by D. Sutter
A fat red troll with a fuzzy head of hair popped out of the window. Between his pointed teeth, he said, “come to poppa’!”
As an alternative, Megamouth flew around the left side and slanted right, coming almost full circle around the tower. The serpent curved around both sides, but broke off into two separate trains. He howled with his foghorn and sent one of the snakelike groups into the side of the tower, smashing the demons like insects across the stone. The other serpent directed for them and Megamouth stopped flapping. They dropped instantly, but were grabbed out of the air by a pair of hands.
“Mine, mine,” the creature said. It was a red troll, possibly the one from the other window, who was bigger and stronger than Megamouth.
“Please let us go,” Megamouth pleaded. He couldn’t fight back, for the demon had wrapped around his legs, arms, and torso.
“No way. I’m gonna’ have fun with you.”
Something hard and rod-like poked into Megamouth’s leg. With limited options, he shoved his salami nose into the red troll’s yellow teeth. The thing released them when his front teeth cracked out of his gums, and Megamouth fluttered out of the window.
A lava fountain exploded directly across the way and when the exhibit cleared, he could see the coliseum waiting beyond. Megamouth flapped harder than he had in his whole life. A purple demon latched onto his pants leg. They were much bigger than the black trolls and weighed him down. It started to climb his body, carrying with it the ten or so demons trailing behind, latched to its legs.
He flew over the wall of the coliseum. Three of the thrones around the top of the stands were empty and the stands full of patrons, the battle in progress. The painted children were clashing, steel connecting with steel.
Megamouth could feel the demon on his lower back. He looked for Porticus while at the same time digging for his shadow gun. The old man was close by, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth like father, obviously directing his psychic attack. Part of Megamouth’s shit wing broke off and along with it went the string of demons. He and Rufus began to descend at a rapid rate. Megamouth pulled out his shadow gun, pointed it toward Porticus, and compressed the trigger. His brother’s eyes shot open.
Porticus’s grey hair became a wave as he did a back flip to avoid the ray. The crowd cheered when he landed on his feet, perched on the rim of the coliseum. Despite their awful ways, the Five (or Two) had loyal followers. Porticus bent his brittle knees, ready to spring. His jeans ripped and he tumbled forward. Megamouth again pulled the trigger.
As his body somersaulted forward, Porticus warped, turning pitch black. His jeans were swallowed by the shadows, his button-down work shirt engulfed by the darkness. The silhouette was sucked into the gun.
They were barely buoyant——Megamouth flapping his one shit wing, Rufus waving the racket too large for him to hold——when Megamouth noticed Manservant. He was crouched on his throne, pointing his eye laser directly at them. Without giving Mega a second to react, the blue laser sliced through the stadium. Megamouth could smell burnt shit as they fell.
He tried to brace for the landing by bending his knees, but when he hit the half-chewed leg shattered and he crumpled to a heap. The painted children fell on him, wielding weapons, covered in war paint, and started to destroy his torso. His chest cracked in half, screams encompassed him, and his other leg shattered into shards. Rufus dropped the multi-tool and vanished inside the chest pocket. A high-pitched whine rang out and all the children stopped, whimpering and covering their ears. The loud footsteps could only come from one person.
Sure enough, Manservant stood over them, his body covered in metallic green armor, wires covering his arms and body. A series of computerized beeps came out of his mouth like Morse code. It translated as a fluorescent scroll across the backdrop of the coliseum’s walls.
“YOU FOOL.”
Along the upper rim of the coliseum, massive wires started to slither, blocking anyone’s exit.
“YOUR DUTY IS NOW TO ME. I, DICTATOR, WILL ALWAYS BE THE LEADER OF THIS MISERABLE REALM. EVEN WHEN I’M GONE THERE WILL BE ANOTHER TO TAKE THE REIGNS. I REPRESENT ONLY ONE OF A GROUP WITH THE SAME IDEALS.”
Megamouth reached for the multi-tool and Manservant poised the laser at his face. He went to press the button for the tool’s shield, but accidentally pressed the wrong one.
“Yuh-oh.”
The laser melted the left side of Megamouth’s face and his vision depleted. Glass shattered and out of the corner of his right eye, Megamouth saw his germ wing collection escape into the atmosphere. He pressed another button and the rectangle shield spread over his body. Blue light bounced off the translucent shield and hit Manservant in the evergreen suit of armor.
His rounded, helmeted head gagged forward over and over. The germ wings invaded his lungs. Both of his hands, covered in multi-colored wires, clung to his throat as he gasped for life. He bent over and fell out of Megamouth’s sight.
The children were coughing as well, dying. The wires started to creep inside the stadium. Megamouth felt the individual pieces of his body go numb.
“What have I did?” he said.
The fragments of his megaphone connected into one uniform cone directly on his face. The smithereens of his body miraculously merged. Then, he evaporated into thin air.
CHAPTER 10
“MY CHILDREN ARE SLEEPING, there’s little to do. I’m blinded darkness, my vision askew.”
The rocking chair squeaked in the desperate silence of the wooden shack. Father Necrocious, for once in his life, felt at peace. It’d been a long time since last he was able to pursue actual rest. His candle burnt out, the smell of flames gone from the singular room. The ones belonging in the crypt were laid down eternally.
He knew Megamouth killed Porticus by accident. Maybe if he behaved long enough at Mount Pus, then Megamouth could return to Havenshaw Crypt and they could live at home together...maybe.
A shadow slinked past Necrocious’s back. He ceased rocking and leaned forward in his chair, lighting a match and moving it nearer to the worn out, blackened candlewick.
“Shhhh...” he said, bringing a long withered finger to his wrinkled lips.
The shadow faded into a darkened corner.
“My children are sleeping, there’s little to do. I’m blinded by darkness, my vision askew.”
The Father began to ease the chair forth and back, forth and back. He tried to reason with the Sandman, but the shadows were non-compliant, in a constant state of motion.
“Time for more children,” the old man said and grabbed for the decanter resting on the round mahogany table.
END.
D.G. Sutter is the author of La Maquina Oscura and the collection Oddly Chilling. His short fiction has appeared both online and in several small press print anthologies. When not writing he can be found on the North Shore of Massachusetts, fighting the cruel Atlantic with his fishing pole. Keep up with him at www.dgsutter.wordpress.com.
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Rae is her name.
Our support group of embittered and most likely deranged women are going to kidnap, torture, disembowel and finally kill the woman who has ruined all our lives. As foul and as grotesque as she is, she acts like she's Queen of the Bean.
She walked past our window with sickening confidence oblivious to us and our weak tea.
Rae believes she is above the pain she has caused. Beyond the whimpering of her victims. Out of reach of vengeance. Our support group of women do not agree. Judgement day is here for Rae.
Rae has got it coming.
“No! You will not move. You say I am a fucking clown, and so I will be. And I will fuck you until I can fuck you no more. And when I am done, perhaps I will take you down to the cattle car and watch while the other clowns fuck you one by one until you are so full that their juices run down your thighs. You will learn to show respect for me. For my art and my craft."
Pinning her hands
to the bed, he entered her quickly and roughly. She screamed and spit in his face. He slapped her again and left her ear ringing.
“You hate clowns? A fucking clown is raping you and he’ll continue to do it until it pleases him to stop."
~The hands of the girls were inside of each-others zip front grey boiler suits and they sat in the blood from where Sonny’s face collided with the surface. The brunette had a finger smear of it next to her mouth.
“You two sluts put each other down and go tell Moira that Sonny’s done. I’m coming in, just got a little business to attend to first.”
As the two started to leave the big blond grabbed the shoulder of the red head and pulled her back.
“Not you Fire-Crotch, all this fucking blood has got me going.” She started to unbuckle the belt on her camouflage hot pants. “Down you go, bitch!”
~Short stories from the Most Depraved Writer in Print. Dark and twisted tales of exquisite violence, rough tricks, narcotics consumption, evil ghosts and drug-snuffling demons. Evil grandfathers and animal-human hybrid clones. Morbid serial killer stalking night darkened hallways of an unsuspecting hospital. Life underground following the frozen apocalypse. Tales of ancient blood-thirsty vampires and Roman decadence. Enjoy all of the hardcore, dystopic, viscerally violent stories. Not for easily offended mamby-pambies. Dark fiction at its finest.
~From Alex S. Johnson, the author of Bad Sunset, Wicked Candy and The Death Jazz, comes a new vision in Bizarro horror. Imagine a TROMA film on meth and acid, one part cyberpunk, one part Franz Kafka, and three parts frankly unsuitable for a sane audience. "Will make you feel as if you've just eaten 8 Percocets and washed 'em down with a bottle of moonshine," says Necro Stein of Texas Terror Entertainment.
~When the winds blew i felt them blowing through me, when the land shook, it was my corpus that trembled. When the tides ebbed and flowed I became more shore and more sea. I was day and night as the sun and moon described the steps of their dancing within me. Just as I could see all the world at once, I was all of these things at once, and the motion of an entire world formed the foundation of my stillness.
I’d travelled through the Sphere of Glammeth, descended through the Guardian, and then through the Grey-Man, fallen through a hole that pierced all the worlds.
~He had to have her the moment he saw her trachea ring. Six months later she was his lovely wife. He performed his duties as a husband and she as a wife. He tolerated a house filled with references to her late first husband and the children they had together. He put up with her prudish ways. He waited. He was patient. He planned. He was adaptable. He was rewarded over the course of a week in her basement. He turned his perverse sexual fantasies of worms and maggots and her lovely crusty trachea ring into a gruesome reality.
~A dirty shameful devil of a secret...
Something that two men share. A legacy that will shock you to your very core. One that is created not out of madness, but of the purest desire. Take a vivid journey into the mind of the killer and his biggest fan. Do you believe in evil? See the knife plunge. Lap at the wounds. Do you still? There is no rational meaning or pretty words that will hide away the darkness that the words of this found journal creates. Inside is the real truth. And it can set you free. Watch all you want. Taste what you dare not have.
~”The routine has this inherent tendency to perpetuate lies, and I speak only in thinly veiled euphemisms — hanging out with friends means going to the bar; being tired means too many sleepless nights on amphetamine; going grocery shopping means robbing Price Chopper blind; filling a prescription means visiting my dealer; going to the bank means pawning my possessions — but refer to them not as "lies;" rather, label them as weak excuses utilized to justify my erratic behaviours.
~I’m feeling down and dirty, feeling kind of mean, so I give those fans my middle finger. Those poor bastards go nuts. My team looks at me in awe. My coach frowns and the opposing one begins to furiously scratch out new plays. I see our opponents and I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards. Their fans can’t help them. Their coach can’t help them. I’m going to run them off their own track in front of their own fans and there is not one thing they can do about it.
~Humanity is the devil is a deconstructed nightmare mixing David Lynch and snuff movies. The plot revolves around a central character, Seth, who is set about a crusade against humanity which, for him, represents pure evil. Through random killings he and his cronies try to accelerate the end of the world, in order to provoke and defeat the Demiurge, the false God that is ruling the earth. As in Burroughs, logical language is replaced here with cut-scenes – sometimes to be taken literally – that plunge the reader into an extreme experience.
~”As a part-time hitman/ exterminator, Ignius Ellis's dream is to buy a candy-apple red Nova Supreme. In the process of trying to earn enough cash to make his dream come true he gets sucked into the rough world of Visitacion Valley, SF. When the tenants in his apartment complex reveal their various extracurricular activities this take an even more bizarre twist and Ellis soon becomes acquainted with the nightmarish Slave State dimension..."
~That's the last time she gets the bigger worm...
Once their flesh flakes away the angels collapse into puddles of hissing goop and withered petals blow into them hurried along by unseen winds. My spit looses its sweet taste to the black flavor of ash. The glowing birds in the bright orange sky burst into small sparkly novas. The sky itself weeps and tears, streaking down like a ruined painting as the dismal grey of life wheezes back before my eyes. I don't blink; praying silently for one last desperate sensation of the high. Lila feels it too. She writhes on the mattress next to me…
~Scary as ever.
He looked at her and grinned wickedly, the overcasting shadows of the outer corner of the stone wall, combined with the flickering light above them, created a deadly feature across the side of his face. He sees her lying helpless. He chuckled eerily, and instantly raised his hand. Her eyes widened to the sight of the gleaming sharp knife in his grasp. He even held it up for her to see it better.
She stared up at him and then to the knife, panting in fear. Her heart pounded throughout her body as he chuckled once more saying deeply,
“Oh excellent. I’ve found you . . .”
~Within these twisted and perverted pages, Johnson manages to demolish clichés with a jaded finesse that I've personally never encountered in written form. Another apparent talent is his effortless deconstruction of pop-culture allegories and references as found in his story "Vampussy." No one is safe or spared from his dagger sharp sarcasm and wit.
While not without its flaws, my appreciation for this kind of talent and voice is what made his writing so fun to read, even if he might possibly be out of his ever-loving mind.
~In Garrett Cook's Murderland serial killers are idolized by society. Their deeds are followed obsessively by television pundits and the adoring public. A subculture has grown up around this phenomena, called "Reap." Laws are created to allow this activity to flourish, including designated "safe zones' where killers can practice their trade without fear of persecution. Fans of the top rated serial killers celebrate each new kill on social media and television. Programs glorify their deeds.
The culture of Murderland is violent and mirrors our own violent society and its decadent obsessions.
~Born whole from the rectum of a dying patient, Morbid silently stalks the hospital's hallways, heinously dispatching the most helpless of patients and in the most painfully repulsive of manners. In the meantime, in order to pay for his family and home that includes his ghost step-father Sammy and his pet aborted fetus Chip, Westphal has to ingest mounds of dangerous narcotics to get through his night shifts. Barely hanging on to his Care Tech gig by his fingernails, the last thing Westphal needs is to be accused of Morbid's evil deeds. You, on the other hand, simply seek some solace from all Your diseases.
~It looks like Carolyn and Mark are in deep, deep shit... Mark and Carolyn live in an alternat
e 1989 where Ronald Reagan is on his fourth presidential term. The USA has a rigid, long-standing caste system and abortions were never made legal. Being homeless is a crime that is punishable by imprisonment in Tent City. Most of Mark's ER patients are inmates at this camp and are victims of a new disease dubbed: Transient Flu. This deadly and rapidly spreading disease mutates with each new host, collecting information, changing code. The disease evolves lightning quick, spreading like pond ripples…
~IMMANUEL THE CHRIST has some nerve. Jonah has already lost everyone he loves to Pilate the vampire and his Harbor drug violence. Jonah now trudges through his days staying as high on Plata as possible. He just wants to be left alone while he waits for his turn to die. The Christ has other plans for him. She sends Pedro, to assign Jonah to order the Herod to dismantle the Harbor's Plata trade. Jonah decides to run. But you can't run from God. As Jonah learns the hard way when the 'Edmund Fitzgerald' goes down in rough seas, with the reluctant prophet on board…
~Five Very Wicked Shorts. Brought to you with love and blood from The Grim Reverend Steven Rage, the 'Most Depraved Writer in Print'. ~
Through the sheer shock of his presentation, Rage forces readers to consider the alternatives, to look at the garbage in the streets, to see what is swept into the gutters at night right before all decent people awake to see another cleaned up version of the day. Depravity at its finest, but really the stories are loads of fun.
