The Thief of Hunger
Anthony Cowin
It’s a rare occurrence to visit a home with a mermaid tank as the centrepiece of its library. How Larson ever finished reading a book there I’ll never know. Those creatures were so beautiful. Their golden hair swaying like wheat stalks on a breezy harvest day. Their tails flicking in curls, shimmering like silver dollar coins dropped into a wishing well. Their emerald eyes followed my fingertips as I traced the warm glass of the cylindrical case. My teal gown swooshed at my feet like waves as I circled.
A pout remained upon their full lips, as though in permanent anticipation of a kiss. It was almost erotic. Eventually it became worrying. A fleeting moment passed between a swelling love for those creatures and dread.
“You’re a chosen one.” Larson said.
The visitors with whom he’d shared this treasure could be counted on his right hand he informed me. As Larson had lost both thumb and index finger in a shark attack I felt quite privileged.
The tank rose five metres high. Vines of twisted ironwork latticed the glass. It resembled a champagne cork in its wire cage. It was surrounded by esoteric books accessible by ladders that also lead to a mezzanine that served as an observation deck. From there one could gaze down into the water and watch the mermaids swim. There were no ladders inside the tank.
I enquired as to how they fed, to which Larson simply laughed.
“Everything they need is supplied through a mechanical tank in the back.”
I nodded in conceit of understanding and imagined some sophisticated mechanical contraption he’d invented stored in a room at the far side of the house. This was no stretch of imagination. Larson was a renaissance man who excelled in every endeavour to which he turned his hand. When I was a little girl he allowed me to explore the cosmos through a telescope he’d designed. Astronomers couldn't emulate his cartography of distant star systems until decades later.
“I've asked you here not just as witness, I also need to pick your mind” He said.
He took my hand as we sat gazing down into the tank from the mezzanine. He'd finally decided to propose. He’d been a lifelong bachelor and as a long standing family friend I was the only woman he knew in a social regard.
“Since you were a young woman I sensed you would blossom into a graceful beauty.” He said almost breathless, offering me a brandy. “And such a mind. So hungry for knowledge. So thirsty for answers.”
I felt giddy. I don’t know if it was the alcohol, the imminent proposal or the magic of the mermaids.
Possibly it was a combination of all. Dizziness had the better of me. I slumped into my chair, the world fading as I travelled through my own stellar system. I heard Larson calling my name in the distance as if through a long metallic tube.
He was at my side when I awoke, smiling. I reciprocated though it hurt to move my mouth. I touched my jaw and found it stiff, as though broken and fixed with a brace. I panicked. My breath was hard to control; either too long causing greater dizziness or too short inducing vertigo. And how my back hurt. I felt along my shoulders and found I'd been undressed. My spine felt raw and exposed. I tried shouting but the world weighed heavy.
Larson moved away. His face replaced with my reflection in the glass. My mouth was pinned open, a plastic tube inserted and fixed at the jaw with tiny screws. A permanent pout.
“So hungry for knowledge my dear I knew you’d understand.” He span around the tank laughing uncontrollably. "Now I have your hunger too."
And later I was hungry, no longer for knowledge but for nourishment. As soon as the thought occurred to me a pain ripped along my spine causing my tail to flick in the water. My blood warmed slightly and I felt as though I’d consumed a feast.
Only later did I realize what Larson had meant about the mermaids feeding through a mechanical tank in the back. Not in the back of the house. It was in my own back and my three beautiful new sisters. Torn open spines fitted with our own mechanical feeding tanks.
I always feel sleepy these days, or sick. And I'm so lonely for my lost dry world.
I'm never thirsty any more. And I'm no longer hungry.
Day 6: L.W. Salinas and Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
2:35 a.m., Tuesday
L.W. Salinas
I'm lying in my bed and my heart is pounding so hard I can't listen for what I thought—I know--I heard. The first thing I think of--and I know it's stupid, it's so stupid, but it'll always be my first instinct--is to pull my head under the sheets, like I'm five.
The second thing I think of is:shit, blankets won't stop an actual intruder.
So I'm here, too scared to move, trying to pretend like I'm still asleep even though I have to be hyperventilating now, I'm so scared there's no way I'm not, and listening for the sound of another person in my bedroom.
I know I heard it. I have to have heard it.
Think. What do I have on hand I can use to protect myself? My lamp? My right hand twitches, but even sprawled out I'm too far away on my giant comfortable bed to reach it in a split second. The only thing on hand is my pillow.
I'm going to die in the most unbalanced pillow fight in history.
I gasp out a horrified, coughing laugh--shit, I can't even pretend I'm asleep now. Instinct takes over; I burrow into a ball, pulling my head under the covers.
I'm regretting it almost instantly. My breathing turns what little air is under the sheet hot and humid too quickly, and I'm already sweaty and gross from terror. The stink of fear sweat and fabric softener would be choking even with air. I stay there for as long as I can stand it. All I can think is,something is going to get me when I poke my head out. Whoever's there is going to grab my hair and pull me out. Something is going to crawl up my nose. I won't even have the time or breath to scream.
I can't stand it any more. I twitch the thick comforter aside just long enough to feel a shock of cold air, hope it's enough for a few more minutes, and seal myself in again. And again. And again. Over and over for... hell, I don't know how long, it feels like hours. It's probably not more than ten minutes.
God, it's like being in a tomb. And now that I'm thinking about it, that's all I can picture. Tombs. Coffins. My own dead body in a closed casket funeral because whoever's in here with me is a maniac who's taking pleasure in watching this horrible choking dance I'm doing and will shred me beyond recognition.
I've never been claustrophobic but that thought, and the sweat, and the smell are all too much now. I'm being ridiculous, I tell myself. Thinking about coffins is the last staw. Come out from under the covers, breathe deep, calm down, and go back to sleep.
I do, slowly. The alarm clock is the only light in the room, green and too bright in the blackness. I check it, tell myself that I'll do just fine on three more hours of sleep, sprawl out with my skin to the air, and close my eyes.
They fly open two seconds later.
I know I didn't imagine the reflection of that green from the corner. Nothing should be reflecting my clock from that corner.
I close my eyes as my heart starts pounding again.
Tracks in the Snow
Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
The wind blew, swirling around Anthony. He swallowed a curse and tightened his grip on the pistol. He would have to find the bastard before the snow covered the tracks. He pressed a hand over the stitch in his side and forced himself to slog on.
Julia and he had loved the outdoors. Anthony had proposed to her in the very cabin they were staying now. He knew that things had been rough lately. That's why they had come back here. To try to fix things. To try to save their marriage.
That wouldn't happen now. Anthony paused and crouched down. The boot tracks were cleaner now, less snow in them. He was getting close. Even better were the bright red drops on the surface of the snow. He had winged him. Good. He chambered a round into the pistol, flexed gloved fingers over the grip.
The first few hours had been hard. Julia had bitched the whole way up here, had complained until he got a fire roaring in the
fireplace. The flames and a bottle and a half of good red had done wonders. They talked about things they hadn't talked about in a long time. Talked about anything but money and Anthony's business. They made love in front of the fire.
Anthony brushed snowflakes from his eyelashes. He was going to make the killer pay. He was going to put him down like the animal he was. The trail circled to the right. Back toward the cabin. The bastard was going back to the scene of the crime. The sick freak.
Anthony had woken to the sound of Julia on the telephone. Something about canceling something. He had planned this weekend for the two of them, and she couldn't leave her lovers alone for even a day. He saw red. He didn't know what he would have done if the killer hadn't interrupted them.
There. A big red spot where the killer had rested for a long while. Anthony was close enough now that he could taste the blood. He let out a low growl and stalked after the injured man.
The front door of the cabin stood open, just as he had left it. When the gunfire had settled, he had grabbed his coat and gloves and raced out after the bastard. He was so close now. He studied the snow again.
Two sets of tracks stood in the snow. Even though the snow drifted into the first set, he could tell that the tracks matched. He had circled the cabin. Anthony's head throbbed. He pressed his hand against the stitch in his side. His palm came away red.
The man let out a bestial howl and started to run. The last moments of his wife's life flashed in his memory like bullets from a gun.The click of a pistol chambering a round. The look on his wife's face. Three quick shots. The ricochet brushing past his side. His wife's cell phone, the number of her lawyer flashing up at him.
The wind howled and cut like a knife. He kept running. If he kept running, he might catch the bastard. Catch the bastard that killed his wife. The tracks in the snow circled the cabin again and again and again.
Day 7: J.J. Steinfeld and Benjamin Sobieck
The Comings and Goings of Ordinariness
J. J. Steinfeld
Early afternoon, late summer, a hint of displeasure in the air, the comings and goings of ordinariness. Downtown of a large, incessant, persistent city. I have second thoughts about those descriptive adjectives, but I do see this city as alive, a character just like its numerous inhabitants, almost as if the city has arms and legs and a complex, contradictory, baffling mind. No need to mention the name of the city. It will be on the evening news and in tomorrow’s newspapers. I know, because as this is taking place I am writing in a post-modern funk, recording or creating, the distinction is slapping away at my thoughts, knowing I should be in a less accessible place, writing something else, being someone else, hiding. But I am caught here, among the crowd of downtown shoppers, looking around, trying to take in as much as I can. My attention is taken from a distraught man, broad-shouldered and well-tanned, his face handsome but with scars of anguish, as he enters a women’s clothing boutique, by a little girl dropping the ice-cream cone she has been clutching. I want to pick up the cone for her, to undo the disappointment and unfairness of her present, add another two or three scoops, her favourite flavours, but I know how ludicrous the thought is, even as I contemplate that I am actually here and the impossibility of being here, in the downtown of this large, incessant, persistent city, observing and writing. She starts to cry but her mother is so distracted that she doesn’t immediately notice the dropped cone or her daughter’s tears. The woman knows that in two hours she will need to let her ex-husband have the little girl for the weekend. A man she despises, and has great difficulty remembering what brought them together, when love turned to this abhorrence. Abhorrence is the word she used many times to describe her feelings toward her ex-husband during the contentious divorce, and now I am using that word. The woman has thought all morning of moving to another city, starting a new life, not telling anyone. As the woman bends down to deal with her daughter’s disappointment, I see a fascinating looking elderly woman, well over eighty, I’d say. Everyone outside in this portion of downtown is ignoring the smile of a life well lived on the elderly woman’s face as she exits a downtown boutique, watching the little girl and her mother’s attempts now to calm her, until the broad-shouldered and well-tanned man I had noticed before, his face even more anguished, walks out behind the elderly woman—good-looking, at least three pedestrians think—and pulls a gun from his jacket pocket. Of the three admirers, one man starts to run; another, beginning a critique of unpredictability, is certain he had seen this in a film at a drive-in when he was 18 or 19, attempts to remember the name of the film and the woman he had seen it with, as if those two bits of information will protect him. The woman with tears in her eyes before what was unfolding began, concludes that her ex-husband, also broad-shouldered but pale as a bleached-out memory of memory, should not have custody of their ten-year-old daughter, even every other weekend—the tearful woman wants to begin a new life far from the mishaps of her tedious existence, she had written in her journal. Only the little girl, through her annoyance and tears, notices that the broad-shouldered man has blood on the knuckles of his right hand. She remembers when her father had blood on his knuckles, but it was both hands. Then there are two gunshots, one into the window of the boutique the good-looking man has exited, the second into the air at a cloud that was shaped exactly like his past. That might be the end of the story, but I know what has happened in the boutique, and the man, in utmost shame, puts the gun into his mouth, as if he is about to devour everything that went wrong in his life.
Open the Door
Benjamin Sobieck
I remember the revolver going off. At least, I think do.
It's hard to find clarity. I was laughing in the other room.
How else are you supposed to react? When your spouse locks the bedroom and swallows a revolver? It's not like you practice for these things.
Movies always make it out to be this hysterical thing. Part of me wanted to react that way. But more of me laughed. I haven't stopped since.
I don't call for help. I don’t go into the bedroom. I laugh.
I do it when I scrub the shine off the dishes. I do it when I go pummel the neighbor's dog. I do it when I fake interest in a pair of Mormons knocking on my door. I do it when I lock them both in the bedroom.
They kick and yell. I only laugh louder as I nail the door shut.
Then it's back to scrubbing soup dishes. Chuckling while slurping bowl after bowl of soup.
It only takes a few hours for the Mormons to crack. The metallic uppercut of a gunshot stops my soup spoon.
I expect another shot for the second Mormon. It never comes.
I put the spoon down and lean my ear on the bedroom door.
Bang.
There it is. Good.
I get back to my bowl of Italian wedding soup. The meatballs are underdone. They leak pink into the broth. I pick one apart and let it bleed out before eating it.
That's when I hear the voice.
"Open the door."
I write it off as my imagination. I slurp soup as loud as I can. Let the wet, pink meat melt on my tongue before swallowing.
The voice speaks between spoonfuls. It's listening to me eat.
“Open the door.”
My mind does the math. That revolver carries five rounds. Three of them are spent. Three people are in the bedroom.
Then again, do I remember hearing the first shot? The one that took my love away?
No. I can't.
"Open the door."
There are two shots left in that revolver. I’ll take my chances.
I go grab a pry bar. I'm not laughing anymore. I'm grunting as I force the door open.
The dark room smells like warm skin and iron. Breathing is like sucking on a rusty pipe.
As my eyes adjust, I realize the metal taste isn't coming from the air. There’s the barrel of a revolver in my mouth.
I follow it up to pieces of a face. I recognize the expression dangling before me.
Yes, I'd h
eard that first gunshot.
No, it didn't kill my love. Never was good with a gun.
I’m better with firearms. Could’ve shown how to make a clean shot. But I wasn’t there when the trigger was pulled. I was in the other room. Laughing. Soaked in guilt.
"Coward. We had a pact," the mangled face gargles.
There's no doubting what I hear next.
Day 8: Donald Jacob Uitvlugt and Chris Allinotte
Summer Games
Donald Jacob Uitvlugt
Somewhere above Heather, a phone was ringing.
The sun shone bright though the air was cool. The blue of the sky reminded her of the color of her daughter's eyes. She forced herself to look at nothing but the rock in front of her. She thanked God the phone was still ringing, rubbed her right hand on her pants to dry it and reached up for her next handhold. She brushed gravel out of the small indentation and pulled herself another foot up the cliff face.
Each stage of her journey played in her mind played as she climbed. The run from her office to her home. The car ride out to this distant state park. The long hike back to the base of this cliff. She had to keep moving forward. She had to find the phone. She had to answer the phone or her mind would snap.
Something cracked beneath her and her left foot slipped. Her weight slammed her hard into the rock and she lost her footing entirely. The tendons of her arms strained as she fought to hold on. The edges of her vision grew dark. With a grunt of effort, she steadied herself. Her toes danced as they searched for a ledge, a hole, a crack. Something.
Keep ringing. Just keep ringing, damn it.
She found a couple toeholds at last. She allowed herself a few seconds to pant against the rock. Her arms and legs burned. Grit from the climb had rubbed her fingers raw. She took a deep breath and continued her climb. Left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot. Her world shrank to the challenge of the rock and the ringing of the phone.
The phone stopped. Heather's bowels turned to water. She felt her limbs grow weak and she clung to the rock. Sweat dripped into her eyes. Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. She contemplated just letting go. Then the ringing started up again. A new strength surged into her. She let out a loud cry and forced her aching body up the side of the cliff.
She reached ledge so narrow that her prone body barely fit. She wanted to collapse. Instead she snatched up the ringing black phone and flipped it open.
"Hello!"
She could almost hear the son of a bitch's twisted smile. "That was a close one, Heather. You almost ran out of time."
"I want to talk to my daughter."
A pause. "I think you've earned that much."
A muffled, echoing sound. And then a voice that made Heather's heart leap. "Mommy?" She could hear the tears her baby girl was holding back.
"Madison, it's going to be okay. Mommy's coming to get you."
She didn't get a reply. Instead the kidnapper spoke again.
"I think that's enough of a rest. You see the stream below you?"
Heather looked down at the ribbon of water. "You wouldn't..."
"I want you to dive in. You'll find the next phone somewhere a half mile upstream. But remember, the clock is ticking."
The line went dead. Heather cursed and threw the phone in her hand off the cliff. She stretched her taxed muscles. Then she took a deep breath and dove...
I’m Ready for My Close-up
Chris Allinotte
At the start, there is nothing, only a final moment of stillness, of silence. Of holiness, perhaps. It lasts the duration of a single breath. The door swings open then, and it begins.
A flash of light. A cacophony of voices. The swell and press of the crowd, thrusting in and out like the insectile approximation of a lung.
“Over here!” someone screams.
He turns, and more bright stars pop and shine. Hands reach for him, and he twists, dancing the minuet, away and away and away. They’ll be satisfied with what he gives, and no more.
“Get back!” yell his guards. They are big, scary authorities with guns, and the wave of faces backs up.
A young man is jostled free. His legs pump as he stumbles to a halt, then work some more as he tries to regain his place in the crowd. To Wally, it looks like a cat walking on summer asphalt, and he controls the impulse to smile. The look on the young man’s face is an elastic tangle of terror and awe. It’s a strange mix, and not one that most people get to see. But Wally has. It started appearing on their faces once the first three victims showed up in the paper. Starting with Mrs. Edna Gumble, the fear he sees is an impure blend. It is mixed with the hard-wired adulation of celebrity, like the polyester in a cheap suit. That same feeling that makes a person fumble their change, when they find themselves in front of the local weatherman at the grocery store, that’s the feeling Wally’s victims have when they realize that they are about to be snuffed by a man who’s been in print, for gosh-sakes.
“Why did you do it?” A man.
“Have they found all the bodies?” A woman.
Wally looks at the youngster. Youngster – that’s not fair. The kid must be thirty.
He doesn't bother doing anything beyond looking. Two uncomfortable shotgun barrels nestled in his back make that absolutely certain.
Still the camera lamps are flashing. The killer meets the gaze of the lamb – who has been searching for an opening in the line of people that squeezed together the instant he was out. When their eyes meet, the kid starts to cry.
“Why lighter fluid?” This one’s voice is androgynous.
Because it burns slow, Wally says to himself. They’d print that. They’re dying for something like that. But they wouldn’t understand it, so he says nothing. The kid in front of him now, he might get it - if he wasn’t already dousing his own leg inside his trousers.
“Please,” the kid asks the wall of people. “Could you move over a little, please?”
The crowd draws in tighter.
There is heat from the crowd. There is also heat inside Wally. It’s nice, the heat. Wherever he may go, there is always the tiny fire inside of him to keep him warm. Sometimes the fire needs to get a little bigger, it needs to burn something. He remembers how the papers got it wrong at first. They thought they were dealing with an arsonist.
Forty steps, more or less, remain from the courthouse to the wagon, from the trial box to death row. On either side of Wally are his fans. In his way… what? A sacrifice?
They want it. They demand it. But they won’t say it. Maybe some of them don’t even know the words for what their faces are expressing.
Why else would you come see a killer?
The kid is almost within grabbing distance.
“Get back!” yells a guard. In another moment, one of the police will take the kid away. It’s in that moment that Wally makes his move. The hell with it, he thinks. They can’t kill me twice.
A breath.
Wally the killer, Wally the old man – who suffers an old man’s infirmities – stumbles. His right shoulder digs hard into the shotgun in his back, then he’s falling to his knees. Something cracks. Pain shoots up his thigh. Lost in his moment, he’s missed the crack of the shotgun.
Trigger happy. Wally thinks. His “hardened” guards are scared to death. The plan broke down. Their response was predictable.
He smiles through the pain in his leg as the journalist stares at the red blossom on his stomach.
Looking over his shoulder, Wally smiles, though his leg is pure agony.
“Well, you sons of bitches …” he says. “Let’s give ‘em what they came for.”
And grabs for a shotgun.
Day 9: Anthony Cowin and Zapata
Let's Play Games
Anthony Cowin
“Pick a colour.”
“Red.”
“Good choice. My favourite colour. R-E-D. Pick another.”
“No. I’m not playing your stupid games anymore. Let me go.”
“Can’t do tha
t sorry. Now pick a fucking colour.”
The kid glowered as his babysitter tried to loosen the rags tied around her wrists behind the chair. Pools of blood gathered at the feet of the dining chair. His brother had tied the wire too tight around her ankles.
“Blue.” She said.
“That’s better. No treats unless you do as you’re told. B-L-U-E. Pick a number.”
He held out triangles of numbers pinched between his index fingers and thumbs. The babysitter shook her head. Dry sobs rattled in her throat.
“Five, seven, three or one? Could be your lucky day.”
“No. Let me fucking go you evil little bastard.” She shook so violently the chair threatened to topple over.
“Do you want to go on the naughty step again? We don’t like the naughty step. But it’ll be for your own good. You’ll thank us later.” He shot a quick look across to the bed.
She stopped. Her face contoured with the memory of terror. “Five.”
The kid peeled back the triangle flap and grinned.
“Animals.” He shouted.
The babysitter screamed.
His brother heard the call from downstairs and let the dogs go. The pets hadn't been fed for three days. The same as the babysitter. The hounds bounded up the stairs, biting clumps of fur off each other as they competed for the meal.
“Hey the doggies like you.” He giggled. He sounded like a ten year old boy for the first time in days.
The dogs crashed through the door and immediately attack the babysitter. His brother walked into their parent’s bedroom as the animals tore flesh from her ankles.
“You’re giving mummy and daddy a good show.” He giggled. It was a harsher laugh than his little brother’s. His was a brittle sound, steel edged and dangerous. He’d suffered two more years of horrors than his little brother.
He sat on the corner of the bed next to his mum and watched the show. The larger dog had already ripped away her left foot. The smaller one licked up the pool of warm blood as it dripped through the floorboards.
“Reckon we’ll need to do something about mum.” He shouted over the screams to his little brother.
“Yeah she sure smells now.”
“When this bitch is done she can sleep next to her boyfriend here,” he tapped a dark patch of the bed cover where the teenager’s foot should be. “We’ll bury mum in the basement with the others and this one can be our new mummy for a while.”
His little brother laughed, rocking on his heels and picking his nose.
When it was all done they cleaned up and looked down at the bed.
“A new mummy and daddy.” The younger brother said.
“Yep, more new ones.”
They locked the dogs in the basement and eat cold beans from tins with their fingers.
Eight days later a knock at the door.
“I’ll answer.” the older brother said. “You carry on making that.”
He opened the front door of the farmhouse letting sunshine flood into the huge hallway. A young girl stood at the front step, bag in hand, a smile on her pretty face.
“Hi, I’ve come about the babysitting job. You’re mum or dad home?”
“Yeah they’re both upstairs,” He let the door open fully. “Please come in. My little brother is in the kitchen making a paper fortune teller. Do you like games?”
“I sure do young man.” She said stepping inside.
“Good. They’ll you’ll love it here.” He said closing the door behind them.
The Mark of Servitude
By Angel Zapata
The men in the waiting room are desperate, hopeless. Some pace, others mumble prayers and weep. None of their mothers, wives, daughters will make it out of this place alive.
I’m not a physician or a healer of any type. As a volunteer, I have very little to offer them, but it does give my life purpose. Most of the women here will die alone.
“My fiancé was killed overseas in Iraq.” Tears blot Ms. Marchal’s cheeks. “And I have no children. No one will be coming to see me.”
I’m at her bedside and can easily see the crow’s feet furrow deeper at her eyes. In a matter of moments a spattering of age spots darkens her skin.
Every woman in this hospital is one foot from the grave, so I must hurry. There are many other rooms to visit tonight.
We’re both shaking when she lets go of my hand.
“I hope I was able to grant some measure of comfort.” I readjust my bow tie, head for the door. “I’ll be back to see you tomorrow evening.”
Ms. Marchal will be dead by morning, but she smiles and blows me a kiss. The wrinkled skin on her arm slumps at the elbow.
I pause at the entranceway; witness her hair grow white, fall out.
Mrs. Lannigan’s room is down the hall. The patient chart, hooked to her bed’s footboard, has a black tag clipped to it. She looks every bit of ninety years old, but her date birth proves she’s only twenty-three.
I clear my throat.
She opens her milky, gray eyes.
“My name is Mark and I’m a volunteer here,” I say and show her my plastic badge. “Can I do anything for you?”
She sits up. This simple act prompts a coughing fit that lasts for several minutes. I turn away; focus my attention on a single rose in a clear vase on the windowsill. One brown petal flops to the floor.
I can’t stop thinking of women as Mother Nature’s prey. The origin of the outbreak is still unknown. The Center for Disease Control investigators were unable to pinpoint a direct cause or cure and the government has been oddly silent since the death of our president. He shot himself the day after his baby girl withered into dust. The only thing they know for sure is that every woman on this planet is aging at a super accelerated rate.
No one suspects me of releasing the virus.
I watched my own wife loose her teeth as she was brushing them; watched her age seventy years in just as many hours.
Without our women, mankind’s days are thankfully numbered.
Mrs. Lannigan is breathless. “Please put on the radio.”
All around me, male doctors and nurses continue to flurry about the hallways, more like ghosts themselves.
I press the power button on the small portable player and ‘Close To You’ by The Carpenters floods the speakers.
It was my mom’s favorite.
“Is this song okay?” I ask.
Mrs. Lannigan nods yes.
We barely make it through the chorus before the heart monitor screams.
Day 10: Jack Horne and Richard Godwin
B27
Jack Horne
B27 waited in the corner of her cage as White Coat approached. She'd just watched him injecting the other inmates in her row with various chemicals, toxins and cancers, and, as usual, she shuddered at the sight of their abnormal growths, paralysis, blindness and insanity. She knew she was fortunate in the choice of experiment for her.
She decided to have her last fix of intelligence boosting hormones. It would be the last injection that White Coat would ever administer to any rat.
‘Just watch this,’ she told her neighbours, B26 and B28.
She estimated her intelligence was twice that of the scientist already, but one more jab should put her on par with Einstein. Not that White Coat realised the experiments were so successful, of course – she had been careful to display only slight and gradual increases of intellect.
White Coat put her through more routine intelligence tests. It was the simple maze again. B27 pretended to make a few wrong turns, and appeared to finally succeed in locating the peanut at the core. She eyed him slyly as he recorded the results.
He still didn't suspect a thing. Simpleton!
She allowed him to return her to the cage. B26 and B28 were probably disappointed, she guessed. They hadn't noticed her daily sleight of tail tricks either.
Suddenly, she sank her teeth into White Coat’s hand. He cursed, as expected, and simultaneously jerked his hand up
wards. He yelled as the hidden needle stuck in the back of his hand. And then he began to foam at the mouth.
B27 impassively viewed White Coat’s features contorting and then his collapse. She'd dipped it in a pretty nasty concoction.
None of the other rats reacted at all. What an anticlimax!
She climbed from her cage and quickly went about freeing the others. Many were too badly damaged by the experimentation to escape, but eventually all the able-bodied rats, mice, gerbils, hamsters, rabbits and – of course – guinea pigs were free.
Like a victorious general, B27 led them towards White Coat, where he was twitching on the laboratory floor. His scream rose to a crescendo and then died a gurgle as the swarming rodents gnawed. Every part of him - his eyes, nose, lips, tongue, genitals, anus, throat and even armpits - was devoured. Nothing remained, but a bloody skeleton, its mouth open in a perpetual scream.
B27 took White Coat’s keys and swipe card and went from lab to lab, freeing the captive animals. She shook her head in disbelief at the torture that had been inflicted in the name of science. Some broken creatures simply cowered; others were no longer able to walk, but those that could, rushed from their prisons.
Each white coated scientist fared as badly as the one personally known to B27. Apes, monkeys, chimpanzees – in fact, almost every primate known to humans – gouged, ripped, bit, tore and ate their former tormentors. Freed dogs and cats celebrated their emancipation by destroying the vivisectionists with equal aplomb.
B27 studied the carnage and finally nodded, satisfied. It was done.
She knew that many of the animals would be recaptured – and possibly destroyed. Some would roam aimlessly and starve, never having fended for themselves before. Whatever their individual fates, they had had their revenge.
There was just one thing she had to see before leaving the centre. Curiously, she entered the top secret laboratory and studied the caged humans…
Frogs Screaming Like Crickets
Richard Godwin
It started with the frogs in the garden. Ever hear a bullfrog fucking? That crescendo of noise. You know what they’re saying in the chorus? I learned their language, their disgusting cacophony of filth and heartache. Emlen studied them in Michigan, I studied them at my kitchen table as my wife wore her lover’s collar bone around her ankle, spooning crusted potatoes into her mouth with her webbed toes. They were taking over. I’d seen her lick their smooth backs, naked, on her knees, a key to the cellar tied to her leg.
I expected her to die from the poison but she didn't. Then I saw her down there, at the bottom of the stone steps, walking barefoot over an army of them as she touched herself with green hands. I knew what she was saying even when she wasn't talking. The small shrill shrieks she emitted as she moved told me all I needed to know. She would call him on her cell phone downstairs. I heard her coughing, croaking, grunting, moaning all night, I stared at her sleeping, her huge neck blowing up like bellows. Her skin was covered in slime. I followed her there, to his apartment and watched them copulate on the lawn spreading green slime all over the avenue while the noise intensified. I had to put my hands over my ears. I hired a road drill so I could drown it out. But it wouldn't stop. They engaged in an orgy of bodily fluids that backed up through the pipes and filled the sinks in our house with slime.
They went on chorusing to each other for days. The staccato sound was unbearable. Like the constant snapping of brittle bones. Tiny fragments of them caught in her hair.
She would text her lover in the small hours. I was woken by the constant tapping of erotic thumbs. It sounded like the sexual frenzy of crickets’ legs, out in the fields, arousing themselves on the sharpened bone of midnight. They scraped their sap dry and began again each day rising to climax on the decibel high.
Their large veins running along their wings, covered in teeth, their stridulations, were a sexual mania, a choral rupture of any socialised sexual activity. Their chemoreceptors were mounting each day, acting like a rapid drumbeat that rode the airwaves and made every building in the neighbourhood vibrate with the frantic activity of their antennae. People stood out in the street swearing. Filth oozed from the mouths of law abiding citizens in a sexual mania that left many wounded by the misuse of household objects in poorly lit alleyways.
I saw her drip with spawn and she croaked at me, and shot her tongue across the hall, trying to unzip my flies with it. Do you know how they breed? She kept rubbing herself, eating all the time, spooning ladles of ice cream into her bulging mouth, vomiting on the carpet, licking it up when it went cold.
The buzzing of the flies began to drive me mad. The house was full of them and they swarmed as she sang, lifting them out of the air in omnivorous insect fellatio. Her foul eructations woke me, she would be downstairs on the grass with hundreds of them entering and re-entering her body as she stared at me with animal eyes. The tap wouldn’t stop dripping.
One day she came to me and said, ‘More, I need more of it.’
I went into the garden and found it carpeted with their creeping living bodies. The noise was deafening.
I had to stop it. I had to shut them up.
Then one day it came to me. Frogs are amphibians. I would return her to her element. I would be generous.
She was bathing. The bath tub was covered in green slime and spawn. It hung like semen from her lips. I leaned in and held her head under the water.
She splashed about and I let her up.
She said, ‘Why? Why?’
I could hear the chorus in the garden, insane, frenetic, and I held her down again. The frogs were climaxing and she struggled beneath the filthy water. Eventually she stopped moving. I stood up and realised the noise had stopped.
The persistent machine gun fire of croaking had ended. I walked over to the bathroom mirror and lifted one lashless lid and stared into my bulging eyes.
About the Authors
Anthony Cowin writes dark and twisted tales that have been published in many print anthologies and online. He's currently working on a themed anthology of short stories and a urban fantasy novel. You can connect on Twitter at@TonyCowin or visit his website www.anthonycowin.com.
Richard Godwin is the critically acclaimed author of bestselling novels Apostle Rising, and Mr. Glamour. His stories have been published in over 28 anthologies. You can find out more about him at his website https://www.richardgodwin.net/ . He has a new novel out this summer.
Jack Horne lives in Plymouth, England, where he works for the local theatre. Quite a number of his poems and short stories have been published. He's also had some competition success.
L.W. Salinas is a freelance writer living in Houston, Texas with her husband. She watches horror movies and knits fuzzy scarves, sometimes simultaneously. She can be found on Twitter at @LW_Salinas .
Benjamin Sobieck is the author of the crime thriller novel, "Cleansing Eden," and the Maynard Soloman short story crime humor series. His reference, The Thriller & Crime Writer's Guide to Firearms & Knives," will be published by Writer's Digest in 2013. His website is CrimeFictionBook.com. He lives in Minnesota.
Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books, including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.
Donald Jacob Uitvlugt lives on neither coast of the United States, but mostly in a haunted memory palace of his own design. He strives to write what he calls haiku fiction, small stories with big impact. Find out mo
re at https://haikufiction.blogspot.com.
Angel Zapata writes poetry and fiction. He is the recipient of the 2012 Mariner Award for Bewildering Stories’ most outstanding flash fiction work of the year, “Carrion Folk.” He is also a winner of the MicroHorror 2012 Story Contest for his horrific tale, “The Blood Worms.” Visit him at arageofangel.blogspot.com.
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