Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  “Your arm,” she repeated, and I straightened my elbow.

  Her sponsor Stacey wrapped her cold fingers around my wrist, and Tara aimed the tip of the needle into my blue vein. The syringe was cocked and loaded.

  “Fentanyl. Say goodbye.”

  “Sweet-Pea,” I whispered again.

  I felt the snakebite puncture my veins. The metallic burn stung, but it felt so true, and my veins filled with the thick venom of all her anger and rage. The last thing I saw were her kaleidoscope eyes before my lungs slowed and my vision went black. My overdosed body would never make it to the hospital, not even for a dump and run.

  Without that, I was certain to die, but my baby-girl was clean.

  My baby-girl was clean.

  About the Author

  Mark Matthews is a graduate of the University of Michigan and is a licensed professional counselor. He is the author of On the Lips of Children, Milk-Blood, and All Smoke Rises. (Jervis Samsa from Garden of Fiends lives on in Milk-Blood and All Smoke Rises.) He’s an active member of the Horror Writer’s Association and lives near Detroit with his wife and two daughters. Reach him at WickedRunPress@gmail.com

  FIRST, BITE JUST A FINGER

  (flash fiction)

  by

  Johann Thorsson

  Julia tried it for the first time in a party uptown, a party she only went to because her friend, that friend, the one who knows all the cool people, convinced her to come. Which is how, at the unwinding of the party with the buzz wearing off and after the first stifled yawn, someone suggested everyone try this thing they had heard of.

  He, the handsome guy with the receding hairline, started them off by biting the front of his right pinky clean off. Julia laughed nervously at the neat party-trick and wondered where the blood was coming from, since surely he didn't just actually bite off part of his finger.

  “Not that again, Toussaint,” someone said, and Julia realized that in addition to the bright eyes and the receding hairline, the handsome guy who was sucking blood from the end of his right pinky was missing the tip of his left one as well. Toussaint's eyes rolled back into his head and he let out a deep long sigh and bent his knees a little.

  * * *

  Monday and then suddenly it was Tuesday and she was calling her mother and then felt bad about herself, about a stagnant career and no baby to post photos of on the internet. Wednesday and she had lunch with that friend and they talk about Toussaint and that trick with the finger and how apparently it was a thing now. The new drug. As her friend stuck her fork into the steak she had ordered Julia noticed that her left ring finger was a stub.

  That evening she stood naked in front of the wall-to-ceiling mirror that totally tied the apartment together and she thought about weight she recently gained and what the chances were of getting married at thirty-nine and then she was biting down on her pinky, biting hard and it hurt and the bone grated against her teeth but suddenly with a snap! it was off.

  She rolled it around on her tongue and felt a single heartbeat of pain in her finger but then her mind flushed with ecstasy and she was standing on her toes, arching her back and there was a tingle there and she sucked the blood and was reminded of something and the tingle went on and she had to finish herself, by herself.

  It was the best she felt in years, physically and emotionally, and all it cost was the little front part of a finger she didn't even really use. She got looks at work, glances at a bandaged little finger, but they were sympathetic and she liked it and didn't explain. The day went by a little brighter than the others and once she got home she undressed and did it again.

  Julia called in sick to work. She had decided to never do it again, that it was madness, but she felt dizzy and afraid of the shadows. By Sunday Julia was pacing around her apartment, jumping at the phone as it rang but not answering. She needed to eat but all she wanted was her own flesh and in the end she gave in, but clever: she took a knife to her smallest toe (couldn't reach it with her teeth) and cut it off with a quick stab and then in it went.

  Euphoria.

  She could quit if she wanted to and she did, and went until Thursday evening, until the rest of the toes of the left foot, all of them, had been severed and chewed and rolled around in the mouth and oh! the taste and the surge of pleasure rushing through her, seeking out all nerve endings and setting them alight with joy and a numb pain that followed but was quickly forgotten.

  She could quit if she wanted to, really.

  Her friend, that friend, came over and drew the curtains back and let in a little sunlight and air.

  “Julia,” she said. “What the hell are you doing to yourself?”

  “Nothing,” Julia said. “I can quit if I want. And anyway this is your fault, you took me to that party.”

  “Julia,” she said, an unexpected actual sense of caring in her voice. “That was just a stupid boy doing a stupid thing.”

  Julia shouted at her and she left, and then she felt sorry for herself.

  She ate her left foot up to the knee, and spent a glorious weekend basking in the joy it brought. She didn't need the foot to walk; she floated through the apartment, and the phone was ringing somewhere in the background but there were just so many new avenues of joy to travel that she didn't care. Her friends cared, and her family, but Julia told them to leave her alone, she was fine. Besides, she could quit anytime she wanted.

  She ate her back, bit by bit, but it all went down and she put on a cape to cover what was missing. A superhero now, our Julia.

  Julia stood in front of a mirror and instead of seeing all the parts of herself that were missing all she saw was what was left but she stopped for a while and she tried normal food but it was bland and didn't sit well in her bowels. She went back to work, on crutches, wearing a cape but they looked at her and she heard what they said behind her (not)back. She got in a fight with her boss and went back home. They didn't understand, no one understood

  She could quit if she wanted to but she didn't want to, not really, and then her legs were both gone and she was smiling by herself in the darkness.

  But she could quit anytime she wanted.

  Just one. More. Bite.

  Her friend, that friend, came by later, finding nothing of Julia but lips, bent back in a smile.

  About the Author

  Johann Thorsson is an Icelandic writer whose short stories have appeared in publications both in Icelandic and English. He spent much of his youth in the finest American schools in the Middle East and Eastern Europe but now lives in Reykjavik with his wife, two kids and ever-decreasing space on his bookshelves.

  LAST CALL

  by

  John FD Taff

  Ted was so nervous about that evening's AA meeting that he'd gone out and had a drink or two.

  Maybe three… He couldn't be sure.

  He'd left the group he'd been with for months after showing up drunk repeatedly. There'd been heartfelt talks, interventions, angry confrontations. They were all like that at first; indulgent of an occasional slip off the wagon, ready to hoist him back on and ride with him through the next bump.

  But they always caught on.

  Then, Ted had to find another group.

  Those drinks—did he really have four? There was no way he was going to be able to speak tonight. Best to go home, feign illness.

  There were few people to see him stumble from the church basement into the twilit parking lot.

  Just as he got to his car, though, a beefy hand fell on his shoulder.

  “Leaving, Ted?” asked his sponsor, Sam, an insurance salesman and a big, solid wall of a man.

  Ted turned, unsteady on his feet.

  “Ted,” Sam hissed through his teeth, grabbing him by his damp, wrinkled lapels.

  Ted went limp, his eyes focusing on the chunky Million Dollar Round Table ring Sam wore on his right pinkie. He imagined its diamond-faceted sparkles furrowing his cheek under the weight of Sam's fist.

  But nothing came. No crunching blow,
no explosion of light.

  “You’re drunk, you dumb bastard! I don't know what to do with you anymore.”

  “I don't know either,” whispered Ted.

  “You wanna die, Ted?” he yelled, shaking Ted's limp body. “Because, it's killing me to watch you.”

  “I'm sorry, Sam,” Ted said, feeling color rise to his cheeks. “I didn't mean to...”

  “Aww, stuff it. I've heard all that shit a thousand times—said most of it myself.”

  Sam sighed, as if he were going to do something he already regretted. Digging within his jacket, he pulled out a tattered business card, handed it to Ted.

  Ted had a hard time focusing. “What's this?”

  “It might be the only thing left to help you. Go ask the shopkeeper for the... the last bottle you'll ever need,” Sam whispered, looking at his feet.

  “You want me to buy liquor?”

  “Damn it, for once just do something I suggest!” shouted Sam. “You have no idea how hard this is...to send you there. I'll go back in the meeting and tell 'em you're sick. I'll call a cab to pick you up at that gas station down the street.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “I don't want your thanks. You've forced me into a helluva decision here. Just remember what you've got there is a last chance. A shortcut.”

  Sam turned and shuffled toward the building's entrance.

  Ted stood shakily, smoothed his suit.

  “Oh, and Ted?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This really is your last chance.”

  Sam drew the door open and disappeared into the yellow light of the church.

  * * *

  The shop was in a nondescript part of town, the kind of area that progress had passed and not looked back. A neon sign was propped in its gray-streaked window.

  Liquor, Liquor, it flashed.

  The door opened—not surprising Ted that a liquor store would be open first thing in the morning—and a little bell jingled as he stepped inside.

  The store had a musty, ancient atmosphere; the smell of dust, old wood and stale beer. The sunlight, yellowed by its journey through the grimy window, fell into the store in a fat shaft of dancing dust. The floor's faded, speckled linoleum, worn through here and there, testified to the great number of feet that had stumbled and lurched across it over the years.

  The rest of the store was a carnival of colors.

  Every wall, every nook and cranny, was stacked with bottles of alcohol. Endless shelves held bottles of every shape, from elegantly tapered bottles of imported red wines to the short, squat bottles of amber amaretto; from the crystalline row of vodkas to bottles that held thick, green and sea-blue liquids.

  The haggard, jaundiced sunlight fell onto these bottles and was rejuvenated, sparkling and reflecting from them as if they were precious jewels.

  A man came through a rickety, splintered door marked “Employees Only” carrying an open cardboard box. Ted recognized the pink paper tax seals applied over the caps of the bottles, the sound the bottles made clinking amiably.

  Though his head pounded and his gut ached, Ted felt a familiar fire smolder within his blood. He could see the cold ashes of that same fire had once burned in this man, too.

  “Morning,” the shopkeeper grunted, setting the box down heavily with a disturbing clatter from its contents. He was neatly dressed, clean cut and of an indeterminate age. He wiped a dusty hand on his pants and offered it to Ted.

  Ted shook it. “Good morning.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Ted handed him the card.

  “Well, I was referred here by...”

  “You're an alcoholic, like me,” the man said.

  “Well...uhh, yes…and my sponsor told me to come here and see you,” stammered Ted, feeling like a teenager on a beer run.

  “Did he?” asked the shopkeeper, walking behind the cluttered counter and taking a seat.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” snorted the man, tapping the card on the counter and staring at Ted. “What else did he say?”

  Ted's memory of the evening was a trifle hazy, and it took a minute to remember if Sam had said anything more, and if so, exactly what it was.

  “Uhh, yeah, yeah, he did. He said to ask you for…the last bottle I'll ever need.”

  Silence.

  “Sounds sort of ominous, huh?” laughed Ted.

  “You don't know how ominous,” the man said, ripping the card in half and tossing the pieces aside. He stood, sidled around the counter, walked to the box he'd set down earlier and extracted two bottles. He cleared a space on one of the endless shelves and began stocking it.

  “Have you decided whether you want to live or die?” he asked without turning.

  “What?”

  “Because that's what it comes down to. Living without alcohol or dying with it. It's that simple.” He turned on Ted. “Are you married? Children?”

  “No and no. And I don't see what that has to do with...”

  “Well, of course not. If you understood, you wouldn't be here. You'd be sober, going to meetings. Going to any lengths to stay sober. But instead, you're here, and you've got to know what that means.”

  “I don't know what it means or what you mean, for that matter,” snapped Ted, beginning to feel the need for a few aspirin and a vodka.

  “You're here to get sober.”

  “In a liquor store?” snorted Ted. “If that's all it took, I should've been sober years ago.”

  The shopkeeper shook his head wearily, disappeared into the backroom without a word. He was gone a few minutes, and Ted considered leaving. Just as he was about to, the man returned cradling a bottle in his arms like a baby. He set the bottle down, wiped it with a rag from his back pocket.

  “Your shortcut.”

  The unlabeled bottle held a liquid so clear it seemed empty. Sunlight sparkled blue-silver on its thick, heavy glass, reflected by the cool mirror of the liquid.

  “My shortcut?” Ted whispered, staring at the bottle.

  “You must be messed up enough—or have someone who cares about you enough—to take a chance. But man, it's a helluva chance. You asked for the last bottle you'll ever need,” said the shopkeeper gesturing toward the bottle.

  “When you decide to get sober for good, you drink from this bottle. When you do, it drinks from you, too. It drinks your disease. You'll be able to see it in the bottle, a layer of thick, black liquid. Every time you drink, the black layer grows. When you finish the bottle, it'll be filled with the black stuff—your alcoholism.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” scoffed Ted, reaching out and taking hold of the bottle. “I'm gonna be cured by drinking a fifth?”

  “Cured?” snorted the shopkeeper. “No. Better, maybe.”

  “What happens if I keep drinking after that?” asked Ted, rolling the heavy bottle in his hand.

  “You won't want to. But once you make the decision to be sober, you'd better be sure. Because if you drink after draining this bottle, your disease comes back...stronger.”

  “If this is so easy, why doesn't everyone do it? What's the catch?”

  “The same as with any shortcut. They may get you there faster, but not necessarily to anyplace you want to be. Sometimes it's better to go the long way. Even though it may be harder, you know exactly where you are, where you're going.”

  “How much?”

  “Free. All I ask is that you understand the choice you're making. It's the most dangerous bottle in here.”

  “I'll take it,” Ted said.

  “Fine,” replied the shopkeeper. “Do you want a bag for that?”

  * * *

  Ted carried the bottle home, concealing it as if it were, indeed, worse than the alcohol he usually carried openly.

  He set it onto the wet bar in his neat and spacious apartment, poured himself a scotch and water, flopped into his leather recliner and stared over the lip of his highball glass at the bottle.

  It was not an unusual bottle, and Ted began
to feel silly about what had transpired that morning.

  A bottle was not going to cure him of his alcoholism.

  But maybe—just maybe—it really was a cure. A real way for Ted to get better, whatever that meant.

  That scared him.

  The rest of the scotch and water flowed down his throat smoothly, and he poured another—without the water.

  If it was a cure, it could turn his entire world on its ear. His life might have been a blurry, lonely and unappealing one, but it was his. It was as comfortable and worn as an old shirt, tattered and in need of a serious laundering, but safe and familiar.

  In a life devoid, for the most part, of happiness and laughter, friends and lovers, dreams and feelings, his alcoholism was all these things to him and more.

  He was not sure how to live his life without it.

  Not sure he wanted to learn.

  * * *

  Ted floated through the next several days as he always did—liquor to work to liquor to home to liquor to bed—without touching the mysterious bottle.

  Each night, having nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to meet, he sat with that evening's drink of choice and stared at the bottle, as if waiting for it to do something.

  Each night, he sank deeper and deeper into depression.

  Ted had never been a social drinker, always a private, furtive alcoholic. When he drank, he drank alone, even at a bar or a restaurant.

  He realized that the AA meetings provided him with much-needed social contact—an outlet that neither his work nor even his alcohol provided him.

  And he missed that.

  Missed it more than he ever thought possible.

  Three evenings after his visit to the strange liquor store, he could take the loneliness no more.

  Tottering from his easy chair, he grabbed the smooth, cool bottle, and twisted the cap off. He noticed, even in his stupor, that there was no pink tax band to break.