Soul Unturned

August 31, 2022August 30, 2022 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 13 Comments

Entwined beneath an afternoon sun, two lovers work in a tiny graveyard in an orchard gone to seed. Sweat pearls their limbs and beads their hair. Their voices moan and echo. The moment passes. As evening shadows begin to sing, they kiss and sigh.

“You sure you want this?” Dean asks. “No changing minds later.”
“I want to be young and in love forever.” Leandra replies

Dean nods, kisses the hollow of her throat. Her blue veins shed warmth. Her life beats there. He can drink it when the time comes. Already they’ve been drawing each other’s blood with needles and sharing it to deepen their bond.

Dean lies back on a grave, drawing Leandra down beside him. They wait, holding hands as their last sunset comes creeping. Shadows stretch. On the horizon, earth colors of red and yellow give way to metallic purples and pulsing blacks. Darkness caresses daylight into oblivion.

Leandra sits up. “You hear it?”
Dean joins her. “Yes. They’re coming!”

A humming seeps from the air. The night sky blossoms, as if god has set off fireworks meant only for them. Brilliant scarlets and muted maroons build a backdrop against which gold and white droplets spray. An image of a great raptor appears, striking from ebony space.

Dean closes his eyes against the glory. “The Angel!” he shouts.
Leandra says nothing. Her eyes are open; they bleed crystal tears with razor edges.

The angel lands with a snap of crimson pinions. It is legion; its eyes are moonlets.

“No,” Dean pleads.
“We seek forever,” Leandra counters.

The angel wraps its wings around the lovers, containing them within its umbra. From a spider’s mouth of chelicerae, the being extrudes a single fang upon which gleams a venom-pearl. Leandra licks the pearl. It bursts on her tongue into oily rivulets of purple, blue and green. Dean will not open his eyes but she shares the venom through a kiss. Spasms strike them both. They jerk and writhe, convulse and scream. Limbs twist; bones snap. From human, they are reborn. Into nothing human.

Leandra recovers first. Her eyes are wider now. They see the electromagnetic spectrum in infinite shades. Her ears are opened. They hear the beat of hearts across miles, the scurry of beetles under her feet, the twisting of worms beneath the earth.

“Thank you,” she says.

The angel holds out a tentacle and pulls her to her feet. She feels a weight at her shoulders, the fast-growing wings that will give her the sky. Laughing, she turns to her lover. Dean lies still, as if with exhaustion. She calls his name. He opens his eyes; they are ruins of rot. She cries out and drops to her knees, touching his face. He mewls from a mouth of blackened tongues and the stumps of broken teeth.

With tears, Leandra looks up at the angel. “What happened?” she pleads. “Help him!”

“The venom did not take,” the angel replies. “This is as far as he goes. We’ll have to leave him for the beast.”

“No!” Leandra protests. “It was supposed to be both of us. Together. Forever.”

No mercy in the angel’s voice as it speaks again. “You’ll find better lovers where we’re going. Come. Or stay. Your choice.”

Leandra glances at Dean. He doesn’t seem to recognize her. He grunts like a toad as his broken limbs scratch in the soil as if to burrow. Leandra stands. Her tears are of sorrow, and of joy, as the angel and the once-a-woman rise and arrow toward the portals of heaven. Behind them in the dirt, Dean digs his slow way to Hell.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Ripper’s Street

August 24, 2022August 8, 2022 ~ Marge Simon ~ 6 Comments

Softly settles East End fog, thick with industry’s residue. It leaves an oily coat on the skin,

plays games with the vision. Forms appear and vanish in the mist, the stink of piss and rotten meat, slimy creatures of dark alleyways. These streets, the Ripper’s playground.

Me being young, and with no binding ties, I once went slumming with the lads. Begging favors of Miss Mary, we taking turns with her to satisfy our bursting loins. And that she did with competence, such was her service for our coins. When we were done, we bade good night and off she went into that dense Whitechapel fog.

Years passed, and I’m a doctor now, with a different take on whores. They’re still corrupting honest men, giving them most dreadful maladies. I should know, being one among them on that certain night. Now I walk these midnight streets alone, carrying my own assorted tools. There’s many a strumpet up ahead, for a trained man skillful with the blade.

∼ Marge Simon

Pieces of Me

August 17, 2022July 26, 2022 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 5 Comments

It began with a finger. I relished the pain from the first slice. Warm blood ran down my palm as I pushed the blade deeper. Soon the digit left my body. I watched it fall with a pulsing vision of loss through waves of pain. But it invigorated me. Inspired me. I had to keep going.

Each additional cut gave me strength to endure the agony until it became pleasure. What I identified as a compulsion quickly became addiction. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to.

With few fingers and toes left, I went for more non-vital parts. The feeling of sawing through the cartilage of my nose roused heavenly sensation. Both ears undone felt divine. With each new loss of flesh, I felt more free, more alive. With each peel of the surface from my limbs, a burden was lifted.

It took time and effort, but eventually I severed one foot. As I started on its counterpart, the front door opened and in walked my wife. She wasn’t due home until late. I thought surprise would have been our matched reactions. But my eyes looked to hers, and hers to mine. We spoke no words—none were necessary.

She gently took the razor-sharp tool from my hand and began to work on herself.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

Waking

August 10, 2022August 7, 2022 ~ afstewart ~ 3 Comments

Hollow.
This thought prickled at its burgeoning consciousness. An absence of something it once had, a realization of missing emotion. Broken memories lingering as scattered images, swirling strange concepts, and nothing more. Nothing more than tiny pinpricks tap dancing around its membranes.
Allison.
The word stirred on its tongue, with a face remembered, if not recognized. Like a reflection in a mirror, not real but still a representation the eye has seen. A human thing, vaguely important, it knew, but no longer cared why. It closed its eyes and settled back against its cocooned prison.
Pain.
Images of blood-red rain and bright stars shifted through its mind, biting like raw sharp teeth, devouring the broken thoughts and residual feelings in fiery nerve endings. Sulphur scented smoke choked its nose as its own shrieking howls filled its ears. It thrashed, until another fractured noise, a thousand decibels past human comprehension, permeated its prison, cracking around it in chaos. Comforted, it found it liked chaos. It never used to before… It wasn’t sure what had come before. Somehow that didn’t matter anymore. It fell asleep, softly moaning.
Hungry.
Waking, it stretched its spindly limbs, flexed its claws. Saliva dripped between multiple rows of fangs. It squirmed against the shreds of human skin flaking off its scales and three pairs of eyes opened. It blinked against the darkness, fingers tracing against the metal pod imprisoning it. Pushing gently, once, then again with force, the container flexed then snapped, and it was free. Alarms blared and scurrying creatures fled, but some were not fast enough. It fed, drinking salty blood and crunching tasty bones. It looked up, seeing a doorway and read the words etched in the glass.
Research Laboratory.
Quarantine Zone.

~ A. F. Stewart

Return

August 3, 2022July 24, 2022 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 4 Comments

It would hurt to return to the stars. It meant leaving everything behind, and for too long, she wasn’t sure that she could.

No need to hurry, the stars said. At your own time.

But would she ever be ready? Could she? In the light of day, she wasn’t sure. But at night, under the spread of stars, her doubts were quieter, her future clearer.

When her last day dawned, she felt her certainty rise with the sun. She knew that, by nightfall, she would be among the stars. That last day was the sweetest of her life, seasoned by finality and peace. Evening neared, and she prepared herself for the sky—for her beginning and her end.

She had chosen the place long before. Quiet, away from the lights and sounds of town life. Here, under the darkening sky, the earliest stars already shone and beckoned.

It is time.

And so, she began to undo herself. First were the outer things—those things she had never mistaken for herself, and yet held so close. Clothing, jewelry, needless ornaments all fell to the ground around her, and she felt lighter without them.

But then, the harder things to lose. Locks of hair fell away painlessly, but still she felt the cold core of fear within her, knowing that pain must come.

Sure enough, the pain was intense as she began to shed herself. The skin that had for so long defined her limits began to peel away. Arteries, veins, capillaries unraveled themselves from the tissues that had softened her, the bones that had hardened her, the muscles that had strengthened her. These things she shed, and with each loss there was pain, but also lightness. Lighter and lighter she became, until she was light itself.

When at last all pain, all fear, all thought fell away, she knew she had returned. Looking at the distant Earth, she added her glow to that of the stars, illuminating the scraps of a life already long forgotten.