Prelude to Space Rape! & Other Stories

by Jordan Krall

  A rainbow of scrotum fluids and chunks of unidentifiable matter exploded out of the scratch, smothering everything in its path. Dunch fell backwards, his crotch a glowing mess of otherworldly gore.

  Sara started to move and while she did so, she tore down her pants, her clitoris transformed into a fully erect member. Thousands of spider-legs moved on Dunch’s face so much it resembled an ocean of black wheat swaying in the wind. She walked over to him, stroking herself and aching for release.

  Dunch was on the floor convulsing but fully aware of his surroundings. Oh Peggy, he thought, why’d I ever let you go? I shoulda learned tennis! He heard ear-shattering footsteps and turned his head. Through his convulsions, he could see Sara walking toward him. “Fucking tennis balls, Sara. Fucking tennis balls,” he said, thinking that she should really slip some tennis balls on her feet so her footsteps wouldn’t be so loud. His eyes caught site of her clit-penis but then the spiders on his face obscured his view. They covered his eyes as if to say, “Naughty, naughty!”

  Within seconds his mouth was stuffed with what tasted like an oversized sardine. He gagged, drooled, and then gagged again as Sara face-fucked him while dipping her hands into the spiders, twirling their legs in between her fingers. The pool table was silent, the top of it still glistening with sloppy, reflective goo.

  While Sara force-fed Dunch, she looked over to the pool table and lost herself in her own slanted reflection. She couldn’t get over the feeling that there was someone lurking at the door, a stranger at the threshold waiting to come in.

  After ten minutes, Sara’s muscles were aching and she stopped, collapsing onto Dunch who was covered in drool, clit-sweat, and vomit. “Oh, Dunch-Munch, I’m sorry.” Sara cried into his shoulder, her voice still not fully her own. Dunch didn’t respond in words, only exhausted burps while he stared up at the glowing orb that still circled Sara’s head.

  A fluttering fart escaped from the bottom of the pool table and a flood of milky liquid whooshed down toward Dunch and Sara as if it was an ocean wave and they were just lovers on the beach.

  There was a sound at the door. Sara looked up, expecting the culmination of all this wet, obscene action.

  Billy Packer poked his head through the doorway. Billy Packer, father of three. Billy Packer, construction worker. Billy Packer, naked from the waist down. He rubbed his face with the back of his hand and then plucked out a beard hair, dropping it onto the floor.

  “You guys open? I’m fucking thirsty.”

  HOWLING BEARD

  Despite having had a drink thrown in my face, I didn’t want to go home.

  She’d already told me to go screw myself. Throwing the vodka tonic in my face was probably just a symbolic period at the end of that sentence. So even though she had started to ignore me, I stood my ground.

  And my beard continued to grow.

  The bar was alive with all of the activity a college town can bring. A never-ending cacophony of annoying and pointless conversation created a din that pounded my eardrums. I took a sip of my Red Bull-and-vodka while enjoying the sprouting hairs that popped up through my face.

  She got up from the table and started chatting it up with a frat boy who was at the bar chugging a beer. Oh well, I thought. Better him than me. I was far too proud to leave the bar even with her drink still dripping down my face, wetting the newborn beard hairs that slowly forced their way up out of my pores.

  The frat boy at the bar also had a beard. I stared at it, concentrating on the shape, on the rough color that highlighted his jaw. A forceful jolt of adrenaline surged through my body. The growth of my beard got more intense. My hairs twitched like spider legs.

  I kept my eyes glued to the guy’s face. His was the tenth beard I had seen that night and it was taking its toll on me. Being the self-confident guy I am, I wanted to wait it out and hope I didn’t make a scene like last time. Still, a huge part of me wanted to tear that beard from his face in a frenzy of gore and spittle.

  As I watched the frat boy make the moves on my wife, I felt the spider legs push themselves out of my chin. More hairs sprouted out from under my ears and then my neck. Before I could take another sip of my drink, my entire chest was covered in sharp, black hairs that matched the beard that was growing on my face. I put my hand up in front of my eyes in order to block the sight of the frat boy’s beard but I knew it was too late.

  I fell to the floor, my skin entirely covered in wolfish hair. With a quick jump, I made my way to the bathroom. Luckily everyone around me was substantially drunk and didn’t notice my appearance. I slammed myself into the handicapped stall of the bathroom.

  What could I do? It was happening again and there I was, trapped in a filthy public restroom. I’d been here before, though. It was familiar. Shit and urine stains thrown around the floor and walls in some bodily attempt at modern art. I think I even saw some fresh semen stains.

  I crossed my legs and stared out the window. Moonlight oozed in like wet hair. It struck my face and my beard hairs immediately responded by waving frantically like a cornfield caught in a tornado.

  My body was in full-beard mode. Five inch fangs of green steel protruded from my gums. I trembled with anticipation, thinking ahead to the orgy of psycho-violence I would unleash once I left the bathroom. Frat boys would be slaughtered, their entrails strewn about the pool tables. The desperate young women that came to get laid by some drunken macho douche-bags would indeed get penetrated but only by my hairy fists as I opened and explored new orifices.

  I was a monster. I knew that. I accepted it.

  Sometimes I even liked it.

  With my face in the toilet, I vomited out foot long strands of black hair along with the corn chowder I had for dinner. The water below me became a shimmering swamp of apocalyptic goo. I looked closer and was entertained by the strands of hair that twisted themselves into marionettes. Three of them stood up and began acting out slapstick scene. I moved my face closer and smelt the stench of corn and shampoo.

  It scared me.

  Though I desired violence, deep in my heart I didn’t really want to hurt those people out there. It seemed inevitable, though. The marionettes were putting on a show and that always meant one thing: there was going to be bloodshed.

  One of them looked up and motioned for me to get closer. I put my ear real close and heard a whisper. It barely sounded human but I got the gist of it. They wanted me to go out there. They wanted me to preach the Gospel of the Beard.

  The bathroom got brighter as more moonlight fell in through the windows. It hurt my eyes so I bathed them in the toilet water. The marionettes caressed my beard as I blew bubbles.

  My entire body was tingling from the millions of hairs that were snaking in and out of my skin, tying themselves in knots and forming an almost infinite number of obscure patterns. I took my head out of the bowl and stood up.

  The marionettes waved and walked over to my legs where they jumped and were taken into the mass of hair. I felt them travel to my crotch.

  A tinge of adrenalin tweaked my upper body. I was ready. Closing my eyes, I opened the stall door and walked out of the bathroom with a howl.

  The bar was empty.

  I had expected it to be full of potential victims. There was to be a slaughter that would soak my full-body beard in alcohol-drenched gore. I would have ripped them to shreds simply because that’s what I knew I had to. But instead, the bar was empty.

  Empty, that is, except for my wife.

  She, too, was bearded. But unlike me, she was the one covered in blood and chunks of muscle tissue. Surrounding her was a jigsaw puzzle of coed body parts.

  I slowly walked closer to her expecting the worst. Instead, my wife simply opened her mouth up wide. Her long blue metal teeth shined even in the dull light of the bar. I took this as an invitation and leaned in close, licking the saliva off them.

  “Sorry about before,” she said. She made a face that emphasized the cute wrinkles around her eyes.

  “Don’t worry abo
ut it,” I replied, putting my hand on my wife’s beard. I let the hairs prick me like so many spider legs.

  Then we stepped outside and lost ourselves in the moonlight.

  FUNTIME, USA

  Whenever I watch Night Court, I feel demonic.

  I don’t know if it’s Judge Stone’s obsession with Harry Houdini or Dan Fielding’s oversexed antics, but I feel satanic during the whole viewing process. It’s as if I’m going to burst full blast into a black mass during the first commercial break. I might just desecrate a bible and sacrifice a virgin while someone tries to sell me a new deodorant or soft drink.

  But I always resist the urges.

  I was 26 when it started or maybe it started earlier and I never realized it. Who knows, right? Despite having a college education, I was living hand to mouth as a gas station attendant, barely scrapping by. It wasn’t the life I imagined myself having.

  My days were spent inhaling the sweet aroma of gasoline while trying to catch glimpses of the high heels of women who stopped to fill their cars. I longed to see their shoes on the pedal. At times I believed I could smell their feet through the gasoline smell. Many days I had to stop my mouth from confessing my desire:

  I imagined myself saying, “Can I help you?”

  The woman would say, “Fill it, regular.”

  I’d reply, “Sure. Can I smell your shoes?”

  She’d say, “Fucking pervert.”

  Oh, but I resisted the urges. I needed my job and didn’t have the slightest interest in going to jail. I wouldn’t last there as I’m too delicate and bladder shy.

  So I spent my days at the station and my nights in my one room apartment, surrounded by paperback books and old magazines. It was cramped, but comfortable. I always liked wrapping myself in blankets and lounging on pillows while I watched television. In the winter it was a necessity because I had no heat. I ate soup out of the can and watched rerun after rerun of classic television. That’s where Night Court came in.

  Some people my age would have found my life depressing. It was quite the contrary. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every second of warmth in my comfortable chair (the only one I had in my apartment). I occasionally went to the bar down the street to have a few drinks and sometimes brought home a bottle or two. Then I’d get drunk and reread issues of True Detective. I’d end up watching an episode of Perfect Strangers. Larry pisses me off. Like when he took a sledgehammer to the wall, ruining the mural Balki had painted. I ended up throwing a bottle at the television but luckily I missed.

  So okay, back to Night Court.

  As I sat and watched Dan Fielding again try to get Christine into bed, I kept tracing pentagrams on my blanket. What now?

  Ants crawled onto my chair, getting comfortable in the pentagram I was tracing. They worshipped Baphomet of Thee Unholy Church Ov Thee Old Blanket. Stupid little insects. They don’t know it’s all made up. They don’t realize it’s all because of that stupid, fucking Dan Fielding and the judge’s Houdini obsession.

  BILLY ROANOKE

  The last thing he remembered was having his toes eaten by a transparent squid.

  Then: darkness. And then: a gradual awakening followed by the smell of cinnamon. Christ, is that mom’s apple pie?

  When his eyelids finally unshielded his eyes completely, Billy Roanoke was faced with an unfamiliar ceiling. He turned his head to the right and saw an even more unfamiliar dresser covered with perfumes, face-creams, and all sorts of cosmetology goop. Billy turned his head to the left and saw a door.

  Where am I? What the hell is this?

  He was agitated. Regardless of any pain he had experienced during his life, he always was reassured if he knew exactly where he was and where he could go to get away from the situation.

  He was also confused. The room was alien to him. It didn’t resemble anything he’d ever encountered. Billy thought there was something off about the room, something under the surface that made the reality of the room all the more terrifying.

  Billy swung his legs to the left and stood up.

  He fell to the ground face first, chipping his front teeth on the mahogany wood floor. “Fucking shit!” he yelled but then felt silly. Billy always believed that getting angry was only satisfying when someone was there to witness it. Otherwise, it was just like putting on a play without an audience.

  His eyes went down to his feet but then Billy realized that they were gone.

  It wasn’t a dream. The fucking squid ate my feet.

  He almost cursed again but held it in. Swallowing his pride, he lifted himself up with his arms and dragged himself toward the door.

  The cinnamon smell abruptly turned to smoke. Mom, you’re burning the pie!

  Billy’s nostrils twitched as he put his hand on the doorknob. He screeched in pain. The doorknob was like molten lava in the shape of a breast.

  A velvety layer of smoke slid from under the door and entered the room. Billy almost thought he even heard the flapping sound of flames.

  The house is on fire!

  With all the energy that fear and adrenalin could provide, Billy dragged himself toward the other side of the room and sat up against the dresser. His shoulder bumped into it and a small vial of perfume fell over, rolled down, and fell on top of Billy’s head, shattering in the process.

  One nostril sucked in the sweet fumes while the other choked on smoke.

  Billy looked out the window and saw only a few feet of dirt and then a cliff.

  Beyond that: grey water that stood still like glass. Billy also thought he saw something tiny out on the horizon.

  “Here goes nothing, you stupid son of a bitch,” Billy said. He slammed an elbow into the window, smashing it. Shards fell on him like rain. His eyes were blinded yet again. He dragged himself out the window and tried to look over the cliff. All he saw was water but he thought he glimpsed his own reflection as well as someone else’s.

  Is that…her?

  Her.

  Though his eyes were now wounded by glass and stung by perfume, he could make out her features. He cursed her and leaned over, sending himself into the water. This is what I get for fucking the fisherman’s wife.

  Out on the horizon, a boat sat serenely on the water which now shuddered with waves. On board, a man sat at a small table eating. He smiled and nodded to himself, shoving bite after bite of apple pie into his near toothless mouth.

  Across from him a squid sat holding a beer bottle in one tentacle and playing cards with another. “So, we playing or what?”

  The man put the last spoonful of apple pie in his mouth, looked at the squid, and smiled. “Yeah, Smitty, we’re playing.”

  And then they played.

  During the first few games the two of them reminisced about their stint in the war. After losing several times, the squid put his cards down. “Hey, lemme ask you something.”

  “Yeah, Smitty?” the fisherman said.

  “Did that guy really fuck your wife?”

  The fisherman smiled and threw up his arms.

  “Who hasn’t?

  And then they laughed.

  BRADLEY SANDS IS A DICK

  I’ll give that dick some credit: he did a hell of a William Burroughs impression.

  I guess Bradley Sands was probably more than a little drunk while he stood there in front of me, talking in that recognizable Burroughs drawl. Bradley was even shaking a little bit as if he was in desperate need of some good junk.

  Scrunching his face to look more like an elderly Burroughs, he said, “Horses are a dying artifact. This is a game planet. In Timbuktu I once saw an Arab boy who could play the flute with his ass.”

  I nodded and smiled, sipping my watered-down rum and coke. Why the hell was I even talking to this guy? I guess it’s because when someone is rumored to be such a dick, you get sort of tempted to meet that person to see if all of the stories are true.

  I didn’t think anyone was cruel enough to crush the dreams of so many of the prospective authors who contribute stories to his m
agazine. Most of the contributors would get a belligerent five paragraph email explaining why Bradley was rejecting the story. Bradley Sands has made many authors cry at their computers, tears soaking the keyboard as they were told they were never going to get anything published.

  Okay. Fine.

  Right now I’ll confess to the reader that I am indeed one of those authors. Before actually meeting Bradley, I submitted a story about a foul-mouthed leprechaun that drove a Ferrari and participated in perverse voyeuristic activities. An hour after I emailed my story, I got a reply that was actually longer than my thousand word story. I was surprised to find out that it seemed like he actually read my story, rejecting it because of my passive protagonist. He also said my imagination was shit and I was destined to die a lonely gutter whore.

  I responded to that email kindly in hopes that someday he’d accept another submission. For the following month I worked hard on another story (this one about professional wrestling in ancient Mesopotamia), but this time putting in a non-passive protagonist named Bradley “Jazz Hands” Sands. It was a hilarious and action-filled descent into lowbrow humor and wrestling-themed surrealism.

  Bradley again responded with an email only a dick would write. All I remember from that email are the words “fudge-packing hack” and “terrible waste of typing skills.”

  So why the hell was I standing there having a drink with him, you might ask? Well, it’s because I’m too nice of a guy, that’s why. We happened to end up at the same convention and then at the same afterparty. When he approached me and asked if I had ever submitted something to his magazine, I wanted to lie and say I hadn’t. Being the honest guy I am, I told him the truth and ended up getting sucked into a drunken conversation with the biggest dick in the world.

  “There’s been a breakthrough in the Grey Room! Gimme anodder drink!” he said, waving his hands around like an epileptic mime. When he asked me if I wanted to see his William Burroughs impression, I should’ve said no.