Kzine Issue 11

by Graeme Hurry

  KZINE MAGAZINE

  Issue 11

  Edited by Graeme Hurry

  Kzine Issue 11 © January 2015 by Kimota Publishing

  cover © Dave Windett, 2015

  Editorial © Conrad Williams 2015

  Fighting Fair in Lobstertown © M. Bennardo, 2015

  Late Night Delivery © Jo McKee & Rik Hunik, 2015

  Leap of Faith © Maureen Bowden, 2015

  On Conti Street With the Kintner Dame © Katharine Coldiron, 2015

  So Long As You’re Free © Imogen Cassidy, 2015

  The Scramble © Damien Krsteski, 2015

  Western Style © Grady Yandell, 2015

  Leviathan © Simon Kewin, 2015

  All You Need Is Yesterday © Eamonn Murphy, 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder. For editorial content this is Graeme Hurry, for stories it is the individual author, for artwork it is the artist.

  CONTENTS

  Guest Editorial by Conrad Williams

  FIGHTING FAIR IN LOBSTERTOWN by M. Bennardo (7)

  LATE NIGHT DELIVERY by Jo McKee & Rik Hunik (10)

  LEAP OF FAITH by Maureen Bowden (2)

  ON CONTI STREET WITH THE KINTNER DAME by Katharine Coldiron (10)

  SO LONG AS YOU’RE FREE by Imogen Cassidy (8)

  THE SCRAMBLE by Damien Krsteski (11)

  WESTERN STYLE by Grady Yandell (11)

  LEVIATHAN by Simon Kewin (6)

  ALL YOU NEED IN YESTERDAY by Eamonn Murphy (10)

  Contributor Notes

  The number in brackets indicates the approximate printed page length of the story.

  GUEST EDITORIAL

  by Conrad Williams

  This time our guest editorial is by an award winning horror author who has just signed a contract with Titan Books for a trilogy of noir crime novels. As credentials as an editor he has edited an anthology of cowboy horror called Gutshot for PS Publishing.

  Graeme Hurry

  I retain a fondness for those small press booklets that swamped the horror scene in the late 80s and early 90s. I still own a big collection of them and the names from the past conjure up memories of great stories. You can’t shuffle through those A5 pamphlets without finding a Joel Lane or a Mike O’Driscoll or a DF Lewis or a Rick Cadger or a Simon Clark. I could go on. Some carved out careers in writing. Some disappeared from the scene. Some are sadly gone for good. Bloody good writers, all.

  Quite a few of these booklets were very ropy, the obvious result of late-night DIY sessions with the glue and staples. Some of them were well produced. Some of them even paid (just a little bit). I doubt any of them were achieved without a certain amount of love, though.

  The main recompense for a story back when I was starting out was two free copies of the zine. I was more than happy with that. I ‘sold’ my first short story, a tale called Dirty Water about the stinking canal at the foot of my road, to Liverpool-based Dark Dreams edited by Jeff Dempsey and David Cowperthwaite. I’m eternally grateful to them (wherever they are now) for setting me on my way.

  Kimota was a part of this happy stamping ground too. It’s always fun to write a short story, but it’s a special pleasure when you stumble upon a friendly, polite, knowledgeable editor and Graeme Hurry is all of these things. It’s great to see his Kimota retaining a presence in this digital age as Kzine, and an encouragement to anybody with that editing bug who wants to follow in the footsteps of the fans who slaved over their paperbound labours of love, 25 years ago.

  FIGHTING FAIR IN LOBSTERTOWN

  by M. Bennardo

  “Wham, bam!” said Joe, making shadow-boxing motions at the lobster on the other side of the glass. Somehow, by some trick of the glass, its face was huge. Every detail of its ugly mug was readily apparent— from the black pips of its lidless eyes to its waggling antennae to its constantly grinding mouth parts. The lobster drifted a little in the water, giving Joe what looked like the crustacean version of the stink-eye. “Let’s do another shot.”

  “Maybe we better sit down,” said Carl. “I think something’s about to happen.”

  “Oh yeah?” Joe looked around the bar. It was a seedy seaside joint, in a no-name town in the pine swamps of Maine, about as far from Columbia University as you could get. “Is that guy around?”

  “I don’t see him… But they’re flashing the lights.” Carl tugged on Joe’s sleeve, leading him back to the sticky little table where they’d been sitting. Joe immediately started tipping old beer bottles to see if there were any drinkable dregs left.

  Then somebody yanked the plug on the jukebox, unceremoniously stranding Jerry Lee Lewis in the middle of the high school bop, and a greasy-haired guy in a white tee and Levis got up in front of the lobster tank. “All right, all right,” he said, a wry smirk on his face. “Shut up, you animals.”

  A couple of other voices shouted “Shut up!” from the back. A chorus of secondary shushes erupted, and Carl realized that the joint had somehow gotten packed. There seemed to be hoods and bikers everywhere, with a few girls sprinkled among them. Invitation or not, Carl thought he’d have kept on driving if the place had looked like this when they first arrived.

  “All right,” said the greasy kid up front. “For those of you who don’t know me, you can call me Bone. I think this is the biggest crowd we’ve ever had up here. Which is groovy, because we got the biggest lobsters we’ve ever seen too.”

  At this, Bone rapped the lobster tank with his knuckles— and it was no ordinary tank. Instead, it was a huge enclosure with glass walls five feet high. The glass ran along the whole back of the bar, and the tank’s interior seemed to stretch back and away forever, as if it opened into the ocean itself.

  “What I don’t get,” whispered Joe, “is how they make the lobsters look so damned big. Do they curve the glass?” “And of course we’ve got some guests here tonight,” continued Bone. He took a drag on his cigarette while the rest of the hoods clapped and catcalled. Carl flushed bright pink under his collar. “Where you boys from?”

  “Columbia University!” shouted Joe.

  “On a road trip,” added Carl lamely.

  “Road trip in daddy’s car!” said Bone. “All the way from New York City. All right! How’d you hear about our little gathering up here?”

  “We gave a guy named Flipper a lift yesterday,” said Carl. “He invited us.”

  “Right on. Flipper’s a cool cat,” said Bone. He took another drag on his cigarette. “In fact, he’s up first.” At this, the crowd erupted in cheers and stomping feet. The hoods all stood up, and Joe got up and cheered along with them. Carl lurched to his feet, feeling out of place. A girl in a lavender scarf standing next to him looked over and laughed.

  “Hey, you look like you swallowed an egg,” she said. “They kid everybody here, but they’re just kooky. It’s no sweat, Clyde.”

  By now, Flipper had appeared and had his face up against the glass of the lobster tank. He was short, but powerfully built. He was stripped to the waist so his muscles showed sharply through his skin. Otherwise he had trunks on and a Bowie knife strapped to the small of his back, looking for all the world like a pearl diver.

  Meanwhile, the lobsters crowded around the glass in front of him, snapping their claws and grinding their mandibles, the tips of their legs tapping creepily against the glass. A moment later, Flipper pounded the g
lass with his fist and pointed into the tank, straight into the face of one of the lobsters. The other crustaceans all faded down into the sand at the bottom as the one he had pointed at crawled over their backs towards the front.

  The hoods went wild again as Flipper mounted to a platform above the tank. It was about twenty feet square, held up by thick pylons sunk down into the water of the tank. Lobsters soon crowded around its edges, as the one that Flipper had picked began to crawl up a ramp to the platform itself. As the lobster broke the surface of the water, Carl suddenly understood the true optical effect of the tank’s glass walls.

  The tank made the lobsters look smaller than they really were.

  “Holy cow,” said Carl as he watched the lobster emerge.

  “Flipper never lets us down,” said the girl in the lavender scarf. “You don’t go home hungry when he’s on the bill!”

  Carl was mesmerized by the sight of the lobster dragging itself up to the platform. First came the antennae. The lobster’s forward progress halted a moment while the tips danced curiously through the air, as if reading the room for signs of ambush. But soon, it was crawling again.

  Next came the out-thrust claws, blue-grey and magnificent. Each claw was about three feet long, and they snipped the air aggressively, sending sprays of water droplets out into the crowd. Carl wiped the briny water from his own face.

  Finally, the lobster hauled the rest of its body up to the platform. It dragged itself forward on pair after pair of pointed, jointed, clicking legs. Every part of its carapace glistened under the stage lights. Even through the clouds of cigarette smoke, Carl could see every line and edge of the lobster’s body defined by moist reflections.

  At last, the final segments of the lobster’s tail were hauled up onto the platform, and it stood face to face with Flipper. Its body was fully five feet long, not counting the claws, and it must have weighed hundreds of pounds. Yet Flipper didn’t seem fazed at all. He just stood on the platform waiting for the lobster, hands on his hips and a can-you-believe-this grin on his face.

  Then the lobster suddenly surged forward, its claws snapping wildly in the air. Flipper bounded backwards, his arms raised in a show-off stance. Gathering itself together, the lobster next curled its tail, pushing the front of its body up as high as it could go, lifting its claws over its head. Then, scurrying forward, it swung one claw in a slashing motion like a cudgel, while it aimed a snap with the other at Flipper’s midsection.

  Ducking and dodging, Flipper slipped easily under the claws and came up close to the face of the lobster. Sliding his knife out of its sheath, he brought it up along with his body in one fluid motion, burying it deep in the face of the lobster while he wrapped his other arm tight around the beast’s head, hugging and holding himself close, too close for the claws to reach him.

  The lobster tensed, and then collapsed, its legs whirling frantically in reverse but unable to overcome Flipper’s weight. Blue-green blood poured out onto the platform floor and dribbled down into the water below. The lobsters still in the tank thrashed, but the outcome was already decided. Moments later, they had dispersed back to the corners of the tank while a clean-up crew pushed the still quivering carcass onto a handcart and toted it off to the back of the bar.

  Half an hour later, Carl was still in shock. He kept looking back at the tank. He couldn’t get over the idea that every single lobster in there was as big as the one that Flipper had fought. And it had seemed to know what it was doing— that thing had seemed intelligent.

  Joe had no such qualms. “Don’t you see, man,” he said. “You don’t just choose the lobster in this joint— you gotta fight it too. It’s beautiful!”

  “You got it,” said the girl in the lavender scarf. “We give it a chance to defend itself. Down here in Lobstertown, we always fight fair.”

  At that, the door to the back of the bar burst open and Bone jumped out. “Two hundred and twenty-six pounds!” he crowed. As the bar erupted into cheers and whoops, the lobster itself was wheeled out on another handcart— now was bright red and steaming furiously at every joint.

  “Look, let’s call it a night,” said Carl.

  “No way.” Joe brushed away Carl’s hand. “They’re just getting started! I want to see the rest of the fights.”

  There was a loud crack as a couple of hoods started sawing through the cooked lobster’s shell. Droplets beaded on their faces as clouds of steam billowed out of the insides. Then they were slicing huge hunks of flaky white meat out of the body, serving it up with long forks and knives.

  “How about it?” asked Bone, sliding a heaping plate in front of Carl and Joe. “You can’t come all the way to Maine from New York City without trying the lobster!”

  Carl sealed his lips and shook his head feebly, but Joe lustily forked a piece of lobster meat.

  “No thanks,” mumbled Carl. He couldn’t shake the idea that this had been an intelligent creature. It wasn’t cannibalism exactly— but still, the idea of eating something else with that much smarts made him sick. It seemed even worse than the idea of eating a dog or a horse.

  Finally Carl mumbled a lie about being allergic to shellfish, and eventually everybody drifted away.

  “You’re basically eating a person, you know,” hissed Carl when he and Joe were alone again.

  Joe just shrugged. “Not eating isn’t going to bring it back to life.” He motioned over to the lobster tank. “And besides, they’re eating it too.”

  Sure enough, a few of the hoods were dumping leftover bits of the carcass into the tank and the other lobsters were picking it clear. Carl shuddered.

  “I really think we ought to get out of here.”

  “We can’t leave yet!”

  “That’s right,” said a voice behind them. Carl turned and saw Flipper there, wearing fresh clothes but still smiling that winning smile. The sight of him should have been comforting, but somehow Carl felt uneasy. He was painfully aware how many people were in the bar and how easily they could be stopped from leaving.

  “Why not?” Carl asked.

  “Because,” said Flipper, “the lobsters just announced that they’ve picked you.”

  It took a few minutes for Flipper to explain the situation to Joe, but Carl got the picture immediately. He lowered his head to the table and tried to keep from throwing up. It was certainly a fair arrangement— Carl had to admit that. But it would have been nice if somebody had mentioned this at the door.

  “Well, which one of us?” Joe was asking.

  “Those claws aren’t exactly fine-tuned pointing devices,” said Flipper. “They usually settle for anybody at the table. But in this case, since you were the only one eating the lobster, it has to be you.”

  Carl glanced up at that. He’d been right not to eat the food, after all, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

  “And,” stammered Joe, “which one of them?”

  Flipper pointed out an especially big and mean-looking lobster that was glaring at them with one beady eye from within the tank. It was the same one that had given Joe the stink-eye earlier. “Oh, brother,” gurgled Joe. He followed that by returning the majority of his dinner back to the plate it had come from.

  “He’ll get slaughtered,” said Carl. “He’s drunk— he doesn’t know how to fight. It’s murder!”

  “No, man,” said the girl in the lavender scarf. “It’s just fair. We get a pick, they get a pick. That’s how it goes.”

  “They usually pick somebody who’s never been here before,” said Flipper. “If I were a lobster, I’d do it different. Let you go back to New York and tell all your college friends about your wild night, and then wait for a few carloads more to come out… That’d be a feast worth having! But those ugly mugs aren’t quite that smart.”

  Two hoods put their hands on Joe’s shoulders and started lifting him out of his chair. “Come on, Clyde,” they said. “Can’t keep them waiting.”

  Carl was certain that this whole thing had been a set-up— that Flipp
er had only invited them because they wanted fresh meat to serve up to the lobsters. But what could he do about it now? There weren’t any cops around, or even anybody else they could count on. There was just him and Joe.

  Over in the tank, the massive lobster had begun its slow ascent up the ramp to the platform. It was bigger— much bigger— than the other one, its claws and carapace tinged with white. It climbed with dreadful, menacing purpose, while the other lobsters scurried back and forth in a frenzy under the platform. They were eager. They were excited. They knew this time who would win.

  Suddenly, Carl stood up and stepped to the next table. He scooped up a big piece of lobster meat off somebody’s plate and took a deliberate bite. His head was pounding and his heart was racing, but he knew what he was doing. “Let me do it instead,” he said.

  Bone and Flipper looked at him in surprise. “Hey, man,” said Bone, “that’s incredible. That’s a wild thing to do, but it’s suicide.”

  “I’m sober,” said Carl. He slipped his shirt over his head. “I was All-State in wrestling three years in a row. Joe doesn’t stand a chance, but I can take that thing.”

  Flipper and Bone looked at each other skeptically, then simply shrugged. Bone looked especially amused.

  “Okay, kid, it’s all the same to me. But if you really want to take that monster on, you better not try to pin him.” Flipper unhooked the knife sheath from his belt and passed it to Carl. “You’d better use this instead.”

  “Carl, no…” whimpered Joe.

  But Carl pushed Joe aside, shaking his head. “I can do this.” He nodded to Bone. He was ready.

  Then suddenly the girl in the lavender scarf rushed forward and grasped Carl by the face. Planting her lips on his, she seemed to be trying to drink his soul through his mouth. At last, when the kiss ended, she looked up at him with dark brown eyes and panted, “Wow! I never kissed a dead boy before.”

  Carl’s stomach did about fifty somersaults on the way up to the platform. It didn’t help to see all the other lobsters crowded around, lifting and snapping their claws below. And they were big claws. He hadn’t really realized how big before, but he could imagine losing an arm or a leg in any of them.