Guardian Idol

It was a posh affair, mainly attended by citizens of Sombra, North Central Positronics, and LaMerk.

A tongue of red carpet rolled to the curb where buckas, monorails, atomic slug robots, limousines, giant mythological beasts, and a rocket ship disgorged contestants and the glitterati of high society. On occasion todash bells pealed and an incandescent rectangle sketched itself into a ghostwood door secreting cloaked Manni swinging bobs or corporate presidents with decadent drinks in one hand and the ample bottoms of beautiful women in the other. They passed along the carpet through a gauntlet of paparazzi and rabid fans towards a black skyscraper. Its height was spangled with window lights like so much rhinestones. Thunderclap cumuli gathered and roiled around the tower, purple bolts of energy dancing on the tower’s apex.

Laughter wafted from below.

Storied guests from many worlds were in attendance, from a thousand one nights of fables to tales of the Brothers Grimm, tragedies to comedies, a veritable plethora of memorable characters from the Rolodex of Genres. They were ushered into a massive stadium whose seats seemed to recede into infinity. Above the large but simply decorated stage bristled an array of photo recording and audio amplification equipment.

Excitement ran its musk through the air and on its surface babbled a throng of voices.

Bill Denbrough took his seat, Beverly Marsh disengaging from his arm to sit daintily. She nudged Bill, said in the direction of her pointing finger, “Hey… doesn’t that fella look familiar?” The man in question, Bob Gray, who was at the moment absently rubbing at a patch of stage makeup on his cheek, was engaged in busy conversation with one Joe Collins. They laughed, and chilled the scalps of nearby guests, especially that of little Alice stroking her twinkling pussy.

A few rows behind them was seated a massive man with his scalp peeled onto his cheek. He had removed the armrest between two seats to fit himself, squeezing next to a grime streaked gent who made inarticulate sounds of reverent delight as his steel lighter sparked up flames.

Near the front row, a man with a scar on his forehead cut in the shape of a cross stared with grave concern as John Cullum spoke slowly into his ear. The Three Muskeeters eavesdropped onto Moses Carver and Aaron Deepneau, who were in deep conversation, perhaps discussing counter-espionage maneuvers.

Dennis and Thomas of Delain strode in, their eyes burning with murderous anger, but their weapons were checked at the door. They found their seats near Claudia y Inez Bachman who was oblivious to the excitement, intent instead on sketches of a choo-choo train. Engineer Bob smiled when he read what she wrote over her shoulder, nodding. It was true, all of it.

The Breakers occupied a large section of the stadium, basking in their Good Mind. Nobody but Ted Brautigan and Dinky Earnshaw really appreciated the irony of their presence. Buttplug baby Jesus gurgled in someone’s gunna sack. Captain Jack Sparrow dozed nearby, finding something better than rum for once.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstearns stood guard at a door before security shooed them to their seats. John Galt was earnestly exemplifying the merits of free enterprise to a bored, chain smoking Ayn Rand whose expression plainly revealed she thought she wrote the book on the subject. A scruffy tramp with a toothbrush moustache expressed his outrage with pantomime, repeatedly smacking a grunting Adolf Hitler with his bamboo cane as nearby spectators roared laughter.

The lights dimmed. All commotion ceased. A murmur of anticipation rippled through the congregation. A dulcet tone rang out, long and sweet.

A ring of light grew on stage.

A voice announced, “The Kas’ ka Gan!”

To the sound of  an eternity of hands clapping, a slick and dapper fellow in a tuxedo stepped into the light. His smoothed back hair gleamed above saturnine features. His smile was immaculate, all encompassing.

He flicked his collar and strode to the edge of the stage where he bowed deeply, milking the wild applause for a moment before saying, “Hey, hey, I’m just a mouthpiece. It’s not like I’m Mister Gan himself!” There was laughter at this. “I’m your Master of Ceremonies tonight. Some of you might know me by one or two of my many names, but I like to be called Walter O’Dim.” His voice lowered into a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s why it’s so bright in here. I’m often dim to the point of translucence.” There was polite applause.

Walter shrugged.

“A tough crowd, huh? Jokes were never my forte. I can see you’re eager to get on with it.” Walter did a little jig, spun on his heels, his coattails flaring dramatically. His arms spread wide.

“We’re well met here.” His manner became solemn, and his hands folded against his heart. “Friends and enemies alike, we put aside our differences to celebrate a pivotal point in the history of all worlds. We’re well met here!” Walter crossed his arms and chinned a hand. “I suspect when the day is over, we will awake as if from a strange dream…”

His mood became genial, and good cheer animated his movements.

“Well, now, folks, as we all know construction on the Beams,”—the stadium erupted with the sound of palms beating against palms—”this ambitious project to replace magic with rationality, is almost completed”—if it were at possible, the applause grew louder—”but… they need names.”

Walter camped across stage on exaggerated strides.

“They need souls. Twelve of ‘em! Our sponsors Sombra, LaMerk, and North Central Positronics have been generous in allowing the public to choose from the beasts of earth!”

He spread his arm as wide as his smile.

“Let the contest begin!”

The first contestant was the Emperor Tamarin who strode regal to center stage and commenced grooming his impressive facial hair. When he exited stage left, careful not to trip over his mustache, the audience pulled out their telecommunications device to call in a vote.

Toad croaked a love ballad about earthworms and flies on hot, steamy nights. Cricket played the sawtooth with his back legs (sounds almost Hawaiian, don’t it?). Rat was debonair in a waltz with Bat as his sexy, shimmering dance partner. Hare boasted his virility on stage with nineteen satin-lashed angoras. Turtle expressed deep wisdom, his languid tones recalling a contest between himself and the Hare. Fish, in a bowl, pointed out on a chart the many delicacies made possible by his very flesh.

And the contest went on, calling upon the stage Lion, Eagle, Wombat, Salmonella, Elephant, Snake, Mosquito, Yeti, Squirrel, Horse, Platypus, Monkey, Wolf, Beetle, Bear, Dodo, Dog, Skunk, Candiru, Lemur, Hummingbird, Armadillo, Sloth, Cuttlefish, Tarantula, Whipoorwill, Rook, Cat, Reindeer, Honeybee, Cockatoo, and then some. A great time was had by all, the crowd roaring with jeers and cheers, and the folken down home who couldn’t afford todash did the same from their living rooms.

And the Guardians of the Beam were chosen, say thankya

The Runaway

Walter Padick gathered his gunna into a coarse weave sack and slung it over his shoulders, wincing as the welts his father laid on his back stung. The Huntress Moon slatted the beaten earth of the Padick residence with cold light. It was in this light that Walter paused to look over his shoulders at the drunken lumps that were his kin. Wouldst thee leave us penniless and starving? his mother’s voice sounded in his mind. He saw her toothless mouth very clearly.  He would. A pox on you! hissed the voice. He slipped from the crooked cottage and ran down the road, purloined coins tinkling in his gunna against the bread and dried meat he had also stolen.

He found jobs swabbing after drunkards in inns or shoveling shit in farms along his ceaseless wanderings. Something called him forward on the road, always urging his hands to lace up his dusty boots and move on whenever he stayed in one place too long. One night in the seedy dive Hung Crooked, dodging the blows of drunk blind patron, ka flung his soul to the winds. From a dark corner extended a hand glittering with doubloons, a scimitar glittering from the shadows. His laughter seemed to slice through the ragtime tune the weedstalk pianist thrashed from his piano. “Fix up my horse for me?”

Walter lay in the foul smelling straw, fighting to choke back the sobs threatening to rip through him. The hot splat of spent seed on his back had turned cold, like his heart. The man had stolen something from him, that spark of goodness that remained despite his father’s drunken beatings and his mother’s insults. That chance for a life not exactly love and light but something close was shattered by an act of violence and theft. The eyes that burned out of the head that turned against the shit crusted straw to look upon his violator was full of hate. The rapist curled his lips into a sensual grin and ran the back of a hand along it.
But, of course, ka is a wheel.

Walter Padick was not to know it at the time, and would never know for the memory was driven to the deepest recesses of his dogan, never to resurface, the face that leered above was the very same as the one which provoked a certain apprentice gunslinger into an early rite of passage.

Walter, always damned, as ka wills it, was not to know that he was to poison his very own soul. Many-faced Marten drew his hood over his cruel features and fled cackling into the night. The boy lay there for a long time, not caring that his pants were pulled to his ankles, not caring about the cold that swirled in with the season’s first snowflakes. Then he slowly drew himself up, pulling at his clothes with leaden fingers and stood shivering against the barn door as the horizon grew pink with dawn.

Walter started laughing, very well remembering the laughter of his assailant as he took and took, filling and filled with a blackness that would reverberate within his soul to the grave.

The Robopope: Ave Mech

Ave Mech gratia plena

Robo tecum
Benedicta tu in androidus
et benedictus
fructus cerebum tui, Bot
Sancta Mech, Mater Robo
ora pro nobis machinus,
nunc, et in hora reboot nostrae

Bloop.

Translation:

Hail Mech, full of grace
Robo is with thee
Blessed art thou among androids
and blessed
is the fruit of thy mind, Bot
Holy Mech, mother of Robo
Pray for us mechkind
Now and at the hour of our reboot

Amen

Khoo

“Khoo groo too voo goo!” Joe Psilocybe held the khoo, massaging its belly with his thumbs. The khoo was the size and shape of a crystal ball, its hominid feature of limbs limp and elastic at its side. Its cartoonish face wore an expression of delight. Khoos came in a variety of colors, and Joe’s was blue.

The khoo giggled and jiggled in Joe’s fingers, a protuberance slowly rising from its lower regions. “Oooo groo roo khoo!” crooned Joe, taking the engorged member into his mouth. He suckled. The khoo squirmed pleasurably.

The khoo is named for the sound it makes upon the emission of its intoxicating essence. The khoo spasmed, squealing. “Khoo khoo khooooooooo!” An expression of bliss rainbowed across Joe’s face. The khoo twitched, ripples running from one pole to another of its circumference.

“Hey, d’ya wanna a hit?” slurred Joe Psilocybe, holding out the khoo.

“You bet your khoo I do!” I said. The khoo rolled into my hand like a ball of goo.

Later, Joe Psilocybe took me to the arboretum where he grew rare variations of flora. Joe ducked under the dome of thin throbbing leaves of a tree very similar to the earth’s willows. Large purple fruit pulsed in its shade, drawn by sugary vines. They looked like plums with a heartbeat. Joe took one in hand. “This is from the khoo’s native planet and is a staple of the khoo diet.” He bit into it, and juice coursed down his chin. He offered the fruit to me. “Although very tasty, by itself it does nothing, but combined with the khoo’s unique digestive system, well, you dug it for yourself.”

I nodded, a texture of flavor flooding my mouth. Joe beckoned me to follow. We meandered through the forest, passing through zones of shade and bright sunlight. A riot of color and scent that soothed and excited the senses. ”The khoo diet is paramount to the experience,” Joe was saying. “What I have done here is discover the possibilities inherent inside the khoo metabolism.” He fingered an alien orchid; it mewled and enclosed his finger, dewy.

Joe was a khoodict. He was also the known universe’s most reputable supplier of khoo. He had a khoo zoo and his khoos were the happiest you would ever see. The khoos were relatively costy, but the real profit came from khoo feed. Joe’s Khoo Eatery boasted a wide range of Experiences. The Third Eye. Tambourines in the Night. Comet Dreams. Still Life in Rouge. “The khoo diet influences the trip, so what I have done here is to create a consistent formula for the type of high,” Joe continued.  ”This arboretum, it allows me to explore the possibilities.”

We stepped into the khoo zoo. Joe plucked a purple khoo the size of a bowling ball from the ground. It was very happy to see Joe. “This is a female. Very rare. For some reason there is always one female per group of males. If the female leaves or expires, a male spontaneously becomes a female.”

Joe kissed the khoo and returned it to the ground. “Worthless though, for business.” Joe shook his head. The female khoo, instead of eliciting unique varieties of pleasure, drenched the user’s tongues with concentrated despair. Users often committed suicide or became ascetics. The blues in a khoo. It was not for the uninitiated. Joe said he took the bad trip once every blue moon. “It’s important to have perspective,” he said, showcasing three she-khoo blends: Jazz Greats, Yellow Raincoat in Rainy Morning, and Anti-Xanax.

I thanked Joe profusely and left Joe’s Planet with a bright red khoo and a pound of Mellow Moan and half a pound of Rocket Lust.

The Space Burial Bill

When the Space Burial Bill was passed, cryogenic suspension became a passing fad. The wealthy filled and invigorated Wallops Island and its outlying municipalities. Paying respect to the dead became a celebration where mourners screamed shrilly in space themed amusement parks and gorged themselves during private bacchanals inside world class hotels. The mourning period, if it could be called that anymore, culminated with the remains being blasted into space.

The options were almost endless. Body parts could be distributed into different tracts of sky for exorbitant prices.  Ashes were blasted into the stratosphere to be caught up and scattered by the jetstream. Or a combination thereof could be employed. One poet philosopher had his skull sent in a collision course with Halley’s Comet. A professional basketball player, who has yet to die, has willed his hands be sent towards the sun. The fact it had governmental funding made it weirder.

But there wasn’t a lack of competition. Houston, the original coffin slinger, was bought out by corporate conglomerates who revamped its infrastructure. It soon became a hotbed of neon sizzle decadence which earned it the nickname “The Vegas away from Vegas.” Corpses were ejected from the earthly body in a ten kilometer long rail gun. The rags to riches story of rock star Axon Storm, the macguffin of which was enough wealth to be launched alive into space, culminated in a live video feed that broke the world record of most viewers of a live televised event.

Eventually it became affordable, even feasible, for the middle class. The satellites of Earth orbit mingled with coffins, urns, ashes, and in some macabre cases, whole body parts. There were three competitors in the industry. Chain locations sprang across the world. Houston became seedy like Reno, and Wallops Island absorbed the ambience of Coney Island during its last days.

The first visitors to the solar system paused at the Kuiper Belt. They were a race of near immortals for whom death was the apogee of life; a combination of half-forgotten nanotechnology and natural biology made them impervious to the various forms of death. During the youth of their species they experimented relentlessly and recklessly with their life and were rewarded with near eternity. They danced within stars, their bodies repairing themselves from the abundance of hydrogen. It wasn’t a painless enterprise. They tried long epochs in vacuum, immersion in exotic compounds, centuries of starvation, and just about anything they could imagine. It took them a long time to come to terms with their mode of existence and they began to cultivate their lives as the Japanese did their bonsai. They trained to master skill sets. They hoarded experiences in all its minutiae, so they could be freed from the sheer baggage of accumulated existence when death did come.

Imagine their astonishment upon observing a culture flaunting death as freely as did the homo sapiens. The visitors came bearing gifts of faster than light travel, portal ships, quantum particle printers, and near-immortality, all the things that mankind would need to arrest starvation and death and gradually transcend the solar system. The otherworlders were repulsed and quietly left.

The residents of that little blue planet were none the less wiser, and went on with their old ways of living, loving, hurting, and forgetting.

Inspired by: 
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-mulls-tax-space-burials.html

doodlebug barbie

A gathering of desperation in the hottest place under the sun. They had come from all the points of the compass, stumbling in the white heat that divided ground from sky, reeking of ash and charred meat.

In small groups they stumbled towards the cruel illusion of the clapboard structures. A facade left behind by a long dissolved movie project, it depicted an old west township down to the very last detail. The saloon with batwings and busted windows, the general store whose sign hung and swung in the cauldron wind, the brothel with its sun-bleached satin drapes.  It allowed very little shelter during the hottest point of the day and the chill of night. A water pump which curled above a battered trough was beaten to the sand in a moment of frustrated rage when it was found to be non-functional.

They sat in the shadows, disparate in age and race and sex, united in their thirst. The men would venture as far as they dared in search of water as the women comforted the children. Soon they became lethargic, slumped against the rough wood walls on the salt-water stains of their dried up sweat, dead eyes glittering from the shadows.

They saw her coming from the west, her hair a halo of white swirling in the constant wind.  It was a toddler in diapers, ambling with the grace of someone learning to walk. Her eyes were the same searing cerulean of the sky that they might have as well been holes in her skull. A red-haired Barbie doll dangled from her hand. A pink bow fluttered in her hair.

There was a wrongness about her. Her fair skin did not burn in the sun, and her lips were not cracked. Delirious laughter seemed poised on her lips. They were frightened and cried out as she came closer. Precious moisture trickled away in the tears of the children.

“A child of the corn!”
“An Amity bitch!”
“God help us!”

She smiled indulgently without showing her teeth, cocking her head slightly. She gripped the doll by its sun-softened legs. It drooped towards the sand and sand and sand. She stepped forward, questing. The Barbie’s hair was a swirling flame as it dipped, lifted, dipped, lifted. As if it were sniffing the scorched air.

“What’s she doing?”
“Demon child!”
“Hush!”

The threads of the doll’s hair were growing taut one by one, extending to a point several yards ahead. The girl was yanked forward and she flew on her toes until the Barbie stopped, taut and trembling, in front of the whorehouse. The thirsty gasped, their cracked hands clawing in an involuntary warding off gesture. The girl let her hands drop to her side then she was again just a lost child holding a doll.

“Dig here,” she lisped, pointing to the ground. She smiled with feeling at them. They waited for her to disappear into the horizon before leaping to the indicated spot and tearing at the ground.

It was cool and sweet but poisoned; several weeks later a traveler wearing a calfskin hat and serape passed, warily regarding the mummified corpses arranged in a halo around a pool of sparkling water. He was thirsty but he knew a deal with the devil when he saw it.

the death merchant

He is a wandering ascetic whose religion is death. He traded in lead for souls for salvation in the final reckoning. He wears a wide-brimmed calfskin hat  tailored by someone who loved him even as he forgot how to love. A monochrome serape draped over his rail-thin frame hides his instruments of death, the cold and heavy descendants of the .45 Colt semi-automatic.

Seen against the low sun he is a frightful silhouette with a shadow that stretches for what seem like miles. He ambulates at a leisurely pace past the saguaros and clumps of sage, stopping occasionally to tear a button or two of peyote from the hardpan. These he places into his leather satchel as he walks towards the cooling horizon.

When the stars slide above, he hunkers down next to the charred husk of a  1953 El Dorado and builds a small fire with dry sage.  He sits with his back against the passenger side, the raw hunger of his stomach broiling with the peyote he has just consumed. The smell of asphalt mingles with the smoke and resurrects a pandemonium of memories. He waits patiently until it passes then thinks of nothing.

The desert is cold and, despite the fire, it seeps into his bones as he awaits the visions which will show the way into the future.

The Novel

Before the final draft of Hargarvard’s monumental masterpiece went to print, the author himself removed a single page from the manuscript. That page contained a passage of approximately six hundred words resolving the multiplicity of mysteries that plagued the Novel’s convoluted plot.

Hargarvard destroyed all the preceding drafts of the Novel along with that single page before committing suicide—an event of significance which would never be recognized by all but one of his admirers—in a most spectacular fashion which in itself was a clue to the enigma of the missing page.

The Novel gained notoriety for its dazzling prose, its wisdom, its intimate and tender understanding of the human condition, and, most profoundly, the legend of the circumstances surrounding its publication. The Novel was the subject of dozens of dissertations and cataclysmic debates among experts in the field.

The only person to unearth the truth of the missing page was an ancient scholar on the cusp of death.  He was found with a copy of the Novel spread on his lap, with the Hargarvard’s obituary placed at the missing page’s location. The nurse tending to the scholar reported that his final words were obscured by laughter.

a new god for a new time

White doves rose from his breast in plaintive sheets. His fingers conjured rabbits, pungent blooms, captured coins, plucking the thin air itself to create.The blue hue of his unreliable features danced like surf crashing on a black beach. His limbs, stolen tree branches, curved into fragrant sickles. An ecstasy of alligators snapped at his toes. Whirling clouds orbited his golden temples, pouring salty rain. Sparks ran along his evil grin to set fields afire.

His eyes, perched low and beady on a wedged nose, supported the true eye, the all seeing eye. It nestled on his forehead, sending corkscrewing rays of sunheat from the blood red moat of an iris circling  the blackest pupil, a student of evil thoughts.

Undecipherable secrets dripped from his movement and spattered on the ground, sizzling.

Zombapocalypto: Barnacle Bob

Barnacle Bob was roused from a dream of frisbees in the park with (dogs were wont to call their owners Master, but Bob’s relationship with his owner was much deeper than this) Friend and the geese by the pond that he liked to chase after and see take to the sky like flowers in the wind. Barnacle Bob was alerted to the fact that it was not a dream by his Friend’s teeth upon his fur, teeth that pressed down on his elastic skin with insistent and increasing force. He yelped and broke loose, a salvo of barks erupting in his wake. Friend unfolded himself from the floor and looked at the small Irish terrier. Shoals of thought, half-eroded memories and failing impulses, seemed to move uneasily across his rubbery face. Friend lurched forward, his hands drooping towards his little, spunky ward.

Barnacle Bob had known something was wrong for days. There was a stink about Friend, the kind of stink he knew from dead birds and squirrels he found during their walks, but because Friend still moved about, not like those animals on the ground, which were hard and cold, he expected things to go on as they always had. Now Barnacle Bob had to admit to himself that something was righteously wrong, that the person he had regarded with much love and affection for the entirety of his life was no longer Friend. Gone was the person who had named him Barnacle Bob and took him home after he had doggedly pursued the cuffs of his jeans at a friend’s party. If dogs could cry, this was what Barnacle Bob would be doing.

Not Friend’s hand enclosed the furry frame of Barnacle Bob and, if his reflexes were not so diminished, would have grasped with a strangler’s ethic and brought the pup to yellowed teeth. But Barnacle Bob, occupied with a personal discourse, was able to come to a decision a split second before this occured. Barnacle Bob fled, rocketing under the queen size bed they shared. In the days ahead were a nightmare in which he scampered from his hiding place to pick what little sustenance that could be found from the trash can he had knocked over. He would also lure Not Friend to the far end of the apartment and scramble for the toilet where he drank thirstily before retreating once more. What kind of life was this, hiding in the apartment through the relentless cycle of day and night, the stink of his evacuations and Not Friend filling the place in equal parts with his despair?

Barnacle Bob was at the end of his life. Weak from hunger and thirst, he dared a final, kamizkaze venture for nourishment. He darted between the legs of Not Friend and headed for the kitchen, scrabbling on the polished linoleum. Not Friend made his strange not noises and pursued, bumping into walls and doorframes. Barnacle Bob, wheezing after a complete circuit of the small dwelling place, gave up. He padded to the living room and collapsed on his favorite blanket to wait. If dogs could cry, it is what Barnacle Bob would be doing. Not Friend shambled into the wall near the foyer, causing a deep dent in the plaster. With a semblance of a shout, he lurched forward.

The front door burst open, halved with a roar and gouts of smoke, and let in light, blinding light. A behemoth stepped in, his flesh a layer of matte black cloth, and his face was obscured by some kind of mask; a salt and pepper mane glistened on his scalp. The chainsaw in his hand proceeded to dismember Not Friend, beginning with the arm that veered towards the scent of fresh blood. The arm traced an arc to land on the carpet next to Barnacle Bob. The stranger brought the saw upward and slit Not Friend in half, spraying blood and jellied brain into the coat closet. The carpet soaked up the noxious brew that had been Barnacle Bob’s lifelong friend. Barnacle Bob managed to exert a weak bark.

The man in black turned his masked gaze upon the emaciated pup on the floor. He spoke: “This is a public service by the Zombinator, to exorcise by any means the demons in domiciles within thus ravaged zones and rescue the disadvantaged unfortunates such as yourself–” He saluted,”–and now, my little friend, you are free to fend for yourself, but heed me well, it’s a harsh world out there. Every man for himself, or, say, in your case, every dog for hisdogself. Now with this,” he revved the chainsaw and blue smoke pooled on the ceiling, “I bid you adieu!” The large man was gone as abruptly as he had appeared.

Unbeknowest to Barnacle Bob in his weakened state, during this one-sided dialogue, the dismembered hand of Not Friend had spread its fingers flat on the carpet and bunched its fingers into a claw. It was in this manner it approached the dog, in a progress slow and unsteady, as its previous incarnation as a living hand was unaccustomed to the practice of walking with its fingers. The hand crept onto the blanket and, finally, came in contact with the unwary dog’s fur. The moldy green hand, instantly transported into the realm of instinct, its muscles remembering the one often practiced gesture associated with the tactile impression of the dog’s fur. It curled and straightened its fingers on Barnacle Bob’s belly, slowly at first, and increased its speed as it somehow registered the hallmarks of canine physical pleasure, a trembling and the rapid cycling of leg. Barnacle Bob spasmed in joy. If dogs could cry, it is what Barnacle Bob would be doing. The hand slowed and felt the fur with long, slow strokes.

It was in this manner Barnacle Bob lay for a long time. The animal, finding his circumstances greatly changed, abandoned all thought of resignation. Hunger clamored within his belly like the packs of slavering dogs that undoubtedly roamed the world outside. Barnacle Bob, with great effort, drew himself up onto his stubby legs and stared at the rectangle of light that was freedom. He looked at the hand, which was now flailing about, if one didn’t know better, in a manner that could only be described as frantic. Barnacle Bob considered the hand for a long moment before reaching the crux of decision. He bent his head low and took carefully into his jaw the wrist formerly belonging to Friend.The hand seemed placated and rested against the dog’s teeth, if one dared to anthropomorphize a dismembered hand, happily.

Barnacle Bob trotted to the door and exited without a glance backwards.

Zombapocalypto: Hank Hansom

Hank Hansom’s eyelids snapped open, as always, at 6:17 AM, exactly one minute before the alarm was set to ring. He drew the covers off his stout frame and pressed his feet onto the frigid floor. He padded towards the restroom, letting the cold seep from the balls of his feet to his stiffening nipples. He turned the shower on full heat and it took all of five minutes to attend to the ritualistic scrubbing of scalp to toe. He removed from the rod a towel draped at a mathematically precise configuration and proceeded to dry himself off with sharp, efficient strokes. The same methodology was applied to the removal of his facial hair, which took exactly three minutes, his ice chip blue eyes correlating the mean area of remaining bristles. He brushed his salt and pepper hair with a maximum of six strokes. He approached the closet and removed from it: a silk underwear, dress socks, khakis, navy blue suspenders, a white button shirt, a red and blue diagonal stripe tie, a navy blue blazer with tan patches sewn on the elbows, and a pair of leather shoes. Dressed, he descended the sixteen steps to the first floor and crossed the spartan living room to the small, clean kitchen. He poured himself freshly pressed orange juice and filled a bowl of heart healthy, fiber laden Cheer-Os with two percent milk. It took twenty spoonfuls and eleven sips to complete his wholesome breakfast. He deposited the paraphernalia of breakfast in their respective areas and took from the kitchen sink a toothbrush and a toothpaste: thirty strokes across each plane of the dental cavity, with a resultant of 360 strokes total completing the routine. Heaving a single, indulgent sigh, Hank Hansom took his leather briefcase from the foyer and opened the front door, illuminating the shuttered interior with the brilliance of a bright winter morning.

Canary street, a portion of a relatively upscale neighborhood, was in chaos. A Benz had wrapped itself around a light pole, and the doors of many a residence were left ajar. Hank surveyed the scene, his ice chip gaze moving left to right almost robotically across 180 degrees. Activity congested the northern end of the street. Hank observed: a young girl, perhaps nine years old pursued by a proliferation of diseased individuals in advanced states of decay. Hank’s heart hammered. He spotted with his keen eye teeth falling from the gnashing orifice belonging to the abomination leading the pack. Adrenaline filled white hot his pulmonary system. His fists trembled. The pack leader fell, snagging the golden locks of the fleeing girl to take her down. Hank was reminded of a childhood memory at a local lake where he and his family would go to feed carp at the docks. An unearthly cry, an ululation of joy, startled a murder of crows from their dark speculation. It had come from Hank Hansom’s throat, and see him, see him well, his middle-aged face an expression of sublime pleasure, pearls of sweat beading at the hair line, to trickle down a bulging vein, along the bridge of a blunt nose. His lifelong dream had come true.

Cloistered, in deep deception of personality, within the wooden cabinets of his humble adobe is an obsession. Shelf upon shelf of an alphabetically arrayed complete collection of Hollywood’s takes, from the worst to the best, of the undead phenomenon. Zombie literature filled another set of shelves. An unfinished novel whose protagonist, Hank Hansom, battled an unending scourge of viral life forms gathered dust in a cabinet. In the large kryptonite padlocked garage behind the house, where at this moment is headed Hank holds his greatest secret. His hands tremble uncharacteristically and it is a long moment before the lock opens. A profusion of raw material, professional tools, an arc welder, and a mechanical engineer’s reference book were the elements of Hank Hansom’s greatest obsession, upon which we gaze as he throws open the garage door: wholesale slaughter of undead elements.

It is a medieval torturer or an amoral riot control sergeant’s wet dream. Glistening in one corner is a flamethrower with multiple spray distribution settings, and next to it is a retrofitted lawnmower with aluminium bracings for ease of manuverability. An armored panic room on wheels, equipped with firing alcoves and a month’s supply of food for two. Chainsaws on a stick. Kevlar moon suits made from used bulletproof vests and suits bought at CDC scrimmage sales. A wheeled mechanism for rapidly unrolling electrified temporary borders of barbed wire and fishing hooks. Half a lifetime of technical expertise and dedication is crammed within, and despite its meticulously arranged layout, resembles a cavalcade of junk. At this point, Hank Hansom is weeping, for he has never thought this day would come, that it would be forever relegated within the confines of fiction. A growl shatters the protracted quiet of this chill blue morning.

Erupting from the pastel green garage of an upscale, relatively quiet neighborhood is a reinforced, retooled night black combine. On its sides are painted flaming skulls, the pirate insignia of a new age. Inside the bulletproof cab is Hank Hansom in a suit of centimeter thick kevlar. Out of all the fantastical creations in his garage, he has elected to bring with him a simple, honed machete and a handgun. He opens up the throttle, swerving onto Canary Street. The first gout of blood, diseased, virulent blood, sprays against the windshield. Hank Hansom laughs high and long, for despite all of his contingencies, he has forgotten to install windshield wipers!

The combine roars on.

oopas

From above an ink black teardrop trembles pendulously, surrounded by oopas of the same shade and varying sizes. It shivers once and detaches, collapsing into a small black dot. The oopas cheer, throwing exclamation marks throbbing into space like hats. A question mark flickers above the dot until it realizes it resembles the oopas! The oopas welcome it into their fold and make much merriment, revolving in the circular dance of sub-atomic particles.

The quintuple calumphs, extending from the upper surface of the eggshape membrane enclosing the oopas, are excited by the oompa romp. The calumphs convulse, whipping from side to side until they are tumescently taut and the quintuple meatuses irradiates the space within with a pointillistic exudation.

The oopas dart to and fro, absorbing the calumphs’ ejecta into themselves. The gorging oompas of various sizes increase their personal dimensions with each morsel they consume. As the frenzy of consumption gradually decreases, interrobangs erupt from the oompas. The largest oompa is sinking! It is frantic, and all the other oompas are frantic also, beseeching it to come back.

It sinks to the inky sludge that puddles at the bottom of the eggshape membrane enclosing the oopas and is consumed. The oopas mourn in soft, dizzy circles until exclamation marks whip into existence. From above an ink black teardrop trembles pendulously!

Zoom away from the eggshell membrane enclosing the oompas and note that either end is connected to another eggshell membrane enclosing quintuple calumphs, oopas of varying sizes, and an inky pool. Each eggshell membrane enclosing oompas are in turn connected to other eggshell membranes enclosing oopas.

Pan away far enough and observe that the chain of eggshell membranes enclosing oopas is, in fact, not a linear chain, but a curve along an oval path of eggshells enclosing oopas, to become the eggshell membrane enclosing quintuple calumphs, oopas, and an inky pool. This eggshell membrane enclosing oopas is then connected to other eggshell membranes enclosing oopas.

Jerry Cornelius Returns For A Minute

Two men stand in the shadows with bars of light running a diagonal across their faces.
‘Jerry, is it?’
‘Yes?’ Jerry replied with vague disinterest, brushing greasy hair from his eyes.
‘That’s what I thought!’ cried Foyle, slapping Jerry on the arm. ‘You’ve been around, huh?’
‘I have?’ A myopic Jerry was rubbing his arm. ‘Oh. I’m sure I have.’
‘You know,’ Foyle leaned in close, lowering to a whisper, ‘I have a message from an old friend of yours…’
Jerry looked at Foyle. ‘Wouldn’t it be a fat–’
‘Yes, him!’ said Foyle, withdrawing a silvery pistol from his coat.
‘So that’s what this is all about?’ Jerry looked around, disconsolate.
‘I’m afraid it is. Business is business, so if you don’t mind…’
Jerry shrugged. ‘Have at it, old chap. I have all the Time in the world.’
A gunshot in the dark.

Who is Jerry Cornelius?

Pieces of Me Falling Away

It is almost chaw, the sun trending a dickfuse pink towards the stars. The tall oaks that loompa above twirl their eaves and birds clit from blanch to blanch, their bong resonate in the chill air.

I don’t feel the cold, but inside me an empty opens its mouth like when you’re a tire what’s the word? It is bottomless, a forever bitchin’ hunger. I pass from the corpse of oaks into the clearing, my feet feeling that soft heavy metalen. One of my eyes must have ejaculated from its rocket, I’m seeing the sky and the floor of dirt, shit, what’s happening to me. What’s pulling me on, an invisible bread, no, no, thread, winding, binding in the air?

A busk, uhh, musk, that noze is the only thing that’s working de facto. I’m blighter on one side and I turn my neck with a groan to see part of my arm all the skin gone on a rotting blog. It doesn’t blother me as much as it should, oh, uhh Jesus Christ, what’s the word for the Christian deity? Moan! Oh, Big Honcho, that smell! That smell!

I’m passing into the city limits feeling like this all must feel somehowl familyar, but forgetting it as much as I’m already forgetting my strange new awkward gait. My right foot, now a gopher hole plug some smiles derrière. An alley calls to me, the braille of ever strongering pheromones blissing my grey flesh with rooster clumps.

Ahhhhh! Somehow, I move faster, what’s that noise, some horror, what, refugee from a B, B for Bad, movie. I blank the thought as I yawn with racialization the muensterous goans and mroans are from my very own larcenyx. Aghhhh.

Oh! Oh! Pelgmy threads thrickle and drip from my lazy eye. The smell is intockicatingeeee.

The source lies there, curled into a bbbbbball. It unfolds. Turrrrrrns glittering eyes towards me and says a word I should remember aaaaaand it is Daddy and then it is crying saying please stop Daddy why are you doing thiiiiiis! But the smell! The smell as I pull its arm apart with a wet hot bray annnnnnd sink my fingers cracking snapping into all the soft spots to cry open like a nutssssss!

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS!

BBBRRRAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNSSSSSS!

Psycombat

They came tumbling out of the rift, sixteen in number, weapons hot and blazing neon death. Their carapaces throbbed with halogen psycombat shields. Fuck! Military thoughtkiller psycombat bots. X let the onboard computer take control in a blur of limbs. His consciousness receded and his psychic gun sprang firing from the pituary gland on a slim of ectoplasm. A soul shield sheathed him in sexy charisma. Pure reflex governed his actions as sixteen became thirteen then four to, finally, one. A wily one with unnatural programming. They danced, streaks to the naked eye, pure choreography to the speeded up eye, flashing psyguns and fleshknives. The foundation of the Governable Banking Institution melted like butter as the murderous duo passed their battle through its offices. The New Wok City Mane Street sewer system ruptured with diarrheal force onto news crews attracted like flies to shit by the architectural tragedy. A news copter sent its nanocamera after that queer smear in reality, its footage sending gasps and in the case of some, acid reflux, through the esophagi of newshounds. Bloodied from minor wounds, his psyche dropping bits of himself in translucent trails of memory and sensation. The bot was no better, leaking psyche RAM in slime green spurts. Its psycombat shields was a flickering rust brown. Failure was imminent. A thought bullet rippling ectoplasm mirages of dreams caught it in its flank, sending a titanium plate protecting its internal processes springing into reinforced concrete where it buzzed, vibrato. A fleshknife whirling with engine powered double serrated teeth cut through bone and sinew until his arm hung from a shred of skeined flesh. He screamed, anger scything from the third eye and it parried with the dredged memories of a housewife’s first real orgasm, the collective of a raucous comedian’s audience, and a child’s purest joy. He retaliated with a neighbor’s lust and the hate of a bullied teenager. As it tried to fend itself, digging its databases for the appropriate defensive emotion complex, X’s howling disc fleshknife embedded itself in the psycombat thoughtkiller bot’s pseudoemotive system. A crackle, a web of lightning like constellations of fading photographs, and a hiss. X collapsed, his psyche spilling, afterimages shifting with the wind. The northeastern section of Mane Street lit up with a raw, tunnelling white emotion that left everyone within proximity weeping for the better part of an hour. The death of a PsiAgent leaves oozing sores in reality, of pain or ecstasy, depending on one’s bend of mind. It was days before anyone could get close enough to the corpse for a proper burial.

Jack and Jill

Secure in their anonymity as dictated by the separation of customer and employee, Jack and Jill stand in the canned fruit aisle. Jack is replenishing a particularly bare section of shelving. Jill is undecided between the sliced peaches or the cut peaches when she abruptly blushes. A hand has fluttered to her lips.

Jack turns to her with a smile, “It’s a normal bodily function. When it demands to be heard, it is heard.”

Jill vehemently shakes her head. “It’s just something you don’t do in public!” She wrings her hands. “You resort to the privacy of your restroom, or somewhere with nobody around.” She wrinkles her nose.

“Then, ma’am,” shrugs Jack, “I must apologize for such a blatant  disregard of courtesy and,” he sniffed, “aromatic sensibility.”

“Why?” Jill asks. “You weren’t the one who… oh.”

She giggles. Jack shakes his head.

“Boy, I’ve heard of simultaneous orgasms,” he says, “but this is a first for simultaneous flatulence!” This time it is his turn to blush; he has spoken his thoughts aloud, and for him the discussion of intimate matters contains more opportunity for personal embarrassment than the discharge of bodily humours. Jill just can’t stop giggling.

The next year they are married, and Jill, still as sensible about appropriate public hygiene, exclaims with exasperation “What are we going to tell our children when they ask how we met?!”

A Night Out

Kraken McCracken posited Time and its constituents of alternative time-lines begged comparison to a colony of maggots in a festering corpse.

Luigi Linguine argued it more resembled uncooked spaghetti, fragile and stiff and orderly in its box.

Time is nubile and alive, sensual like thirteen glistening women swimming in a bed of cash, cried James Pimp.

On the sidelines of the Great Debate, which took place in a greasy dive where the smoke clung to the ceiling and the drink was a close cousin to paint thinner, a fey figure gestured to a holy hippie.

“Jesus H Christ!”
“Yes?”
“What are these fools going on about?”
“Well, dear Lucifer,” Jesus said, stroking his beard, “One’s a proponent of the flying spaghetti monster. The other is the leader of a Cthlhu sect.”
“And there’s a pimp, a priest-hey, he brought a kid! That’s a direct violation of the drinking age policy.”
“Easy, boy. They don’t do kids anymore. Let’s just say the dwarf gay community has exploded. It’s a lucrative enterprise.”
“Huh,” Lucifer said. “And here I thought I was well informed.” He shrugged. ” The more the merrier. So that’s a pimp, a priest, what about the guy off in the corner screaming at the lady?”
“That’s a scientologist. She’s a psychiatrist. He says old man Hubbard is Time, and she just came for drinks.”
“Wow, She’s bringing out the mace. Nice!”
“Well, old friend, I gotta head out. Despite what they day, I don’t got all the time in the world,” Jesus said. “Thanks for the drinks. Ta-ta.”

Lucifer shrugged. It was time to go to hell, and he might as well bring a party. At the snap of a finger, the bar burst into flame. As they descended, he was dismayed that these damned were so caught up in their debate nobody seemed to notice their abrupt change of circumstance. “Fucking 21st century,” he spat. “So-called age of enlightenment.”

Cost of Arm and Leg

Cancer had damned each one of his limbs. An experimental procedure gave a faint outline of hope. It required the removal of affected appendages; he requested a taxidermist’s touch. They would grace his living room mantel where he would discuss shock art during dinner parties.

Organometallic compounds grown into the nerve endings of his stumps married flesh to machine. His new limbs glistened in configurations of lightweight steel and plastic, its very alien nature prompting a sheath of false flesh. He went to prison on a manslaughter charge during his first week with the cybernetic extensions. In prison he learned control and carried that lesson to the grave.

Movie deals were made, interviews given, the revenue invested wisely. As a result, he lived a life of comparative luxury, and hosted dinner parties whenever he could, languidly pulling at a pipe while commenting on the mantelpiece.

The Dairy Queens

The women of Milk Maid Dairy Products are of the friendly sort, their smiles as white as their product. Rows upon rows of lactating females gossip, give and receive manicures, get their hair done, play crossword puzzles as they are being pumped. “We feed them nothing but the best, all organic, no processed food, no siree!” the spokesperson for Milk Maids cries. “We have milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream!”

God in the Face of Infinity

“So…” God threw the thesis on the table with a thump that resonated in the holy chamber. “This many worlds interpretation…it’s valid?”

The angel’s brow was lined with golden droplets of sweat. “I-it would seem so, O Lord.”

The Almighty sighed and settled heavily into his throne. “The first commandment.” He shook His radiant head. “I’m a fucking fraud. Now everyone’ll think I’m as narcissistic as the devil.”

“But my Lord–,” the angel cut himself short, the consequences of continuing the thought out loud evident in God’s glare.

“In an infinity of Myself, originality is dead. What point is there in continued existence?”

“Lord, if I may interject?” the angel trembled, averting his gaze.

“Go on.”

“Almighty, have you ever watched The Highlander?”