The Mustache Factor

Business As Usual

2012-02-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

By Robert Mynatt

You go into the office with anal beads, you know, shoved up there. Someone starts talking about spread sheets, then quotas to be met next quarter, then what the color for the company's summer picnic invitations should be, then an argumentative, point-by-point run down of the marketing advantages of using this software over another, all of which you're drowning out because there are anal beads shoved up your ass and the only thing you can think of is a). does anybody notice you squirming in your seat and b). would Joelle from accounting date a guy who recreationally shoves anal beads up his ass. It's a microscopic feeling, in which you become suddenly more aware during business meetings.

        But I mostly use anal beads as a way to keep myself awake in the 9-to-5 after long nights of speculating investments, i.e. a promiscuous and, I believe, precocious love life, and leveraging resources, i.e. drinking enough to ensure my liver won't recover for at least several years. I came into work one too many times late, tired, sore, or all of the above, and my boss has yet to see the advantages of his employees climbing the social ladder at clubs and bars, but I think he'll come around. 

         One morning, after a night of after-hour accrued collateral interest, I went to take my standard five-hour energy shot when all of a sudden this naked Korean investor in my bed says, 'Those are so unhealthy for you. You might as well just stick anal beads up your rectum to stay awake.' I know she meant it as a joke, but I thought it might be a sign to experiment with my portfolio in expanding methods to wake me up.

          So she hands me this string of what I imagine is a five-foot-long, neon-blue, polyurethane anal beads, which I promptly used to shove up my sphincter. Before you know it, I'm wide awake and bushy tail, ready for the most brutal and bloody hostile corporate takeovers. 

         I must warn you, for those who might want to try it, there will be a little bit of blood, you know, the first time. Real standard, nothing to go to the doctor or anything serious like. The blood goes away after awhile; you just need to optimize your seating position and adapt. Trust me, there are probably only five different positions you can put your buttocks in without those anal beads irritating the shit (literally) right out of you. 

          The only down side is that each time you put the beads up there, well, it expands your rectum, and eventually it doesn't keep you awake. No, you have to keep increasing the size for optimal efficiency. I've acquired a tolerance to the anal beads. I can no longer stay awake at the office without anal beads, but I think I've gotten to the point where regular beads just don't work anymore. I've had to upgrade about five times, and now I use beads that are almost as big as the circumference of the rim of a coffee mug.

I read an article about goldfish being able to survive in the anus of sturgeons for five weeks, so I think I might go to the pet store and buy me one. I'll let you know how it goes.

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Bio: Robert is a college student. His friends nicknamed him Mumbles because he never learned how to annunciate.

Rag Tavern

2012-02-13T01:45:00.000-08:00

By Andy Griesenauer

NO SMOKING.

Their pores reeked of stale misfits. Little mind is paid to how they arrived there or why they stood there. Yet they huddled in masse, leaning into each other’s silences, a give and take of thought and hunger.

One broke away and moved left. It was unannounced and uncelebrated, a movement equally calculated and shadowed. Before One, a long, concrete portal shot straight ahead, inviting a restless corpse to lay its body down and sleep for a while. One had nothing but time.

Simple sleep is always the best sleep. One ducked around inside for a while, searching for a place to hang One’s head. Behind Door #1: Endless blue. Where the ocean ended and the sky began was up to the discretion of the viewer. Splashes of wind tussled greens rocked rhythmically on the sands of time. Behind Door #2: forks, spoons, knives. A doorknob being twisted at 5:10 p.m. The thuds of footsteps from above and around. The sink is claustrophobic. “Honey, did you bring the chicken?”

One walks towards that with color. The door opens and the scene turns to black.

Two witnesses the peril of One and offers advice. One has become Two. Two sits up and moves somewhere new, a place where eyes are blinded and recall nothing being seen. This has also been referred to as heaven.

Sidewalks lead to another door. A sign above:

The Time is Now

Tick-tock. Tock-tick. Tick-tick. Tock-tock. Bong. Back and forth, sideways swaying, the walls are lined with clocks and numbers. Was Two supposed to be somewhere? Some of the big hands move faster than the small hands. That one over there is screaming 4. But his sister over there is chiming 1. Was Two supposed to be somewhere?

It led to a headache. A pounding distortion. An overwhelming annoyance that assaulted the senses and threatened well-being. Two must escape and find shelter.

“Four!” Getaways are all the style.

Four ran toward some place heard about in tales from late nights. Wishing well. Drop a coin in, pull a hope out. Thank you for your transaction. Four to a corner of a circle. Necks craned down into the vast abyss. It has been minutes waiting for a sound, a “clink”, a confirmation.

Four decides to make some noise. “HELLO!” “CAN YOU HEAR?”

S I L E N C E

But the fog began rising, crawling upward, framed by the chute. Four moved its head up, turning away from the smoke, seeking anything but betrayal from the star splattered sky. But no march could beat away the intoxication. Four fell asleep on the ground.

Four awoke to a Thousand. A Thousand met a Million. A Million was frightened to look. They all looked the same. Mirrors. Everywhere. Walls. Ceiling. Floors. “I’m scared!” “Help!”

A cry in unison. A great division. You’ve heard it before, right?

“we are all one”

Their pores reeked of stale misfits.

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BIO: Andy Griesenauer is currently a student at the University of Missouri. He can usually be found buried beneath a pile of words. Or at Jack in the Box.

Sour Pinch Of Summer

2012-02-12T16:41:00.000-08:00

By Jamie Grefe

Floyd and I had unloaded the last of the furniture from the van into the garage, thirsty . . . oblivious. The returned tables, lamps, and chairs were stacked in the far corner, right where she had told us to put them. There was a door in there, led inside. I grabbed the key from under the mat, where she told us it would be. We were itching for that complimentary drink. It wasn’t everyday that you could enter your boss’s home when she wasn’t there.

“Freshly squeezed lemonade in the fridge, boys,” she had told us, “help yourselves when you’re through with the load.”

It was a beautiful house, clean, but stunk--sour milk or bad eggs. We should have turned back right then and there. How were we to know, though?

“Probably the old hag’s dirty laundry,” Floyd said. “That or her leftovers.”

“I hope it’s not her lemonade.”

Down the hall was the kitchen. All of the cupboards were white. I grabbed two plastic cups from the dish rack by the sink, Floyd went to the refrigerator for the lemonade pitcher. The refrigerator door opened. Floyd must have swung it wide on his way down. Just like that, he was skittering backward on his elbows, pushing away, and pointing at the fridge.

That’s when I saw it, too--can almost still see it now.

It was a fleshy ball of earlobes, eyelids, puckered lips, and fingers all blotched together in a ball. The fingers, thin and pink, curled down, dangled from the middle rack, each one tipped by a clear, sharp nail. The thing huffed slow like it was sleeping or something. Eyes shot open.

“What the--,” but Floyd would never finish that question. It happened quick. I dropped the blue cups to the floor, heard them bounce, skid around my feet. The thing was chomping on Floyd’s face, gnawing, digging into him, while his whole body shook and writhed. It was snarling, biting . . . and those nails . . . I couldn't help it, started to cry.

I grabbed a kitchen knife from the dish rack. Flustered, didn’t know what to do, threw myself on top of Floyd, shut my eyes and let my arms go to work, stabbing up and down, harder . . . harder. When I snapped out of it, the only thing I could see was the knife sticking out of Floyd’s mangled face. What was left of his face was broken with bloody holes, torn skin, flesh-puddle of goop. The thing was gone.

I scrambled to my feet, and there it was--the other one.

I felt lunch lurch up my throat, took steps back, skin prickling. The thing was seven or eight times the size of what was in the fridge. It was ambling down the hall, a flabby mass of plump toes, a giant blob of fat, covered in curly brown hair. Some kind of wild animal, I thought, or worse.

My back slammed into the open fridge, must have bumped that lemonade pitcher too hard. It slipped down beside me and spilled all over the floor. I couldn't stop screaming, gripped the knife like a sword. The hairy thing pounced almost all of it’s body on Floyd’s chest--those toes, hair like fuzzy feelers, sniffing at his remains. Then it came out of his mouth.

Three long fingers rose from Floyd’s open mouth. The little thing had been rooting around inside his skull. That heap of earlobes, lips, eyes, and fingers, slid up, stretching and ripping open the lower part of his face, and stared at me with all those eyes blinking fast. I wanted out, imagined running right past. But, just as I was about to dash, a strange miracle of sorts happened.

See, that lemonade had been making its way across the kitchen tiles and just made it to the tip of one of the fat one’s hairy toes that still touched the ground. With that little brush, as liquid hit skin, I heard a squeal like the shriek of a pig.

It was the lemonade.

Toes twitched, hair stiffened. The big thing tried to scuttle backwards, away from the liquid, tried to balance itself atop Floyd’s body, was too clumsy. I reached down, picked up one of those plastic cups, threw, and knocked it right in the middle, or thereabouts. The thing tottered, slipped, and fell right smack into the spilled lemonade. When that thing hit the lemonade, it began to bubble, the rank odor tripling in stench, hit me hard. Puke flew out of my mouth. Under all that hair, I saw fleshy bubbles form and pop, fizz and pop. Something was happening. It was swelling, was gonna burst. I heard the little one start to make the most awful weeping sound. It’s eyes turned to me, sets of lips parted to reveal sharp white teeth, and it flew up. I stuck my arm out and watched it dive right into the outstretched blade. I spun, rammed the thing into the open fridge, slammed the door to muffled squeals.

I bolted, ran back down that hall, out into the garage, into the van. I just sat there for a second, trying to breathe, trying to wonder what had happened, just rocking back and forth. I thought I heard something explode, splat from inside the house. Didn’t matter. Floyd was gone.

When I told them, they ridiculed my delirious imagination, even tried to pin the disappearance of Floyd on me. His parents left town two months later after the tabloids picked up on the story. People in suits kept me under watch for a while. I told them all what I saw, took a lie detector test. I told them about the lips and toes, about Floyd, the knife, and about the lemonade, how it saved me. They never found Floyd’s body or any trace of those things. There never was a crate, they told me. My boss, a pillar of the community, denied everything.

I ran away two months after that, without Floyd.

It was summer.

_____________________________________________

Jamie Grefe lives and works in Beijing, China where he clutches his Craven A tin with a grip of steel. His written work can be found here: http://shreddedmaps.tumblr.com

Proud To Be An Amerikkkkan

2012-02-08T17:05:00.000-08:00

BY Douglas Hackle

Hey, duuude. Now listen to this shit.

I was in my kitchen not too long ago when I noticed a mosquito sitting on the windowsill above the sink.

Its dick was bigger than mine.

You might think I’m cracking a joke, one where I make fun of my own penis size, but that’s not the case. Au contraire, mon frère. In fact, I possess a respectable four inches of limp whitesnake that nearly doubles in length when fully erectified. Not to be a braggart, but I’ve been known to make a few toes curl in my day—know what I mean, big boss? My dick also boasts a retarded Yosemite Sam tattoo that I thought was cool seven years ago. Ah, the folly of youth—know what I'm sayin', big bosserino?

But I digress.

So this tiny little mosquito was on the windowsill in my kitchen rocking a twelve-inch pecker. Thick as a beer can this unwieldy phallus was—even in its state of flaccidity—sitting there up on the windowsill like a hot apple pie that had been set out to cool. I was standing several feet away from the sink when I first noticed the thing. I naturally assumed it had been severed from a man, that the mosquito I observed sitting near its base had landed on the penis, was not in fact attached to the penis, was most likely sucking its bloody breakfast from the penis. But upon closer inspection, I beheld with amazement that the bug was connected at its segmented abdomen to the cock—that the organ was indeed the mosquito’s very own natural appendage.

Lucky for me, not only was I gayer than a rainbow over the San Francisco Bay, not only was I single, but just last year Ohio’s state legislature passed an amended version of the State Marriage Equality Act that finally recognized same-sex marriages between humans and insects. Opposite-sex marriages between humans and insects had already been legal for several years now.

At the time I noticed that big-dicked mosquito on my windowsill, I was a widower. Prior to coming out of the closet a couple months ago, I had been married to a female mayfly. She was a species of mayfly that had a normal life expectancy of approximately seven hours. Our marital bliss lasted for about five. During that time, as a result of my repressed homosexuality, I was not at all happy. That poor female mayfly—she never knew the truth about me.

But I’m not in the closet anymore—thank you very much, mam.

That little mosquito with the gimungous rod that was sitting on my kitchen windowsill that morning—I married him, goshdarnit!

And a fit little fellow he turned out to be. My nameless mosquito husband actually ended up living three days longer than the average, post-larval lifespan of his species, which was seven days. During those ten, all-too-brief, hot, steamy, unforgettable days we had together, I was my husband’s obedient, submissive, shameless, pillow-biting, little bitchslave until the very moment he died inside me.

Oh, by the way: while I have your attention I’d like to state for the record that I’m proud to be an Amerikkkkan. Both my deceased mayfly wife and my deceased mosquito husband were Amerikkkkans too, goshdarnit. And the only reason they weren’t proud of the fact was because their tiny insect brains didn’t permit them to feel complex emotions like pride (or any emotions for that matter).

But they were fuckin’ Amerikkkkans all the same, ratdamnit!

What’s that? You got a problem with me because not only are you A) a homophobe, but you’re B) rigidly opposed to human-insect sexual relationships and marriages on the grounds that they constitute abuse toward insects since insects are nearly brainless creatures incapable of offering their consent?

That just shows what a moronic, unenlightened, bigoted, bitchass bumpkin you are, you dimwitted duffer, you!

Yo, fuck you, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

Now get the fuck outta my face so I can sing already.

Ahem—harrumph—ahem.

Here I go, bitches . . . I’m proooouuuuuuuud to beeeeeeeeee an Amerikkkkaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

____________________________________________

BIO: Douglas Hackle writes fictions that are bizarre, darkly humorous, horrific, veiny, vainglorious, stupid or some combination thereof. His stories have [vein poppet] appeared in several online and print publications. Douglas resides in Northeast Ohio with his wife and little boy, and he’s not exactly sure how that blasted vein poppet be gettin' all up in his bio n' shit.

The Unfortunate

2012-01-10T21:14:00.000-08:00

By Andrew Danielsen

The man pulled. The man screamed. The man had “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” stuck in his head, and this pissed him off more than the fact that he was about to lose his leg in a terrible way. 

He was snapping his fingers, strolling along, doing his own boring thing, avoiding people as he usually does, when out of nowhere a louder snap cracked, then another. The first was the sound of the train tracks switching for an oncoming freighter. The other was the breaking of his ankle. He’d never felt this amount of pain.

“I’ve never felt this amount of pain!”  

Shut up, you. I got this..

Ten minutes had past since the unfortunate event, and after all of the screams and wails sounding much like Free Willy’s cries for mommy, he finally caught the attention of a couple kids walking a ways down the tracks. It was late at night so he couldn’t see who they were, but when the moonlight permitted so, he was disappointed to find out that they both had both their mouths and eyes sewn shut. Of course, just his luck.

He threw rocks at them, hitting each of them in their tightly sewn faces until they shot off into the sky like red rocket red rocket, and he proceeded to wail. 

A few minutes later the man saw two police officers approaching and for the first time ever, he was happy to see them.

“Officers!” He yelped. Someone had obviously heard his cries and called the police. 

“I’m in agony and I need help! Please stop all oncoming trains!”

The officers caught up to the man and stared in confusion saying not a word. This made the man irate.

“PLEASE! I don’t want to lose my leg!” He cried. 

One of the officers whispered into his walkie then lit a cigarette. The other continued to stare, then grin, then back to staring. The man was so furious at this point and began to throw anything in his reach at them. First rocks, then a railroad spike, then a beer bottle. Just then the man heard the first signs of the train which was coming to collect his limb.

The men started jogging away to avoid the debris and have a little chat.

“So Mary left me for that professor with one arm, Billy Haiku.”

“Ouch.” Said the other in reply,

“Yeah, no bueno.”

“You gonna shoot her?”

“Yeah, probably.”

The train was now in sight, and the man became hysterical as Wham’s curse began again. He gave up on getting attention, knowing that everyone was against him and wanted to see the show. 

ROOOOOAAAAARRRR! The train was about a hundred feet away and the man lied back knowing his fate. 

The man screamed his final words. “OH…….MY!!!!!!”

By the time he got to God, the man passed out providing a loud exhale. He was then removed from the abandoned railroad tracks and taken to jail.

__________________________________________

BIO:Andrew Danielsen is a guy, who's just a guy. No one out the ordinary. He  likes to travel around with a backpack, make people feel uncomfortable  for kicks, drinks bourbon religiously and is going to school to be a  mortician.  

Along Came The Truth

2012-01-09T04:38:00.000-08:00

By George S. Karagiannis

At the parking lot, the Yakuza assassins are waiting to torture professor Martin to death. Yakuza didn’t appreciate Professor Martin’s last published article regarding the tremendous consequences of coca-cola on pregnant women. When Professor Martin appears, they throw him down and force him drink water from the rusty pipes, pushing his face violently into the dirty street water; dogs had shitted there earlier.

“How does that taste, huh?” one of them asks him kicking his head deeper into the muddy pile.

It’s ok, it will soon end, Professor Martin thinks. His nose bleeds seriously and his skin and eyes almost melt in the burning asphalt. His skull slightly cracks. The water turns crimson red like an old Burgundy wine. In particular, the bloody-Mary red!

The Yakuza gang leader reveals a hand-crafted stiletto from his pants and starts cutting professor’s genitals with a sexual frenitis. This youngster used to wet his bed, torture animals and be abused by his father at his childhood; the tightest profile fit for a serial, tainted killer.

One perverted street artist somewhere across is drawing in real-time fashion the Yakuza assassins urinating at professor’s car and then kicking it to total destruction, after they are done with him.

The new design turns out to be a huge commercial success; in this advertisement, a group of teenagers drink coca-cola, drive in a badly kicked and urinated car, and strive to have a party in a suburban underground velvet place, where Yakuza is supplying everyone with ‘meds’, and they never stop dancing in the flickering rhythm of the candles, prepared for a ceremony worshiping the Antichrist.

That’s indeed someplace!

Because the peaceful people do not care about Sun blisters or blood in the streets or torn gloves or withered apples or aluminum cans thrown here and there. They like symmetry in their lives, instead.

We, all, have previously seen Professor Martin on the posters, by the walls.

Yes, we’ve seen him on the posters.

 ______________________________________________________

BIO: George S. Karagiannis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece at 1984. He finished the School of Veterinary Medicine and is currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto in Canada, studying the molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis. He enjoys writing science fiction, mainly in the sub-genres of (1) hard science fiction, (2) bizarro and horror sci-fi and (3) apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, but more often blending all those, together! His favorite science fiction author is Philip K. Dick, whom he has been reading since he was introduced in the field. He is also an abstractionist/surreal artist and his blog can be found here: http://abstractsur.blogspot.com/

Ode to Jonathan Byrd’s “Jason Statham Beat Me Up”

2012-01-09T04:35:00.000-08:00

By Eric J. Guignard

Jason Statham beat me up, too. I was completely engrossed reading an account of how Jason Statham beat up Jonathan Byrd. I thought to myself, "No way. No way could Jason Statham beat me up. Jason Statham is from England and everyone knows the English are pussies. I would just kick Jason Statham in the nuts." But then Jason Statham walked through the doorway behind me. Jason Statham can really sneak up on a guy. Maybe Jason Statham can even read minds. I instantly regretted thinking Jason Statham was a pussy. I tired to save myself. I told Jason Statham, "There are no Milky Way bars in this household!" It didn't work. Jason Statham kicked me in the face. I saw stars. They were shaped like Jason Statham's shoe. My legs shook and I pointed a finger at Jason Statham. "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!" I said. Jason Statham bit my finger. Then Jason Statham punched me in the face. I fell down. Jason Statham stood above me. Jason Statham looked so proud, heroic really. Jason Statham smiled at me and I saw how perfect and white Jason Statham's teeth were. I felt a twang of jealousy. Jason Statham must have a really good dentist. Then my dog, Rusty, walked in. Rusty was a mean rottweiler. "Get Jason Statham's nuts!" I yelled. Jason Statham just patted Rusty on the head and Rusty sat back, wagging his tail. Jason Statham sure has a way with animals. Jason Statham turned back to me and punched me in the face again. My nose collapsed. Blood shot out and a drop splattered on Jason Statham's white teeth. I felt vindicated. Jason Statham's teeth weren't so perfect now. Then Jason Statham kicked me in the nuts. I rolled into a little ball and cried. When I got up, Jason Statham was gone. I knew though… I knew Jason Statham didn't leave empty-handed. I saw the bowl on my table. It was empty. Then I realized: Jason Statham had beaten me up and took my salad. Jason Statham must be on a diet now.

_______________________________________________

BIO:

Eric J. Guignard is an award-winning author and editor in southern California. Eric J. Guignard favors fiction short stories in the genres of horror, speculative, and young adult. Eric J. Guignard is editor of the acclaimed anthology, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations (Dark Moon Books). Eric J. Guignard also writes research and knowledge-base articles in genealogy, woodworking, and ecology. Eric J. Guignard can move mountains. Eric J. Guignard can fly.

Eric J. Guignard is married and father to an adventuresome toddler son.

Please visit Eric J. Guignard at www.ericjguignard.com

A Change in Lifestyle

2012-01-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

By D. Ross Noble

The visit to the doctor was a disaster.  I just opened the lab results and felt physically ill.  I walked to the bathroom scale which creaked when I stepped on it confirming I’d gained 63 pounds in one year.  My image in the mirror was a monstrous sight.  Lesions the size of nickels oozed a clear liquid and my nose was the size of a morel mushroom. For God’s sake, I had spider veins in my eyes and the bags under my hideous peepers looked like I had packed for a two month European tour.

I’d become the perfect foil for the beer belly joke.  “Hey look at that guy; he’s a dickey-do!  I finished the punch-line in my head, “his tummy sticks out more than his dickey-do”.  I had to look in the mirror to see all the pimples and sores around my crotch and on the fronts of my thighs.  I sneezed and blood-stained mucus ran down my lip while I snatched a Kleenex from a box near the bathroom sink to wipe away the foul liquid. 

What had I done with the lab results?  My memory was getting worse….”I’m too damn young to have Alzheimer’s or dementia for Christ’s sake!”  I wandered into the TV room searching for the, ahhhh lab report, picked it up and flopped into the easy boy.  What had the doctor said during the visit?

“Charley, this is an epidemic.  The U. S. Department of Health has issued a national alert and nearly 9,000,000 American adults are showing the very same symptoms.  We don’t know what’s causing it.  Have you started vomiting blood yet?  It will appear to be almost black.”  I remember nodding my head left and right and being unable to speak.  I was so emotionally and physically wrung out that I took a taxi home instead of the bus.

I picked up the lab report and pointed it at the big screen television, pressing it with my thumb. “I’m losing my fucking mind,” I shrieked as I threw the papers on the floor and picked up the remote control.”  The big screen cheerfully came to life and there were three hosts beaming into the camera.  The blonde woman said, “we here at FOX and Friends are pleased to announce that our market share has been nearly 9,000,000 viewers for the last year.

_______________________________________________________

Fatass, The Visitor

2012-01-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

By Daniel Vlasaty

The face in the ceiling tells me it’s time to wake up.  I roll over to ignore him but he isn’t having any of it.  He starts screaming.  Just noises at first.  Then: “Jeffrey Highfive!  Jeffrey Highfive!  Wake up.  Wake up – it’s time to wake up.”  I throw my pillow at him and he disappears up into the ceiling to dodge it.  He pops back out like a pimple, further away in the corner.  His eyes turn into flashing red lights that whirl around the room.

            I hate the face in the ceiling so much.  But he is effective.

            I get out of bed, throwing the covers off my body like they are spring-loaded.  I see the empty spot left by Syd.  It makes me feel nauseous.  I can hear the face in the ceiling chuckling at my sadness.  What an asshole.

            In the kitchen I find a man sitting at the table.  The bottom half of his face is hidden under a mossy mustache.  He is very fat.  I am amazed the thin wooden chair is even able to support all of his weight.  He is not wearing a shirt, and his chest is so hairy it is basically fur.  Maybe this man is the missing link.  

            I have seen this man before.  But never in the house.  I’ve seen him hanging around at the bus stop and the grocery store, I think.  I’m still not convinced he is even real.  He might just be a figment of my imagination, something created by my mind to deal with the loss of my wife.  Syd.  This has to be her fault.  If she hadn’t left me for her second cousin none of this would be happening.  

            I pour myself a cup of coffee this fat mustachioed man must have made.  It is strong and thick, just how I like it.  “Cheers,” the man says in a walrus-y voice.  It is full and deep, like the words are vibrating through all his layers of fat.

            I sit at the table, across from the man.  “Hello,” I say, for some reason.

            He smiles a big gap-toothed smile at me.  “Morning.”  I notice that the hair around his nipples has been shaved.  There are faces drawn on his nipples.  One is smiling.  One is frowning.  

            The fat man rubs his nipple faces and slurps coffee from his mug, thick black liquid hanging from his mustache.

            “I’ve been watching you, you know,” he says.

            “I thought you were only in my dreams.”

            “No.”  He shakes his head and his fat cheeks spread out like face-wings.  “That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.  Why would you be dreaming about me?”

            I shrug.  “I have no idea.  But I think the more important question is: why are you watching me?”

            The fat man shrugs now.  “Why not?  It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

            “That doesn’t even make sense.  And it definitely doesn’t make me feel better.”

            “Well, what can I tell ya?  It is what it is.  I’ve been watching you – get over it.”

            “Get over it??  Fuck you, man.  You can’t just stalk someone and then tell them to deal with it.  It doesn’t work like that.”

            “Sure it does.  It works however I say it works.”

            I open my mouth but nothing comes out except hot air.  The fat man finishes his coffee and wiggles his way out of the seat.  The chair cracks into a hundred pieces when he stands up.  I notice that the three other chairs around the kitchen table are just as dead.  He walks over to the coffee pot, the floor groaning beneath him.  His fat leg crashes through the floor like it’s made of toothpicks and glue sticks.  This fat man is destroying my life and my home.

            “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” I say to him.  “And to also put on a shirt, please.  That’s just gross.  Nobody should have to see that.”

            “You’re an asshole,” the fat man says, struggling to free his leg from the hole in the floor.  “I’m not leaving shit.”

            “I’ll call the cops then.”

            “You won’t,” he says, standing up.  He throws his arms in the air like a gymnast sticking a perfect landing.  He’s sweating now.  “You won’t because you need me.”

            “Need you?  For what?”

            “You just do, man.  I can’t tell you everything.  I can’t spell it all out for you.  Damn.  Some things you just need to figure out for yourself.”

            “And that’s why you’re here?  To help me figure it out?”

            The fat man nods.  He twirls his mustache around his sausage fingers.

            “Figure what out?”

            He stalks over to me, points his chubby finger at my chest, and stabs.  “Your fucking life, man.  I’m here to help you deal with all your shit, and to get past it.”

            “OK,” I say, thinking for a second.  “Get out.”

            The fat man’s smile breaks.  “What?”

            “You heard me.  Get out of my house.  I don’t want or need your fucking help.”

            “You do, though.”  He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his chest.  He hugs me for far too long, and when he finally releases me I see that the faces drawn on his nipples are all smeared.  Smeared across my face, most likely.  “More than you can imagine,” he says.

            I try to push him away, but am unable to even budge his massive body.  

            He begins massaging my shoulders and my body melts in his hands.  “It’s all going to be OK,” he says, going to town on a thick clump of knotted stress.  “You’ll see.  I’ll show you what love is.”

            I pause at that last comment, but my body feels too good to care.

            “I’ll make you forget all about Syd,” the fat man says, “you’ll see.”  And I feel his mustache brush ever so softly across the back of my neck.

______________________________________________

Bio: Daniel Vlasaty lives in Chicago. He works at a methadone clinic and reads comic books. He is not on drugs. You can find him on facebook if you feel the need to curse him out or tell him he is stupid.

Long Story Short

2012-01-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

By Manuel Royal

You'll turn your head and look over here one of these days, and sure I know you don't speak English, supposedly, hey, that's okay.  You're Malaysian or Brazilian or something.

You keep taking the same bus I do and I'll get on at Mackinaw and talk to you every day and talk the same words at you 'til you get off at 25th, and sooner or later it'll get into your brain, I don't care where you come from.  Surely sooner or later you're gonna shoot me a glance.  Hi!  Hi!

You're the most beautiful woman, or possibly really good tranny, I don't care, that ever I saw on the public transit bus.  It's those indigo eyes I love.  If I could just have those indigo eyes of yours in a pickle jar I'd be happy, at least for a while.  Feels good to say that out loud.  Your eyes would get me through those rough days when I stay home and can't go out of my home because of certain issues that come up re: pants.

Hi!  Right off the bat, we should have kids.  For a long time whenever I saw a baby in a lady's shopping cart at the market I'd say, "Hey, what aisle did you get the baby from, 'cause I'd pay a lot for a fat one like that," and they'd laugh, nobody takes a hint so I started putting up flyers about buying me some babies and what little response I got bore no resemblance to what I'd been hoping for.  Police guys came to the trailer and Sheila was there, she had a nose full of meth, making a lot of noise, long story short I did two years and Sheila did a nickel.

I had a court lawyer, but Sheila acted as her own attorney and made a statement, she said she had two dozen clutch purses in the crawlspace that she got on sale because they were irregular and she was going to fill them with C4 and make deadman timer switches so next time some punk snatched her purse he'd get twenty yards away and blow up into little meaty chunks and she'd dance around and yell "It's raining punk!"

So my advice is get a lawyer, because she went to St. Aloysius psych ward for two months and then they said she was faking it and she still had to do a nickel in Rockville.  I blame her dad, but he has a lot of trauma damage because he spent so many years servicing bus station vending machines.  Cycle of abuse.

So, Sheila doesn't come up for parole for a while, and meantime you look like you could squeeze some babies out, unless you're actually a tranny.  I wrote a song called "Pump You Up With Babies" but it got zero airplay.  I didn't write the whole thing down, but it was getting there.  Got a new song called "Unhand That Bitch", more of a smooth jazz thing, I'll sing it to you if you ever turn your head and look at me.  Maybe there's something wrong with your neck.  Something bollixed.  I don't care, we're all irregular somehow.

Hi!  Oh Crikey, look, here's your stop on 25th already.  Okay, sir or madam, farewell until tomorrow.  Just kidding about the pickle jar.  Think about those babies, right?  Pump you up.  Bye!

_________________________________________________________

 BIO: Manuel Royal was born, like Tristram Shandy,  with a broken nose.  He will die.  In between, he lives and works in  Atlanta, Georgia.

Tuesday Evening

2011-12-31T18:41:00.000-08:00

By Richard Shewmaker

The skin on my feet turns whiter and peels more every day because my feet are always wet at this shitty job. I stand by the deep sink and scrub pots or I load the dish baskets and slide them into the dishwasher. While I stack the clean dishes on their shelves and the clean pans on their rack over the cooks’ line I get out of the inch of standing water in my dishwashing pit, but that doesn’t take long enough for my shoes to dry. I tried wearing boots, but that was worse. Try wrapping your feet in rubber for eight hours a day, and you’ll learn what I mean.

On the way back from delivering a stack of pots, I grab a fillet knife from the prep station and stab it to the handle under the ribs of Pedro, the line cook. “What are you looking at?” he snarls. I go back to washing dishes. 

I snap off one of my apron strings and use it to garrote Chef Jean. He crowds me against a table and pushes a dinner plate at my face to show me a spot of dried egg yolk. I cringe and am overpowered by the itch in my wet shoes. I grab the plate and smash it over the head of Adrian, the grill cook. 

Johnny, the smug busboy, I drown in my sink full of gray water. 

Heather and Buffy, the interchangeable waitresses, I lure into the walk-in freezer and snap on the padlock so they’ll freeze or suffocate, whichever comes first. 

At 3:30 on Wednesday I’m back at work and my socks are already soaked. Maybe today I’ll get a chance to kill the son-of-a-bitch owner. Pedro throws a big saute pan into my sink, splashing a gallon of water down the front of my shirt.

Mister Bowman comes through from the dining room. “I need you to work tomorrow night,” he says, “Gary called in sick.” 

“Okay,” I reply. I bash his head again and again with Pedro’s saute pan until blood and brains mix with the water on the floor. 

“Be here on time,” he says.

_________________________________________________

The Snowman in the Sand

2011-12-25T12:41:00.000-08:00

by Tim Tobin

Everywhere the Snowman looked he saw sand, infinite sand. The sand surrounded him, 360 degrees of sand. The sand shifted under his feet making walking difficult and running almost impossible. Sand blew into columns and pillars as high as the sky. The wind carved canyons half way to hell. And then they were gone, replaced by some other grotesque shape. The wind was the Great Sculptor, whimsically carving the desert into camels and oases that were real and then illusions.

Far, far to the west the Snowman saw the peaks of mountains. A snowman in the desert doesn’t have a hundred years, but even if he did, the Snowman could never reach the mountains. To the north lay a great ocean. An ocean where the wind does to ice what it does to sand in the desert. He would be safe there but the ocean was also unreachable in a snowman’s life time.

The Snowman peered eastward. Green pastures lured him, meadows of flowers called to him and cool streams tempted him. He would last longer there but only marginally. Finally he look to the south. The Snowman couldn’t hear them yet, but his pursuers couldn’t be far behind. He was on foot; they rode in vehicles with immense tracks that floated on the sand like hovercrafts on water.

If the Snowman stopped here to rest they would catch him and he would melt. The sand would become wet with his blood of water.

Just then the Snowman heard a sound on the desert breeze. A mechanical sound prodded him to resume his flight into desperation. “Hide!” the Snowman told himself. Behind a dune, in a valley, up a pillar, anywhere the Midgets couldn’t see him in the desert.

His charcoal eyes scanned the vista seeking, searching, for … anything. There was nothing. The sun poured liquid fire on him and he already felt loose. He was melting, alone, desperate in a foreign world. The Midgets were only minutes away. They would howl in glee as the sun reduced him to two pieces of charcoal, a carrot and a pipe.

First came a brief salvation. The breeze turned into a wind and then into a hurricane-force gale. Hundreds of tons of sand blew across the arid landscape. Valleys filled with sand and towering sand sculptures turned into gentle ripples in the sand. The hovercraft became engorged with sand and then stalled. Victims of the desert, just like the Snowman.

The storm momentarily, at least, blotted out the yellow and orange sun. The Snowman survived a little while longer. Like him, the Midgets were now on foot. The odds were almost even.

Except they had blowtorches. Fiery hot, the torches could melt metal. The Snowman would be a memory in seconds. Again his fear turned to panic. But the storm had leveled his hiding places. He was three hunks of snow standing in a desert. Even a scorpion could see him.

And at last the Midgets did see him. The Snowman ran for his life. The Midgets had him so they no longer hurried. There were five of them and each carried a smoking blowtorch, its flame struggling to be free to search out the Snowman and melt him into the sand.

As the Snowman struggled in the sand, the five Midgets surrounded him, blowtorches at the ready. The Snowman spun in a circle, watching the horrible mouths of the torches, waiting for the spray of fire that would finish him. Would he hear their glee, he wondered? Would the fire hurt?

The Midgets rejoiced in the Snowman’s capture. They taunted him by firing a blowtorch close to his head. They tortured him by burning holes through the huge chunk of snow that was his torso. They knocked the hat from his head and burned it to ash. The carrot was cooked well done.

The Snowman had been hit five times and lay melting in the sand. The sergeant looked down at him with his torch still smoking. Why a snowman would volunteer for an army of snowballs in the desert, the sergeant would never know. The relentless sun had begun to drive the Snowman mad almost immediately but he would not quit the service. His eyes were the worst problem and no thickness of charcoal ever soothed him. When he had finally deserted, the sergeant had no choice but to bring him back. Too bad the Snowman had resisted.

When the snowman had finally melted into the eternal sand, the sergeant gave the order, “Forward, Roll!” and the snowballs returned to their base.

__________________________________________________

The Nondenominational Tourist

2011-12-25T12:32:00.000-08:00

By Matthew Dexter

The man was enjoying his vacation so thoroughly that after pontification, he decided it should never end. In the lost decades which followed he found seven Mexican wives, lost all his teeth, burnt out his lungs, gave up frozen margaritas, took up warm-aged tequila, and pitched his tent on a different beach every evening. In America he was considered odd and unattractive; south of the border he was exotic as a mermaid. He made love to currents, dreamed of buying a sailboat--though he knew his finances and decrepit credit rating (all three scores) would weigh down his sea-drenched catamaran until it was no more than a leaky kayak. The man understood all too well that his consumption was nothing more than delusions of grandeur and a fledgling case of tuberculosis. 

He was shitting in the warm starry moonlight. He cracked open a bottle of Casillero del Diablo wine stolen from Mi Casa Restaurant from a disillusioned busboy in exchange for a small gram of marijuana and a large rock of cocaine. This defecation of Australopithecus was sleeping inches from a sandy used tampon and a rusty needle. He never got pinpricked--so it did not bother him; the crabs are a different story. 

The wives and mermaids wax as he pops his warts with a sombrero. Alone tonight, he busts most of them--the large ones anyway--pus slithers down his shaft. A good man despite his misery, as pigeons listen, a survivor howls amid the pain of the nightly procedure. 

Familiar with fishermen, drunken captains often indulge him on sunset cruises. 

    There is an uninhibited island that enchants him in the Pacific. Rocky and rough, he fantasizes about being immersed in this oasis. They say it´s too dangerous to land. He will prove them wrong; knows it’s only a matter of time, and luck. The stratosphere is his overturned hour glass. 

The man gambles his wine for a fine lady tourist searching for her hotel in a nervous stupor; ends with another mediocre whore with an enormous mouth that never closes; legs always open; scabies and hairy, she chews on the man’s mustache during negotiation. As if studying the menu of a steakhouse after a month of Ramadan, unfastened bloody stained blouse, she exposes herself like a lobster trapped in a cage. Lost in the labyrinth of tent fabric, they become the moons of Jupiter; a gassy planet orbiting the sun.

As the crabs bite and fish fall from the sky, crimson bodies dripping lust for something neither can understand, embracing the carnal ecstasy already fading, they ride the already cresting atavistic wave to shore, unsure of the outcome as always.

He ends with a boat; she a crack pipe stuffed with wet rock, four bottles of wine, and a varicose spider nest of throbbing misery. Grinning toothless, she amuses the nipples of the nondenominational man and hands over the keys of the panga. The man does not bother pulling up his pants; tripped by shredded khakis, he rips them from swollen ankles, gives them to the woman, her fluorescent lighter aimed at the Big Dipper. The zipper hits her in the cheek, doesn´t faze the beast focused on her rock as if it were a hidden constellation: Ophiuchus. 

His satellite is the decrepit boat tucked into the cove. Hers is the melting yellow snow of paradise. Both avenues are escapes in their own. The woman disappears. The man hits rock on his island, guided by the waxing moon. The panga sinks within minutes, so weakened by butt cheeks of women. The man swims to shore with crabs.

__________________________________________________

Tartlets

2011-12-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

BY J.S. Watts

“The very nature of life is to be random,” the lobster argued eloquently. “A sentient observer gathers a collection of unlinked, linear events and arbitrarily strings them together, calling them a chronology.” The lobster preened his whiskers with his claw, admiring his reflection in the highly polished wine glass opposite.

“But”, said his dining companion, trying to inject his own thoughts into the conversation.

“No buts”, said the lobster firmly. “This is how it is. The fact that we create recognisable patterns from chaos and call it life is both our victory and our undoing. I’d say ultimate undoing, but that would imply a directional flow which would undermine the obviousness of the lie of cause and effect.”

His dining companion remained silent, staring morosely into his soup plate of half consumed lobster bisque.

He lay full length on the couch.

“Please continue”, said the psychiatrist.

“But I really miss him, you know: his blue eyes, his ruddy complexion, the sublime eloquence of his arguments and his fervour. Oh, how I miss his fervour! Dining without him has lost its appeal and, quite frankly, Doctor, I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you feel your life has become random and without purpose?” the psychiatrist asked, but the man was too busy crying to answer.

The analyst stared thoughtfully at the lobster crouched half under and half out from his leather couch. It was a very fine lobster: ruddy carapace, large meaty claws and the best set of whiskers this side of a cat.

He wondered what to do with it. There was no rush. His next client wasn’t due for another forty minutes. There was plenty of time, but how to fill it? That was the question. The lobster wasn’t helping much. It was just crouched there; half under and half out from the couch. It looked beautiful, elegant and highly edible. If only it had been a sheep.

It was a young sheep, little more than a lamb really: clear eyes, soft white fleece that looked like it had been hand washed lovingly in the softest Dreft and the cutest pair, two pairs really, of little black hooves. It was so innocent, so perfect, he couldn’t help himself.

Afterwards, as they lay down in the hay together, he found himself wanting to tell her all about the others, to make a clean breast of it, so to speak, but he couldn’t bring himself to sully such sublime Arcadian bliss. Perhaps he should take her to the city: the theatre, maybe and then a fine restaurant. Over lobster, cooked to perfection and a glass or several of the very best champagne, before the arrival of the meat dish, of course, he would tell her all about himself and what had passed before. There was such calm and placid order in the depth of her clear, dark eyes that he was sure she would understand.

________________________________________________________________________

BIO:

Cats and Other Myths, the debut poetry collection by Pushcart Prize nominee J.S.Watts, is published by Lapwing Publications. 88 pages of poetry that finds contemporary relevance in the echoes of myth and legend and the mythic in the day to day world around us. ISBN 9781907276644.Website: http://www.jswatts.co.uk/
Find the writer J.S.Watts on Facebook: www.facebook.com/J.S.Watts.page

Two Bills

2011-12-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

By Chris Conroy

Two men meet in the park.  It’s not a planned meeting.  They went out for a jog and when they were done, they both sat on a bench in the park, across from one another, about fifteen feet apart.  They were friends in High School but have not spoken in years.  They see each other—they know—but pretend they don’t.  One unties and ties his shoe lace.  The other plays with his wrist watch.  They are both named Bill.  A couple walks between the two Bills.  They’re eating crispy slices of pizza.  The man stops.  The woman says something to him.  He puts his hand on his chest and collapses.  His pizza crust tumbles from his hand when he hits the ground.  Pigeons battle for it.  The woman drops to a knee still holding her slice. The two Bills watch this for a few seconds and then stand up.  They take out their cell phones like two dueling cowboys.  They punch in 911 and move towards the downed couple.  The woman pulls a stringed whistle out of her shirt and blows it.  The sun reflects off it; a glittering crucifix in her pursed lips.  She blows again.  A policeman on a bike wearing a helmet speeds up to her.  The two Bills back away.  They take pictures with their cell phones.  The cop and the couple and the pigeons.  Click.  They’re too close now not to talk to each other.  That would just be weird they think.  At least now they have something to talk about.

            “Bill?”

            “Bill?”

            “Jesus”

            “It’s been awhile.”

            “Sure has.”

            “That was something, huh?”

            “Tell me about it.”

            “He looked fit.”

            “He did.  Really.”

            “Bad diet.”

            “You never know.”

            “Never.”

            “I thought you looked familiar.”

            “Small world.”

            “So, how are you?”

            “I’m teetering on madness.”

Sirens sound.  An ambulance rolls up and the crew hustles out.  

            “What is it?  The madness?”

            “Birds.  In my head.  Chirping.  It’s constant.”

            “You’re kidding?”

            “I wish.”

            “The volume.  Does it go up and down?”

            “It does.”

            “And at night?”

            “The worst.  I can’t sleep.”

            “I thought I was going crazy.”

            “You hear them, too?”

            “It’s horrible.”

            “Horrible.”

The EMTs are gathered around the man like a swarm of ants.  They pound at his chest and hand each other medical devices.  They count: “three, two, one” and try—several times—to bang life back into him.  They wipe sweat from their pimpled faces and foreheads.  The woman who was with the man is smoking a cigarette.  She extends her bottom lip when she exhales.  They were supposed to go to the circus.  It was their third date.  They hadn’t had sex yet.  She liked him and carried a whistle because she was deathly afraid of dogs.  She was ripped apart when she was fourteen by her neighbor’s mutt.  The doctor told her to always carry a whistle after that.  The whistle had her name and birthday engraved on it.  It was real gold.  Her father bought it for her.  It made her feel safe. The deep scar went from her right hip down past the back of her knee.  It healed well.  You had be a close friend, her lover or in her family to see it.  The dead guy didn’t even know she carried a whistle.

            “I think he’s dead.”

            “Sure is. You never know.”

            “So, besides the birds…what else?  What are you?”

            “I’m a urologist.”

            “Isn’t that something.  So am I.”

            “Get out.”

            “Are you married?”

            “Divorced.  No kids.  Remarried.”

            “Same here.”

            “Come on.”

            “Small world.”

            “We should get a drink some time.”

            “We should.  We should catch up.”

            “Do you still play the guitar?”

            “Come on now, Bill.”

            “Time.  It flies.”

The two Bills say goodbye without shaking hands.  The ambulance drives away.  The woman puts her whistle back inside her shirt and calls her father from her cell phone. The sun changes shadows on the ground.

Bill’s second wife is naked on the bed when he comes in the room.  Her legs are spread wide and she’s working a tiny vibrator over her clitoris.  Her other hand is pinching her left nipple.  Her hair is wet from a shower.  CNN is muted on the TV.  Bill walks up to her.  He pulls his shorts down to his knees.  His legs are hairy and white and weak.  He grabs his limp cock and works it in front of her face until it’s hard.  His head is killing him.  She stares at his cock and smells him.  He waits for her to come.  She comes with her eyes closed.  He jerks off harder, faster.  He cups his hand out in front of his cock and ejaculates into it.  He makes a fist over the hot semen.  He grabs for the tissue box on the nightstand.  “No,” she says and grabs the box, “let me.”  She takes out a tissue. He opens his hand and she cleans it. “Thanks,” he says pulling up his shorts.  

“How was your jog?”

But he’s already in the bathroom.  He opens the window and stares out from the 66th floor.  Chirp.  Chirp.  Chirp.  A gust of wind blows his hair back and, with arms spread like wings, he steps up and out of the window.

_______________________________________________________________

Fat Blunts and Slutty Women

2011-12-16T17:48:00.000-08:00

By Grant Wamack

Dear Rich,

     Last night I ate a rapper. I know it sounds strange, but it's true. You can check the facts if you want. There's probably some DNA strands embedded in my shit. Disgusting, I know. 

     I found him walking down the street rapping that rapper stuff. You know, the money, hoes, and clothes stuff you hear all over the radio. I knocked him out with a steel frying pan and dragged him inside the front door under the cover of night. 

     He smelled like a pungent mixture of fat blunts, dead presidents, and slutty women. Just thought you would like to know. 

     The kids were sound asleep and so were you honey. So I knew I had to be real quiet like. Mouse. Cat. Old people. Take your pick.  I was all three and then some.

     I tossed the rapper on the table with a small thud. It was actually quite easy thanks to some workout videos I picked out last year and some key supplements. Then I took a butcher knife and chopped him up real quick like. 

     Chop.

     Chop.

     Chop.

     It was crazy bloody. I got some fluids in my hair and bits of flesh on that yellow summer dress you bought me for our last anniversary. I considered cooking him but none of my pans were big enough for the job so I said fuck it. Yeah, I know ladies aren't supposed to cuss but I'm a lady with an edge. Metaphoric of course. That's why you married me instead of that goodie two shoes who lives down the block. 

     Just like sushi I ate him raw. I applied liberal amounts of wasabi and Tabasco sauce to add some flavor and I downed a few cups of bone marrow afterwards to finish off a satisfying meal. I felt a little bad that I didn't wake you up and share, but I thought your sleep would be more important than my late night snack. 

     All that remained were hollow bones, a little viscera, a fat ass gold chain and some rings. 

     I slid the rings onto my slender fingers and put the chain on my neck. I have to admit it was kinda heavy. I wanted to feel like a rapper. It felt good. 

     I gave the leftovers to the neighbor's dog who seemed to like it just as much as I did. 

     I woke up the next day late. You already dropped off the kids at school and I assumed you went to work. 

     Everything seemed the same. Drool hanging out the side of my mouth. Eye boogers in my tear ducts. Hair all over the place as usual. The only thing that was out of the ordinary were my thoughts. They all rhymed. I couldn't help but think of raps. That five finger ring, gold chain rap. 

     So I said a few and they sounded great. 

     I tossed on some clothes and felt this urge to take out a sucka emcee. 

     I went outside scouring the streets of our safe and serene suburb for any rappers who dare cross my path. I finally found a couple of acne ridden teenagers and accosted them.

     “Yeah I rap,” this little snotty ass Eminem wanna be said. Then he spit on the ground. “Nice tits.”

     “Yeah wish you could feel these chump, but I bet your balls aren't any bigger than a cancerous lump.”

     He looked at me dumbfounded. Then he began trembling like a poorly constructed house caught in a raging hurricane. He fell to pieces, sobbing on the sidewalk.

     “...it's true...every single word.”

     His friend gave me dap, closing his hand around mine as if it were a secret gesture. 

     “I make beats. You should come over to the studio and we can make an album.”

     So I did. I sleep in the basement with rats and other creatures. Sometimes I give the kid a blow job from time to time so he'll be happy and let me stay for free. He actually has a pretty big cock. It's juicy too. Besides that, I write raps all day and record them at night. 

     We released a few songs on youtube. My newest song is called “Fat Blunts and Slutty Women.” I think you would like it. Plus, it  has over ten million views on youtube. 

     A couple record execs called me up and invited to fly me out to talk about signing a deal. Isn't that great? All of my dreams are coming true and I'm going to be rolling in the dough in no time. 

     I hope there's no hard feelings. Tell the kids I said hi. 

Love,

     Melissa Sawyer aka the baddest bitch.

__________________________________________________

BIO: Grant  Wamack writes weird fiction at night and works for the Navy during the  day. He has been published at Flashes in the Dark, Everyday Fiction, and  365 Tomorrows among other places. If you would like your mind blown  please visit him at http://www.grantwamack.wordpress.com 

Perfect Body in One Sentence

2011-12-14T14:58:00.000-08:00

By Kaye Linden

Your arm doesn’t belong to you anymore, sensation fades, a kaleidoscope of pink and yellow circles assaults your eyes as anesthesia winds the muscles down into a free-fall of sorts for your next body part procedure, where this time the surgeon excises a tumor (maybe or maybe not in need of extraction) and you fall into the dizzying depths of the operating room and remember when you were eight and a doctor with a mask etherized your baby body and burned up the appendix, then at fourteen they took out your tonsils but you could eat ice-cream afterwards, at eighteen three wisdom teeth, at twenty they widened the sinuses, at forty the hyperabdominoplasty repaired loose skin from two C-sections and one gall bladder operation, and you wonder if you’re addicted to internal plastic surgery, or to the attention you get with the cleaning up of unnecessary body parts and if you need all this cutting anyway and then your memory goes black as death when the surgeon makes his first cut and slices into your brain.

_________________________________________________

BIO: Kaye has an MFA in fiction from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island. Kaye was born and raised in Australia and now resides in Florida. She is the short fiction editor of the Bacopa Literary Review, an annual print journal and teaches short fiction at Santa Fe College in Gainesville. Kaye has just signed with Shelfstealers.com to publish a collection of tales from Australia: “Fifty Tales from Ma’s Watering Hole.” (Watch me write 50 Tales from Ma's Watering Hole)

On Planet Zōhlzärt, It’s Okay To Get With Your Grandpa

2011-12-12T20:03:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Hackle

On planet Zōhlzärt, it’s okay to get with your grandpa.

In fact, on planet Zōhlzärt, you have to get with your grandpa.

Because if you didn’t get with your grandpa on planet Zōhlzärt, you’d never be born! On Zōhlzärt, that’s just fuckin’ nature, man. That’s how the Zōhlzärtians reproduce. They don’t have a choice in the matter. Specifically, in order for one to be born on Zōhlzärt, one must bang one’s grandpa. One must fertilize the ovum in the geezer’s large intestine. Then gramps must carry around the resulting incestuous offspring in his aging gastrointestinal tract for nine months, carry it to full term before giving birth through the terminus of his alimentary canal. As a matter of fact, father and mother are completely bypassed in this astounding natural process. Or, to put it more accurately, if you’re a Zōhlzärtian, you are your father.

And your grandpa is your mom.

What’s that now? Not only do you think this idea is disgusting, confusing, and morally reprehensible, but it’s logically impossible? It’s stupid, you say? It’s like one of those Terminator or Back to the Future time travel paradoxes that doesn’t make any sense, you assert, except that this one’s even that much more inane? It’s completely fucking retarded, you say?

Well, here’s what I say to you: what the hell do you know about Zōhlzärt, duuuude?

All you know is planet earth and a little bit about the laws that govern the puny universe in which earth resides. Who are you to say how time flows on planet Zōhlzärt? Who are you to say how cause-and-effect logic plays out or doesn’t play out on an alien planet in a parallel universe the likes of which you have never even dreamed? In fact, all your objections are provincial, earth-centric, arbitrarily moralizing, intolerant, myopic, and just plain narrow-minded; nay, intellectually bankrupt, duuuude.

You know what, duuuude? You’re so damn simpleminded that I don’t even want to be your friend anymore. So call me an Indian giver if you like, but give me back my zombie ass-gerbil. Now, bitch! I’m going fuckin’ home.

No, I don’t want a ride. Yes, I can see it’s raining outside—I have fucking eyes. I’ll walk. I’d rather get soaked in the rain then drive in a car with you, little bitch. No, I don’t want to borrow your goddamn umbrella. You know what? You can take your umbrella and stick it in the same place that you held my zombie ass-gerbil for the last two hours—and then you can open the damn thing up!

Yo, I hate you, duuuude.

Ouch! What the hell was that? Hey, did you just chuck a “q” at my head?

q4df7*{%&

Hey, stop that! That hurts. Stop hurling letters, numbers, and other typographic characters at me!

hdfkj%34@!)h4d[p(].*!@iivt

OWW! STOP! Please! I’m fucking bleeding now. You’re stoning me, duuude!

/#—:

Oh my God. I just got backslashed by a backslash, pounded by a pound sign, dashed by a dash, my colon pierced by a colon (Or was that a semicolon? I can’t tell because now there’s a big mess of blood, guts, shit, and typographic symbols down there. ) Oh no, oh shit, please not another volley . . . .

8dh$dfd*fgsV#(h<6:7df>265i?=fdgs!!gql$6^

Please . . . you’re fuckin’ killing me with these things. Hey, I’m sorry about what I said before. I don’t hate you—I love you. And you’re not a little bitch. And you’re absolutely right: all that stuff I said about reproduction on planet Zōhlzärt—it was all bullshit. Planet Zōhlzärt is stupid. Planet Zōhlzärt doesn’t even exist. I made the shit up. Please just stop hurling those—oh God no!

]jdk2las8jnbkghjoit$#%^#%^456jdsaklfjid4u8%hdfaskjhf^&%R-yui7yhi

You’re . . . fuck . . . ing . . . kill . . . ing . . . me . . . please . . . .

qaljfl83292y439%$&%*&yGjsdqwioefh&*,&567p67f:};}{L,;l,pohUT:YF%gHIOuuygufrfgidufhiuoqwmne6567456433^&*&^*($#%^#%*&YU*(<>?

___________________________________________________________________

Packed Lunch

2011-12-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

By Alabama Washington

Not long after stumbling out of the Irish Pub, Bruno Bates found his way down a darkened alleyway. This dank cobblestone cesspool would be where the greys abducted the poor boy. A light came from the sky, shrouding him, and in its warmth he began to float upwards.

After a brief period of being blacked out Bruno came to with his face buried deep within a pink plush carpet and his pants down to his knees. He was resting in the “duck and cover” position, face in his lap and ass in the air. Urine was trickling into his mouth and nostrils. He finally snapped back to reality with the echoes of a familiar voice.

“Two fingers, up to the second knuckle and then twist.”

Bruno snapped his head to the left and witnessed something most absurd: former President Lincoln standing behind a tiny grey alien who was second knuckle deep up the bare ass of a saggy-skinned white man. Apparently, Mr. President was instructing the anal intrusion. But there was something different about him, something Bruno just could not place a finger on.

“Excuse me Mr. President, but there is a difference in your appearance that is causing me to ponder.”

Lincoln turned, faced Bruno and spoke “Please, my boy, please continue.”

“Well, Mr. President, by chance would you have happened to shave?”

President Lincoln tilted his head, and spoke with a half cocked upper lip, “No sir, I did not, nor shall I tomorrow.”

He quickly dismissed any further conversation with a smug look out the corner of his eyes.

“Fucking elitist,” Bruno whispered under his breath to avoid the wrath of the President.

“I heard that, and now you’re next, boy.” Bruno could tell by the tone of Lincoln’s voice that it was a promise.

The Grey then removed his two probing fingers and waved them beneath the presidential nose. Lincoln shook his head no, almost violently enough to throw the feather headdress from his skull.

“We will find it, I am sure of that. I packed my lunch in one of these here. For that I am damned sure.”

A quick sweat dampened Bruno’s brow, he began to grow evermore nervous. The President’s eyes focused on him, and he knew that the man had his suspicion. He turned his head so the President couldn’t see his guilt, but it was too late.

“Get’em boys,” the President snapped. Bruno attempted to push himself up. His attempt was thwarted by the small, child-like hands of a group of Greys. The President stood above him, staring down into Bruno’s watering eyes.

“I swear Mr. President, I didn’t know!”

Lincoln’ nostrils flared.

“I didn’t know it was your banana! That’s all, I swear to you. I left the sandwich alone. It’s still there.”

President Lincoln’s eyes grew large, he took a deep breath and pointed a finger into the boy’s face.

“Goddamn hooplehead! You thieve! You goddamn thieven’ hooplehead! I packed that lunch! I did! For myself to eat, not you! Not you… You scumbag!”

With that Bruno could feel the rush of two small child-like fingers thrusting into his rectum. One knuckle, two knuckles deep and then the twist: one finger to the left, the other to the right. Bruno clinched, but his cheeks could not fight the overpowered alien’s strength. His anus slowly began to open.

“That’s it boys. Open him wide. Mr. President is hungry.” The President’s arm made it elbow deep before Bruno lost consciousness.

Bruno woke at the end of a large wooden table. Lincoln was seated directly across from him in mid-chew of a ham sandwich. Globs of mayonnaise dripped from the corners of his mouth. The President then set his sandwich down on the table and his eyes focused on Bruno.

“Mr. Pres… President?” he managed.

“Yeath, my thun?” Lincoln answered, mouth full of food.

“Are you… am I going to… ”

“No,” the President intercepted, “I am not going to kill you.”

Bruno sighed in relief.

“But,” Lincoln said, “You will be dealt with unless you agree to fulfill a last priority that is bothering me.” He took a vicious bite from the sandwich, ripping it apart like a wild animal.

“Yes. Anything... ” Bruno spiked his words with excitement at the opportunity to continue living. Lincoln held his hand up and snapped his fingers. At that very moment the Greys burst into the room, holding a cage containing the bite-size French General Napoleon, foaming at the mouth, dashing back and forth, banging his fists against the metallic bars.

Bruno gulped.

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