But even with that, the daily abuse didn’t let up, because once the mean girls and bullies chose you as prey they couldn’t be fooled by anything minor and modest.
In that secret place, the festering thing told her more radical measures were needed, because the problem was way too severe for small accomplishments. And the pain had gotten even worse, like a throbbing ache that had no limits either.
The next course of action presented itself when she was pushed down a flight of stairs at school by a football player and her plump face was horribly crushed by the tumbling fall. She was used to taunts and mocking sneers, but now it was obvious they wanted her dead. She was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, and taken to surgery right away. And that’s where her life was changed forever. Under the sizzling lights in the operating room, she met the gleaming metal god that had the power to change human flesh.
Her face had been smashed to a bloody pulp, so bones were rearranged, sinew attached, and the battered skin was sewn back together. The operation was deemed a success, but her face was even more revolting, a swollen atrocity mashed together with stitches.
The recovery process took months, another wrenching crucible of pain. When the healing was finally completed, the result was a surprise she didn’t expect. It may have been the surgeon’s miraculous skill, or just an unexpected accident, because her features weren’t as dreary and dreadful as before. It wasn’t a total transformation, but it was definitely better than what the exercise and make-up had been able to achieve.
All because of the gleaming god of surgical steel.
“This is your life . . .” she heard from that secret dark place.
The taunts and bullying continued through her teenaged years, then finally slacked off in college, only because the torment was now to make her invisible, as if she didn’t exist at all. The beautiful people decided this was even more cunning and mean, to pretend they couldn’t even see her. By this time though, she was so focused on becoming a doctor the new torture was something she could finally ignore.
But she didn’t want to be just any doctor, she wanted to wield the metal god that could transform flesh.
She learned the mysteries of the human body in medical school, then studied the magic of plastic surgery after that. Late at night, in that secret place where her nightmares dwelled, the misery of her younger years still howled with an unforgettable agony and pain. But now she knew the slab of flesh that covered her body was not a physical prison, but merely a mushy facade that could be easily changed.
The years of study and building her practice were grueling, like climbing a mountain where her only desire was to get to the top. When money finally came, she quickly utilized the benefits of her chosen profession, sculpting her face and figure into a form that was unrecognizable from the pitiful creature she’d been before. She transformed her flesh into a captivating shape that wasn’t that different from the glossy pictures in the beauty magazines from long ago.
With her new allure, suitors arrived and she picked the one that seemed the most pleasant. She’d never been overly attracted to men because of the psychic cruelty that still lingered inside, but she wanted a child so she accepted marriage as a necessary part of the process.
When her daughter was born, the flesh of her flesh, she felt a joy she’d never experienced before. Cradling the tiny bundle in her arms unleashed a part of her heart she never knew existed, the part where love was the most powerful feeling imaginable.
But then another emotion suddenly appeared one night when she realized her child was indeed the flesh of her flesh, but before her sculpted transformation. Her eyes were becoming dark and gloomy, and her wiggling body was twisting into a misshapen form.
They say the greatest heartache a parent can feel is to witness their child in pain and it echoes the same pain they felt as a child.
Down where her nightmares dwelled, and the memory of her tortured years still howled with pain, a plan formed that she accepted as the only right course of action. No loving mother would ever allow cruelty to the flesh of her flesh, so if ugliness was going to be her daughter’s inheritance, then changes had to be made.
She divorced her husband, in case he didn’t understand what needed to be done, then set up a make-shift operating room in the basement. She’d acquired skills that few people had, as a worshipper of surgical steel.
It was a slow process that wouldn’t be detected by others, but it was extreme and radical in its own way.
She gradually transformed her daughter into a teenaged beauty, but it didn’t stop at just that. She made her a bombshell beyond the limits of good taste, with a sexy figure, lusty lips, and cascading hair. She’d been attacked for being ugly, so she made the flesh of her flesh something totally new, seductive perfection in every way. And that’s when it happened, the horror of horrors that no child should ever experience.
Her daughter came home in tears after a date with the captain of the football team, and the evidence was easy to see. Her clothes were ripped and her body was bruised, but the assault had gone much deeper than that.
Down where her nightmares dwelled, her rage erupted to monstrous proportions and she prayed to the metal god for an appropriate response. It came with a clarity that startled her with its stunning cruelty, but she accepted its depravity.
She needed her daughter’s help, which she offered with the same need for payback and punishment.
With a soft and luscious voice, her daughter told the lumbering football player how much she wanted another date as soon as possible. This fed his brutish ego like a game winning touchdown run, so the trap was set.
“My Mom is away this weekend,” she whispered in his ear at school. “Why don’t you come over and we can have more fun . . .”
When he arrived lugging a bottle of cheap booze and flashing a horny grin, it was easy to knock him out with a super powerful tranquilizer slipped into his drink. It took both the mother and daughter to drag his bulky body down the thumping stairs to the make-shift operating room in the basement, then push him up on the table.
He was missing for a couple of days, because the operation was extreme and radical, not an easy fix.
He was one of the beautiful people, with sunny blonde hair, a square jaw, and blue-sky eyes.
It was close to midnight when his parents heard a scraping at the front door and stumbled downstairs. When they opened the door, it took a few seconds to see the whimpering thing on the stoop was their son, but now the flesh of their flesh was something brand new. He looked more like a pig than a human, with four stubby legs, a limp tail, pointed ears, and a snout that came from between his legs. The horror in his eyes was a pain no parent should ever have to see, but down where her nightmares dwelled, she knew the operation was a success.
PUBLICATION CREDITS:
“ERUPTION” Charlotte Baker © 2017
“DEVIL’S TEARS” Shadrick Beechem © 2017
“AN ANGEL AMONG US” David Beers © 2017
“HUMAN-KINGS” Austin Biela © 2017
“WRIGGLERS” Chantal Boudreau* © 2013
(Originally published in Midnight Creature Feature II)
“LITTLE MONSTERS” Ed Burkley © 2017
“TOM’S THUMB” K.M. Campbell © 2017
“FAMILY DINNER” A. Collingwood © 2017
“THE ITCH” Stuart Conover © 2017
“THE BLIND ASSASSIN” Damien Donnelly © 2017
“FLESH” James Dorr* © 1999
(Originally published in Maelstrom Speculative Fiction)
“A NORMAL SON” Spinster Eskie © 2017
“GAS MASK BABY” Santiago Eximeno © 2017
“HUMAN BODY” Balázs Farkas* © 2017
(Originally published in the Lovecraft Lunatic Asylum’s Lovecraftian Horror Anthology)
“FRESH FACE” Tarquin Ford © 2017
“MEET THE WIFE” Kenneth C. Goldman* © 2016
(Originally published in Cranial Leakage Vol. II—Tales from The Grinning Skull
)
“MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER” James Harper © 2017
“MANTIS” Kourtnea Hogan © 2017
“CICADA” Carl R. Jennings © 2017
“TETANUS” Christopher Vander Kaay © 2017
“GRUB” Alexander Lloyd King © 2017
“MY LOVE BURNS WITH A GREEN FLAME” Thomas C. Mavroudis © 2017
“THE FACE IN THE MIRROR” Sean McCoy © 2017
“PORPHYRIA” John S. McFarland © 2017
“THINGS” Rick McQuiston © 2017
“THE FLESH GARDENER” Jeremy Megargee © 2017
“EAR WAX” G.A. Miller © 2017
“THE FACE” Kurt Newton* © 2002
(Originally published in Dark Demons)
“BATTLEGROUND” Drew Nicks © 2017
“WHIZZ-BANG ATTACK” Sergio Palumbo © 2017
“THE ALWAYS WATCHING EYE” Gary Power © 2017
“HOT FLASHES” Jenya Joy Preece © 2017
“THE IMPLOSION OF A GASTROCRAT” Frank Roger* © 2005
(Originally published in Black Petals Magazine)
“NO STRINGS” Josh Shiben* © 2015
(Originally published in Creepy Campfire Stories (for Grownups))
“BABEL” Ian Steadman © 2017
“A POUND OF FLESH” Edmund Stone © 2017
“CONDITIONED APOCALYPSE” Aric Sundquist © 2017
“LENGTH” David Turton © 2017
“NATURAL GROWTH” Mijat Vujačić* © 2015
(Originally published in Devolution Z)
“UTTER NO EVIL” Joseph Watson © 2017
“DOWN WHERE HER NIGHTMARES DWELL” Sheldon Woodbury © 2017
ABOUT THE EDITOR
C.P. Dunphey is an author, editor, Lovecraftian scholar, and the founder of Gehenna & Hinnom Books. He has edited thousands of stories for authors, novels, and collections, both mainstream and independent while also publishing work of his own. His science fiction/horror novel Plane Walker was published in 2016 and was met with critical and commercial success, going as far as being nominated for several awards. Dunphey is the editor-in-chief of Gehenna & Hinnom, helming both the anthologies released by the company and the bi-annual magazine Hinnom Magazine. When he isn’t tirelessly steamrolling through editing, Dunphey can be found at his home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with his beautiful pit-bull Ripley Ellen, a book and movie shelf that holds all his secrets, and an insatiable thirst for everything horrific and imaginative.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Shaun Avery writes crime and horror fiction to the best of his abilities across a number of mediums. He has won prizes with his writing, and recently co-created a self-published horror comic. He sees “Slobber” as a laugh-out-loud comedy. But then, he always did have a pretty strange sense of humor.
Charlotte Baker is currently a PhD student studying cult horror, female identification and fandom. Her MA in Horror and Transgression and her research into the use of skin as a method of spectatorship won the ‘Best Dissertation’ award at the University of Derby. Charlotte is currently an associate lecturer in Film Production at the University of Derby and an author. She has published a series of novellas and over twenty short stories and articles.
Shadrick Beechem is a twenty-five-year-old aspiring horror writer from the Midwest.
David Beers writes thriller novels in Dallas, Texas. When not writing, he obsesses over stories in the news about unexplained deaths and paranormal happenings to the point that his friends and family wonder if he should see a psychiatrist.
Before publishing novels, David received awards for his short fiction seen in numerous publications, including the New York Times mentioned Every Day Fiction.
David scribbles weekly on topics from crime to horror movies at his website, http://www.davidbeersfiction.com. He loves interacting with fans through email, hand written letters, and smoke signals, so feel free to contact him!
Austin Biela currently lives in Forth Worth, TX. He has just finished attending Texas State University where he acquired a bachelor’s degree in both English and Physical Anthropology. Though he is currently unemployed, he plans to work with law enforcement as a Medico-legal Death Investigator while also writing to his heart’s content. He regularly runs 5Ks, has excavated a burial site in Poland, and volunteered with Texas State’s Forensic Anthropology Center. Though humanity will always hold a special place in his heart, his mind is dominated by the thoughts of monsters, both surreal and all too realistic.
Chantal Boudreau is a speculative fiction writer with a focus in horror and fantasy. She is also an affiliate member of HWA and a current member of SF Canada. She has published in Canada with Exile Editions in their Dead North and Clockwork Canada anthologies and her other Canadian publications include stories in Postscripts to Darkness Volume 5 and Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories. Outside of Canada, to date, she has published more than fifty stories with a variety of American and British publishers.
Ed Burkley is a Social Psychologist living in Oklahoma. By day he works as a professor and researcher studying human behavior at Oklahoma State University. By night he writes about the darker side of the human condition. His short fiction appears in the forthcoming Smoking Pen Press anthology Uncommon Pet Tales and the new series Night Shades by Firth Books.
K.M. Campbell is a warmongering New Zealand librarian who writes when not sleeping. Breastfed on Stephen King, Karley now lives in some half-world where nothing terrifies her more than the monster that still lurks beneath her bed, whispering strange tales while she slumbers and insisting she scribe them lest he bite her foot off next time she leaves her bed. He is slowly draining her essence. His name is Brian, and he’s an asshole!
A. Collingwood lives in a little town between forest and sea, and currently lives in a dank and dingy house on a hill, where a typewriter is the only thing that can drown out the scratching and slithering in the walls. If Collingwood must be contacted, do so on a full moon, at exactly midnight, on the blog “The Cabinet of A. Collingwood” at WordPress.com. Any misfortune that occurs afterwards cannot be held against the author. You’ll have no proof. We promise.
Stuart Conover is a father, husband, rescue dog owner, horror author, blogger, journalist, horror enthusiast, comic book geek, science fiction junkie, and IT professional. With all of that to cram in on a daily basis, it is highly debatable that he ever is able to sleep and rumors have him attached to an IV drip of caffeine to get through most days.
A resident in the suburbs of Chicago (and once upon a time in the city) most of Stuart’s fiction takes place in the Midwest if not the Windy City itself. From downtown to the suburbs to the cornfields—the area is ripe for urban horror of all facets.
Damien Donnelly was born in Dublin, Ireland. Damien juggles being a pattern maker by day for various fashion brands and a writer by night. He originally moved to Paris in 1998 before falling distracted by London and Amsterdam. Since returning to Paris in 2015, his focus has been heavily on writing and he was published in 2015’s Irish short story anthology Second Chance, Eyewear Publishing’s poetry anthology Nous Sommes Paris and various online journals including Firefly Magazine and SickLit Magazine. Aside from maintaining an online blog of poetry and photography, he is currently working on his first novel. For the rest of the time, he can be found in the kitchen baking high calorie cakes.
James Dorr’s THE TEARS OF ISIS was a 2014 Bram Stoker Award® nominee for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Other books include STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE, DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET, and his all-poetry VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE). Also be on the watch for TOMBS: A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, a novel-in-stories just released from Elder Signs Press in June 2017.
An Active Member of HWA and SFWA with more than 500 individual appearances from ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE to XENOPHILIA, for the latest information Dorr invites readers to visit his blog at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com.
Spinster Eskie is a resident of California and has
an M.Ed in creative arts education. With a background in women’s studies, her focus as a writer is to expose the woman’s experience through unsettling tales that highlight the dilemma of sexual repression and oppression. By combining the genres of feminist and horror/science-fiction she aims to not only disturb readers, but deliver a message that is informative and thought-provoking. In 2005, Eskie’s play, Tell Me About Love, was featured in the Provincetown Playwright Festival. She has been featured in various online magazines such as Deadman’s Tome, Bad Moon Rising, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia. Eskie has a number of short stories published by Pill Hill Press, Post-Mortem Press, Scary Tales Publications, Cruentus Libri Press, and many others.
Santiago Eximeno is a Spanish genre writer who has published several novellas and collections, mainly horror literature and flash fiction. His work has been translated to English, Japanese, French, or Bulgarian. You can find him at www.eximeno.com or @santiagoeximeno on Twitter.
Balázs Farkas is a Hungarian writer of literary and weird fiction. So far, he’s published two books and his works appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. He also reviews books, movies and video games, and occasionally he also translates short stories from English to Hungarian. More recently, he started translating his own works to English.
He lives in Budapest and works at a video game development company as a community manager and contributing writer.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 42
