ruined genitalia.

  “Candice!” he cried, and then attempted to roll her over so she would at least stop shitting her insides out against his bathroom wall.

  Despite the hellish scene of gore he was now entrenched in, what disturbed Al the most was the fact that when he managed to roll the woman over, he saw that her stomach had deflated but was somehow yet . . . moving? Was that what it was doing? Al couldn’t tell. He looked longer, and sure enough, her skin was rumpling and dimpling as if something was moving around within.

  “Oh my god,” he whispered, staring at the woman’s stomach with terror, ignoring the fact that she was likely on the edge of death, only slight spasms in her arms and legs as the acidic mixture dissolved into her nerves.

  She was right, there was something in her, holy shit. What is happening? His fried brain struggled to understand what had just happened and what continued to progress. You gotta kill it, man you can’t have let her die in vain, a stoic voice spoke in his mind. Finish it, finish the job and then go bury her body out there at that special place in the desert where you put Jim and that cunt from Vegas.

  Resolute now, and also terrified of whatever fucked up creature was hiding in Candy Cane’s sweet tummy, he shrank back from the bathroom, and went to retrieve his knife.

  Before he did though, he stopped and grabbed the small vial of Devil’s Tears and looked at the bottle. It had been full at one point, but now there was only a small puddle in the bottom. Perhaps five or six hits left.

  “Fuck it,” he said, pouring the remaining fluid into his right eye. It stung like acid and he was forced to sit on his bed while the wave of biting heat raced through his head. In that moment, he felt every single busted capillary and inflamed vein running through his optical nerve, becoming aware of his entire body. It was then that his mind broke after so many hits of the drug. He completely lost sense of who he was, where he was.

  But he remembered his mission.

  The girl.

  Yes, he needed to kill the thing that was in Candy. He reached over to the head of the bed and pulled out his big Ka-bar, which he kept under his pillow at night. He pulled it out of its sheath, and studied it, mystified for a moment. To Al, it looked like some kind of glorious Excalibur, a noble blade forged from violet sapphire.

  “I’ll honor you, baby,” he said in a brave voice, and proceeded towards the bathroom, the rusty dull-edged knife that he was so proud of thrust out in front of him in a mock fencer’s stance.

  He entered the bathroom again, and by now there was a gelatinous puddle of human matter sinking through a hole burned through the bathtub. Candice’s midsection had caved in, dissolving the navel and revealing crisp white ribs and a few strands of muscle that were clinging from them, protruding from a dark green puddle of dissolved innards. A smell similar to burning plastic, barbeque, and rubbing alcohol filled the air.

  Preparing to thrust his knife into the beige pink soup in his tub, he raised the blade, feeling like a glorious knight. He plunged the blade into the ruined body, and at first thought the creature was attacking him. His hands deep in her fluid organs, he pulled up, revealing his skin was searing and burning.

  He didn’t really understand though, and continued plunging in. Eventually, acidic gore burned through the skin until the ropey metacarpal muscles and knuckles glinted through the filmy mess. With his muscles dissolving, he lost his grip on the knife and instead began running his boney exposed fingers through the muck, splashing his forearms and face with the terrible soup.

  He was enraptured in the experience, the burning feeling like a cleansing as he spread the gore all over himself, coating himself in the gelatinous liquid as some sort of ritualistic rite, although at that point his thoughts were not coherent enough to assign any kind of philosophical meaning to his actions. He just wanted to be her, be in her, find a way in.

  Then he heard three loud knocks on the door.

  “POLICE, SEARCH WARRANT!” a voice boomed from outside, followed by a loud crash.

  AN ANGEL AMONG US

  By David Beers

  “Now I know,” the preacher said, “that today’s world don’t believe in miracles. Modern society thinks the days of miracles—the days of Christ turnin’ water to wine—them days are gone. I’m here to tell ya, to tell all of ya, that’s just the Devil’s talk.”

  A chorus of amens erupted from the congregation. The church was hot, as it always was during summer Sundays. The two air conditioners attached to the windows couldn’t keep the church-goers from sweating something awful.

  The preacher, his name being Alfred P. Cunningham, knew this was his moment. Alfred came from a long line of preachers—indeed, his very Daddy had founded the church he now stood in. The elder Cunningham had retired ten years ago, giving control of the church—and congregation—to Alfred.

&n
bsp; Both understood he was ready for it, and standing at the pulpit this morning, it was clear how much greater the Lord would work through Alfred than he had his father.

  It wasn’t that the elder Cunningham was bad at his job, far from it. Only, his son was that good.

  Alfred walked to the edge of the pulpit and looked down at his flock of sheep.

  “The Lord talks to us all, doesn’t he?”

  “Lawd, yes!” Ruphus shouted from the third row.

  “Brother Ruphus knows. The rest of us do too, don’t we?”

  “Amen!” came the agreement.

  “It’s that tiny voice that speaks to us, the one deep inside our chest that tells us right from wrong. That’s God talkin’ right there.” Alfred paused as any good preacher will do, letting his words sink into the people before him. After a few seconds, he continued. “The Lord’s been talkin’ to me, lately, and he’s been tellin’ me some important things.” Alfred looked up from his feet. “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes, Pastor,” Aunt Jennie said from the first row. “We know he has.”

  “Yes he has. Yes he is. He’s told me that he’s tired of people not believin’ in him. He’s tired of the world denyin’ his miracles, and he’s tired of how people are ignorin’ his word!”

  “Amen!”

  Alfred nodded, flames flicking in his eyes, revealing the intensity of his belief beneath them. Because the good Lord had been talking to Alfred a lot lately. He’d been detailing out a lot of things, and Alfred had kept it quiet for a while. Up until this week, actually. Six days ago, the Lord gave him permission to start talking, and so he had, first bringing in the Bilbox family. It was their son that God planned to work through.