Silly Bunny

April 21, 2015April 17, 2015 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 21 Comments

Oh, what a lovely selection this year! Such cute little bunnies. Each with a cherubic face: round rosy cheeks, tiny pink lips, glistening wide eyes. I don’t know where to begin… I suppose I’ll just pluck one at random – what fun this will be.

They seem to grow uncomfortable when I try to coax the first one toward me. I don’t want to frighten them; don’t they know how I love my precious bunnies? I suppose the fidgeting and jostling should be expected as my impatience drives me to grab the first boy and drag him forward. Calming myself, I reach back in time and recall my grandmother’s instructions from when I myself was a youth.

“Everyone knows you start with the eyes. Nibbling them off the face is the first step. Then the ears. Yes, the ears. You begin on the right, taking small bites until you reach the crown – but don’t crack it! Breaching the skull at this point would be unforgivable!” She would say with mock exaggeration. Giggling, we would begin peeling back the foil wrapper together. “Next, it’s the legs. Nibble, nibble, nibble! Once you reach the torso, it’s time for a final sugary treat – the bow tie. When I was a girl, I ate all the parts off my bunnies first, and then I would line up their leftover bodies to be devoured later!” She would always tickle me when she reached this part of the story.

The din of screaming children is a faint echo compared to the bliss of such a treasured memory. As my eyes open, I see the other bunnies gathered in the corner, scrambling and clawing at one another to climb out of their pen. Silly bunnies! You can’t get out… the wall is much too high, I chortle to myself. Then I notice the change – tears streak their once placid faces; their formerly rosy cheeks are now blotchy and rouged an ugly red. Both saddened and angered, I turn my attention back to the one I’m holding. I realize he’s squirming and shoving against my hand to be set free. My previous jubilant mood is beginning to sour. Why are they ruining this for me? Selfish little bunnies!

In my anger, I must have shaken him too hard – the little bunny is no longer struggling; blood is trickling from his open mouth; his body dangles slack in my grip. Another special day ruined. How I miss my gram and the delicious bunnies she would bring me; now I’m forced to collect my own. Glancing toward the corner, I see a few have given up and are sitting on the floor sobbing. The cacophony of terrified wails from the others has grown in volume and pitch. I wonder if gram was wrong. I wonder if I should set these bunnies free; they really are adorable, after all. Then I look down at the one dangling from my hand. A small smile begins to creep its way across my face. I’m a good boy; I deserve these bunnies.

Everyone knows you start with the eyes…

~ Nina D’Arcangela

Damned Words 11

February 24, 2015March 7, 2018 ~ The Tale Weaver ~ 31 Comments

A Reason
Joseph A. Pinto

I found a reason to walk tween the folds of winter’s shawl, so hand in hand go we along Perdition’s Road. Shall we burn, we burn as one; shall we suffer, then know love cores the depths of our wounds. Lace your trembling fingers round my neck and your burdens I shall carry. I’ve no need to burn this lantern’s oils for our demons come well-known. Let them swirl in the dark, guttering til gone. Death is tenant of our path, yet tonight she’ll know no coin. My life I mortgage for yours; take flight now against my sky.

Nightfall
Nina D’Arcangela

Torn and bloodied, she huddles against the lantern’s pedestal fighting for a life already lost. Broken in spirit, broken in heart, she watches as they circle, awaiting night’s fall. Not taken on the last, she knows this eve she’ll not be so lucky. Day is already beginning to dim; the heavens darken. Having sought solace in the flicker of a dying flame, the whispers in her mind reassure no salvation will be granted. Darker than the deepening hue of the foreboding sky, they watch. The lantern struggles to glow, then gutters out. Her hope vanquished, they descend. The feast begins.

Monarch-Man
Thomas Brown

It had gone midnight when I crossed the park but he was quite visible by the street lamp. Stick limbs. Wild hair. The sickly-sweet scent of honey. He was filthy and beautiful.

Upturned, his pale face bathed in the orange glow. I saw his tight lips, his dusty skin. His eyes were like two orbs of polished stone. I saw myself in them a thousand times over, growing larger as I approached.

He smiled as I swarmed in his eyes, this Monarch-Man, my Emperor. I smiled back. Together we danced around the street lamp, and the night whispered with wing-beats.

Welcome to New Orleans
Zack Kullis

James glanced at the last gas lantern as they followed the old Haitian woman. Its light seemed to warn of coming darkness, fluttering and pointing away from the famed priestess. They had asked her for a taste of local voodoo, thinking it was bullshit until the old woman turned in the darkness of an alley and blew powder into their faces.

“Coupe poudre,” she whispered with a grin.

He pawed at his face until his legs buckled. Unable to move, James gazed with unblinking eyes as the voodoo priestess stooped close to his face.

“Welcome to New Orleans, my pet.”

Color Me Gray
Blaze McRob

It’s another gray winter evening, bereft of color, even the moonlight not distinct. And the light at the end of the old rock wall? Colorless. The sky blind to its presence.

The leaf-less trees pass his word through their twitching branches. He is pissed. Revenge is on his mind. Those who would destroy what he created must pay the price.

A giant pallet, held between his enormous hands, continues to draw all colors other than gray to it.

Armageddon will be much easier now. The lack of color already depresses them.

Great moans come from everywhere as the beasts attack.

High Society
Hunter Shea

“It’s the one right there”
“Where? I can barely see.”
“The one with the old gas lamp.”
The crowbar made quick work of the rusty mausoleum door. Bitter fall wind knifed through the opening.
“Help me with this.”
They chipped away at the cement covering, dumping the coffin on the floor.
“Shhh, you’ll wake the dead!”
They both tittered.
The coffin lid opened with an eerie squeal. The corpse looked like jerky, smelled rancid.
“You first.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He lowered his open maw on the corpse’s face.
Eaters of the Dead Society was not for the squeamish.

Flicker
Jon Olson

This city stands tall, desolate, and lifeless like the trees against the sunless sky. More empty concrete; more of the same. Nothing. Perched atop the corner on a forgotten wall, a lamp. Encased and protected by a small cage. The glass bulb intact, untouched by history. I imagine it glowing; a beacon of hope in dark and despair. Wait! What was that? Did it just… my God, it did! The filament lit up! I swear it flickered. Do it again! The bulb had blinked once… teasing me. Flicker again! Please do it again! Damn it, I need this. God, please…

The Game
Craig McGray

Once a beacon of hope, the lanterns go unlit now. In a new world, where few things are guaranteed and only death is certain, he scours what remains of the charred earth for the precious few that have somehow survived the scorching heat, famine, and disease that has spread across the globe. They think they’re surviving, fools every one of them, but he’ll track them down; the ultimate hunter. When the demon and his ebony stallion finds them, they’ll wish they’d perished like the others. For the game has only one survivor and he rides atop a fleshless black beast.

Raven
Magenta Nero

I pace in the street light, my heels click a numbing tune. Many drive past, slowing down, hungry eyes gawking, but it’s just not their time.

The chosen one rolls up, engine humming. I get a blank stare when I smile and say “My service is free.”

His face drains of colour as it dawns. The irrevocable darkness is a rising tide within, a slow choking. I shriek excitedly as he passes over. My wings burst open, eager to deliver him. The judgement is always a feast of pain. Few are redeemed. Snatching his soul in my beak, I soar.

Ne’er To Be Seen Again
Tyr Kieran

Under this post, he lay slumped against the cold stone wall; bleeding, appropriately ripped open. I watch the pain swell in his eyes and it widens my smile. I had not reason to smile in weeks—not since the woman I loved had been murdered in a savage manner. Despite her being of ill repute, I planned to marry. But on a night like tonight, with ring waiting in my pocket, I happened upon her torn body in the street. He took her from me. And now, I’ve taken him away from Whitechapel, ne’er to be seen in London again.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author
and may not be reproduced without prior consent.
Image © Copyright Dark Angel Photography. All Rights Reserved.

A Foul Day

February 3, 2015May 25, 2016 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 26 Comments

It moved! I swear on my mother’s grave I saw it move! Glancing up, I scan the faces surrounding the table trying to determine if anyone else saw the jerking motion. No one seems to have noticed; they’re all laughing and drinking, chattering away happily while waiting to be fed.

I blink a few times to clear my eyes. I’ve been working too hard lately, putting in too many hours, that’s all. I raise the carving knife and fork once more, preparing to plunge them into the bird trussed before me. It fucking moves again! This time with an accompanying slopping sound. A bead of sweat breaks out on my upper lip; my wife is staring at me hesitantly. With both hands now resting on either side of the beast, I take a few slow, deep breaths to calm my overwrought nerves. A slight nudge comes from my right. It’s my wife, a strained smile on her face; she nods toward the foul creature. I nod back.

Bringing the arm with the fork up, I dab at the dew above my lip and make an off-hand comment about it being roasting in here. Everyone laughs. A small shake of my head, I exhale and raise the knife once again to begin slicing the meat. As the gleaming instruments near the platter, I hear a voice in my head. ‘Go on ya piss-ant piece of shit – cut me open. Show everyone what a big man you are and gut me. Gut me like you gutted your wife when the doctor told her there was no physical reason you couldn’t get it up. Ya don’t have the balls to stick it to her, and you don’t have the balls to stick it to me either!’

What the fuck? My knees nearly buckle and my wife reaches out to steady me. I jerk my arm away. The room grows quiet, the tension nearly palpable. I toss out another remark meant as a joke; the responding chortle is terse, fraught with unease. My wife is no longer smiling; she looks worried. I try to reassure her with a smile of my own, but a bare shake of her head lets me know she’s not buying it. ‘Ya know, she doesn’t have any faith in you anymore, right? She was expecting to marry a man, and look what she got – you! She knows about Terry, too.’ I almost utter a response but choke on my own spittle instead. ‘Yeah, that’s right. She knows you’re sticking it to that bitch from work. She knows you been doin’ it for the past month when all you’re bringin’ home is that limp fish in your pants, she just doesn’t wanna ruin this family get-together-thing. Your ass is outta here as soon as they’re gone, buddy!’

Sure that I’m pale as a ghost, I lean on the table for support once more. My head hanging, limbs trembling; the nervous tick of the fork tapping against a glass the only sound in the nearly silent room. My wife reaches over again and lays a hand on my forearm. I lash out to shove her away, forgetting that I’m holding the carving knife. We stare at one another in shock for a heartbeat before her body crashes forward into the china, her throat sliced ever so neatly from side to side. As the crimson of her blood mixes with the pumpkin colored hue of her favorite tablecloth, a slight gurgling is all that resounds. I look on in horrified disbelief, then one of the children lets out an ear-piercing screech. The demon starts again, ‘Ha! Look what you…’

I begin stabbing it with the fork, maniacally ripping it to bits while screaming incoherently. Everyone in the room is staring at me like I’ve gone insane. I try to explain about the turkey… about not realizing I was still holding the knife… about the pressure I’ve been under… but there isn’t a sympathetic eye to be found. ‘You know what you have to do, don’t ya? If you don’t, they’ll lock you up in the loony bin again.’ An icy cold sheet of acceptance washes over me as I move to the doorway, blocking my teenage brother-in-law from escaping.

I was really hoping this family would be different, not like the last…

~ Nina D’Arcangela

Damned Words 10

December 9, 2014March 7, 2018 ~ TheDamned ~ 28 Comments

Misery
Thomas Brown

Misery rolled with the dogs in the shadows of Tompkin’s shed.

On August 25^th, 1968, Mike Callahan hung himself from a cross-beam in the ceiling. The wood was old and riddled with rot but it held his weight well enough.

On July 13^th, 1985, Sarah Paulson was stabbed in the neck while tending to the potted bulbs on the windowsill. She died instantly. The bulbs never sprouted.

1989, fire. 1997, rape.

In 2001, the Tompkins moved in. The shed became a doghouse. Two-year old Muttley howled perpetually. Three coats of paint couldn’t hide the stains seeping through the skirting board.

Inner Sanctum
Jon Olson

Don’t open it! Leave it shut! You must not let them in. I know you’re tired. You spent years building this place; this hideout; this inner sanctum. Yes, although you can’t see them, your victims are in here too. They coax you to open it; to reveal yourself to the real world. It would be so easy, so relieving, to turn the knob and walk out. No more hiding or pretending. But then what? What will you be out there? Condemned. In here, you rule; you are god. That’s right, step back and let’s go find us a new victim.

Home, Never Sweet, Home
Tyr Kieran

Standing in this place again, after all these years, makes my scars tingle. I swear I can still taste the fear, the spilled blood, the unnatural appetites. Just by looking around, you can see that it was a house of torment; that the structure itself acquiesced to the display of wicked sins. And yet, despite the hatred I bear for my family and this past, I’ve always felt the need to return—a subconscious compulsion to revisit and relive. So, I’ve come back and brought with me this nice trembling family to whom I will gladly pass on the tradition.

Mind Palace
Zack Kullis

In prison I walked the only halls I could – those of my mind. Once luxurious, they now sit in rot and degradation. Twenty years ago this palace was filled with vivid splendor. But memory without input is like a sail without wind – damned to stagnation.

I created this entire place, with the exception of a troublesome door in the darkest recess. No longer able to resist, I open it. A loathsome horde escapes and fills me with their cries of lunacy. The open door shows my cell, its inhabitant raving. My hoarse cackle echos that of the imprisoned maniac.

Portal
Magenta Nero

The force shredded the meat from her bones, flesh flaying like curls of thin paper. She felt herself as a trembling skeleton, the frame that once held her image, her story. Then that too disintegrated in the searing heat. You need to be on the brink to make a choice like that, to challenge the very fabric of the universe, to bend time to your will. The portal opens, a swirling whirlpool of unstable energy, threatening to fold in on itself and disappear. Time at her fingertips and no time to hesitate. She approached the blinding light, she stepped through.

Shadow World
Blaze McRob

One lousy layer of wood is all that separates me from what waits on the other side. Yet, I have fared better than the rest of the town. I am still alive.

I tried warning them, but they laughed at me the way they always did. When they came, it was too late. I should have just fucking gone and not worried about them. I did try. The fault is theirs.

I walk to the door, open it, and embrace the Dark. They are out there, shadows begetting shadows. No more waiting. I am ready.

I am one of them…

ZAP
Leslie Moon

Dusty are those memories: HORSE, the gas scooter we built, the telegraph system…

What is it that two tom-boys saw in that old shack? We imagined a spark could give us a glimpse into history. You held the wire while I hosed the area. You vanished with the last of the sparks; I kept the ashes.

Every year, I go back to find me and see you. I get one question – you always evade the Edison one. This year something is different instead of you answering a question about another century you’re holding a sparking wire and that same dripping hose.

Click
Nina D’Arcangela

Cowering in the corner, I muffle the ceaseless pounding upon my psyche with useless hands that cover my ears. The thunderous clamor from the other side continues night into day, day into night. I watch the walls quiver with each new assault upon my senses; the crack in the floor creeps closer and closer with each quake of the jam. Cold and alone, this huddling in dank misery seems endless. I crawl forward; the battering stills in pregnant pause. I reach for the key in the old lock; listen to its bare click as it disengages. The door swings open…

One-Third
Craig McGray

The world is different now, so fucking different. At first, things seemed random; pockets of disease spreading slightly before being contained, angry mobs destroying their own communities, financial crises. We were too arrogant to see the bigger picture, a picture that didn’t include more than two-thirds of the planet’s population. And now, I’m the one-third of my family still alive. I know what atrocities wait beyond that door because I’ve survived the horrors on this side of that same door. I step over the severed heads and gnashing jaws of my wife and son as I reach for the handle.

Part
Joseph A. Pinto

The chandelier hung here once; your eyes caught in its crystal, cast into a thousand shards, yet I could not see who you were. It is gone now. So are the tools that spurred us, tore all down. I have kept to my menial task of rebuilding; oh, the drudgery of my clumsy fingers through dust clotted hours of toil. Our palace razed, I recall the promise you once glimpsed through these slatted boards. I hold fast to that vision. Our walls crumbled; this foundation strong. You are part of it now. Each pass of my trowel layers your smile.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author
and may not be reproduced without prior consent.
Image © Copyright Dark Angel Photography. All Rights Reserved.

Tid Bits

November 18, 2014May 25, 2016 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 28 Comments

He sits in the bell tower: watching, waiting; scenting the air.

It has been far too long since his last meal, not because he hungers, but because he craves. So many years of eating spoiled meat, the rotted flesh of the dead; so much time held in subjugation, fearing the wrath of a god that does not exist – these things no longer shackle him, he no longer recognizes a master other than his own desire. However, the invasion of his privacy, his sanctuary, after the last feeding frenzy came to light has forced him to stay his hand, to crawl back into the warren beneath the ground to avoid unwanted attention; as well as forced an unnatural silent abandonment of his home. This is his true birthplace – the place he shed the bonds of superstition and started living for himself; he is loath to leave it.

So he sits in the bell tower of the old church that boarders his domicile and he waits.

A fog sits heavy upon the ground this night, cloaking all but the nearest object, masking all but the loudest sound – but not to his senses. He sees and hears with a sharpness the pathetic human rabble can’t even comprehend. Frustration and anger setting in, he is about to descend from his perch when he hears it…

***

“Come on! I know you’re scared, but do you wanna go back and let him beat you again?” The boy’s hushed voice asks, “I’m not gonna let him hurt me again, and I don’t wanna let him hurt you.”

Her small hand trembling in his, one only slightly larger than the other, she looks to her older brother through the mist with tears running over her chubby, flushed cheeks. “No… I don’ wanna let Uncle hurt you or me no more. But Mommy and Daddy said we should stay there. That man read it from the special paper. The paper that said Uncle was s’posed to take care of us until they came back.” Tucking her head into the dirty teddy bear she clutches in the crook of her arm, she begins to sob – small feet trying to keep pace with her brother.

“Look, Mom and Dad aren’t coming back. That man with the paper said they are dead – do you know what that means? Dead?” Hearing her wail even louder, he stops for a moment to kneel in front of her. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you, and I’m sorry I said mom and dad are dead so mean like that, but it’s the truth – I know you don’t want it to be true, I don’t want it to be true, but it is. So now it’s just you and me, and we gotta protect ourselves.”

“Uncle is s’posed to protect us…” she shouts, spittle flying from her swollen pink lips.

Jumping up and clamping a hand over her mouth, he tells her to hush. Tells her that if anyone hears them, they’ll be sent back to Uncle’s house and he’ll beat them for trying to run away. He tells her he’s bringing her to say goodbye to their parents before finding them a new safe home where they don’t have to worry about being afraid of a backhand that will tear her cheek open, or a strap that will leave him too sore to sit for days. Gently rubbing his thumb over her injured face, he sees it begin to bleed again. “C’mon,” he yanks her small arm in anger; anger at himself, anger at their parents for dying and leaving them on their own. “We’re doing this and you had better stop crying about it or I won’t let you say goodbye to Mom and Dad. Do you understand?” This last statement hushes her bawling, and she nods her head as hiccups and quiet shudders escape with her heaving chest and still watering eyes.

Feeling ashamed of scaring her into silence, he puts his head down and starts walking once more.

Listening all the while, the Ghoul’s quills vibrate with the stuttering rhythm of her nearly imperceptible weeping. They are headed his way; where else would dear old Mom and Dad be if not in his burial ground? One clawed nail rap-tap-taps on the exterior metal of the bell before scratching its way down the surface, sending out an eerie wail of protest from the bronze. He begins making his way to the ground.

***

“I can’t go no more,” she protests as she plunks herself down upon the sidewalk.

“We’re almost there,” he replies as he pulls on her arm trying to get her to stand. “I told you to put on sneakers not those silly shoes. Now, come on, get up.”

“I like my pretty shoes, momma gave them to me! She said they were my princess shoes!” The bear is thrown; her arms cross her chest in protest. Looking into her face, he can see he’s made another mistake; her lips are curling, cheeks puffing up, and eyes beginning to squint for yet another outburst.

“Shh.” Finger to his lips, he bends down. “I’ll carry you and you don’t have to worry about walking. Okay?” he pleads, hoping she won’t start screaming this close to their destination.

From the fog, another voice answers, “Let me. I’m much stronger and I believe where you are headed is just over to the left.” Both children freeze in terror, trying to peer through the dense fog to see who is addressing them.

Slowly, walking with a paced gate, a hunched figure begins to emerge. Holding the teddy bear out in front of it, it speaks to them once again. “I have your toy animal, would you like it back? And if you are tired, I can easily carry the both of you.” He comes into full view – the boy pisses himself, the girl begins to giggle.

“Are you a giant talking puppy?”

The hair along his spine bristles in protest, “No child, I am not a giant puppy. I am something entirely other. But I can pretend to be a puppy if you’d like?” Sensing the boy’s need to flee, the creature reaches out a hand and lays it heavily on his shoulder. Addressing the little girl once more, he inquires, “Would you like to ride on me the rest of the way so that your pretty shoes don’t hurt your feet? You can pretend I’m a puppy, I don’t mind.” He grins, being sure to keep his lips sealed, hiding his teeth.

The girl leaps from the ground, and after reclaiming her teddy bear, climbs upon him. Gritting his teeth at the indignity, he allows the grin to slip as he stares the boy in the eye.

“Okay puppy, let’s go,” she kicks his flanks with her wooden orthopedic shoes and clutches tiny fistfuls of his highly sensitive hair. Bearing the humiliation, he nearly drags the boy along as they proceed to the graveyard.

Reaching the field-stone wall, he bounds over with the one child holding firmly to his back while tossing the boy onto the grass. Retrieving him once more, the Ghoul asks for the name of their parents.

The little girl pipes up that her mommy’s name is Rose as she pulls and stretches his skin with tiny digging fingers. Finding his humor for this game fading fast, he draws the boy close to his face and, with much malice in his tone, asks again for their parents name. The boy replies that it is Rose – their last name is Rose. Their mother is Chistina and their father is Benjamin.

Breathing fetid breath into the boy’s face, he mocks, “I guess that makes you little Bennjie then, doesn’t it?”

“His name is Christopher… he was named after mommy. Do you want to know my name? Do ya? Do ya, puppy?” The growl that issues from his throat is not intended, but he does not bother to cut it short, either. The small girl stops laughing and becomes still. With his free hand, he reaches around and plucks her from his back. Lifting the boy with his other hand, he begins to bound toward the portion of the cemetery where they may be interred.

Reaching the proper area, he slows and asks the boy where their marker is. There is no response. He glances down and sees the boy’s vacant stare. “Well, point then if you are too much a dullard to speak in my grasp.” The boy motions slightly with his head; the creature nods as he recalls the planting of the Roses’ and their elegant yet modest gravestone. Striding to where they rest, he tosses both children to the ground.

“Here you are children, reunited with Mommy and Daddy once again. I believe I overheard you discussing saying goodbye to them before moving on, is that correct, Bennjie?”

Rushing to her bother to clasp her arms around his neck, the little girl defiantly states, “I told you his name is not Bennjie! His name is Christopher!” Her face is red once more, in anger this time. “You’re just a big meanie – a monster that no one likes!”

A full grin splits the Ghoul’s face this time, his teeth glinting with saliva. The girl stares, not comprehending.

“I beg your pardon, my sweet one. I’ll ask again. Christopher, is this or is this not the grave of your parents?” He takes one knee before the children, placid, calm. Christopher nods once.

With lighting speed, the demon whirls and punches a fist through the packed earth, through the lid of the uppermost casket and rips dear mommy from the grave. Her putrescent corpse drips a trail of pealing tissue and carries a noxious fume as he holds it before them. Both stare in terror.

“Well go on, give mommy a kiss goodbye. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? To say goodbye… here is your chance. You don’t want it? Don’t you think Mommy would like a hug and a kiss before you ungrateful little shits disobey her and your father’s wishes? Hmm?” He growls, “No takers?” His fangs flash in full display.

“Fine, I’ll just give your Mommy a goodbye kiss for you.” And with that, he turns and bites clean through the front portion of her skull, ripping the still clinging sinew and tissue away with a horrendous sucking sound amid the crunching of bone.

Turning back, he leers at both children before spitting their mother’s face onto the ground at their side.

The little girl begins to screech hysterically while clutching her brother. With a flick of his forefinger, he silences her by sending her tiny body tumbling several graves away. The boy has still not moved; he sits frozen, gaping at his decaying mother.

“Damn!” the Ghoul declares as he tosses the corpse at the boy’s feet. He stares at the small girl, hoping he hasn’t killed her. He detests eating dead flesh. After a moment or two, he sees slight movement and hears the beginning of a groan. As the faint groan develops to a moan, adrenaline courses through him. In a leap, he is upon the child. He lifts her by her skull and with two strides is back at her brother’s side.

She screams hysterically for Christopher to help her while clutching her auburn capped head. Growing tired of her ceaseless kicking and the cacophony emitting from such a small mouth, the creature starts to squeeze her cranium until she can no longer screech. The kicking – now only a spastic jerking motion. Easing his grip, her body relaxes but her feet continue their odd peddling.

Holding the child before his gruesome, viscera covered face, the Ghoul asks the little girl to tell him her name. Her blank stare gives him the answer he seeks – the child is no longer capable of comprehension, the pressure on her skull too great; it has deadened her brain. Wide eyed like a porcelain doll, she stares back at him, drool puddling in her gaping mouth, and overflowing her lower lip.

Without removing his eyes from the little girl, he asks Christopher to tell him her name. Listlessly Christopher replies, “Deborah. Her name is Deborah, but everyone calls her Orie.” The monster lets out a resounding cackle, leans forward and delicately pinches Orie’s pink tongue between his front teeth. Once he has a firm hold on it, he slowly pulls backward until it, and a portion of her esophagus, tears free from her tiny body. With a slapping sound, it strikes his chest. Slowly, sucking bite by sucking bite, he consumes the delicate morsel. The drool now runs red with blood.

Bending down in front of Christopher, the creature asks if the boy would like to say goodbye to his sister. Christopher turns his head away.

The Ghoul bites into Orie’s face as though it were a ripe tomato. Juice spurts in all directions. Holding the small body to his mouth, he sucks it dry until there is no more fluid to take. Wanting to get to the organs before they cool, he rips the stomach cavity open and begins plucking them out one by one; the smallest he grabs in handfuls like raisins. After finally sucking the bones clean of their marrow, he tosses them to the side and turns his attention back to Christopher once more.

Sounds echo in the distance, Uncle must have discovered them missing and assumed they’d run to the cemetery.

The blood smeared visage before Christopher speaks to him again. “You know your legs are useless. You know they, and your spine, were shattered on the grave markers as we traveled to this place, yet you didn’t tell your sister even when she begged you to save her. Why? Why let her die thinking you didn’t care?”

“Does it matter?”

Considering the boy, the Ghoul reaches out and rips off his left leg, then the right. He laps the blood pouring from the arteries, then just as with the girl, he slices the stomach and chest cavity open. The child’s heart beats at an alarming rate, his breath rapid and shallow, his lungs gasping for air as his mind tries to process what his body can no longer feel. Looking the demon in the eyes, he speaks his final words.

“At least I won’t go to waste, huh?”

With his hand wrapped around the boy’s heart, the beast replies, “No, you certainly will not. The trouble you children have brought me will force me back into the warrens once again. But you and your sister made for a scrumptious snack.” Leering in pleasure, he rips the heart from the boy’s chest, devours it whole, then fades back into the fog.

~ Nina D’Arcangela

Damned Words 9

September 23, 2014March 7, 2018 ~ TheDamned ~ 27 Comments

Time
Jon Olson

How long has it been? No way to keep track. Not in here; not in this crypt. I’m sure the humans know. Once, they were prey; I was the hunter, too powerful for defeat. How long since they dug this pit and threw me in? Imprisoning and confining me to this tomb? These stone walls: built to contain; to prevent my escape. Impenetrable; unbeatable. That’s their belief; makes them feel safe; makes them forget. Time will be their undoing. Look there! See the plants? Slowly, they’ve found a weakness; slipping in through cracks. A way in, is a way out.

Stone Cold
Blaze McRob

The time is nigh. He feels it, smells it, tastes it. The rocks encased in the cement binding the wall together tingle with excitement. Leaves growing within the cracks between the rocks turn towards the sound of foot steps.

The fool approaches. Each step brings him ever closer to his destiny.

Anticipation hangs heavy in the air.

The young man is entranced by the wall. Stepping closer, the leaves reach out to him and force him flush against the structure. His spirit and the soul trapped within the wall exchange places.

He walks away, a devilish grin on his face.

Bipedal Meal
Zack Kullis

The grating whisper of movement over rock and stone pull me from my long slumber. Sweet bipedal things, wet and soft, are often driven by curiosity into these cavernous depths.

Warm hands grip the cold rocks as they descend with their blasphemous light. Their tasty meat, covered by cloth and rope, awakens my ravenous hunger. One draws near, its eyes focused on where it climbs, unaware it just took its last breath.

No scream escapes its crushed throat. Through his terrified mind I see my eyeless face and gaping maw until his death closes the vision and my meal begins.

Stone Deaf
Leslie Moon

Etch away the soil of my heart. Let the roots and tendrils cling.
Where once blood flowed upon a course, there pulses a stony thing.
Nothing do I feel but cold. But when I lay me down…
A hatchet set to “swoosh” and “ching”; a dark and eery sound.
Young and fair my head to rest . Choice sinews for carrion to shred.
They laughed so coarsely in the crowd; fools believed I was dead.
I will get my pound of flesh when next I am set free.
Beware those who have put me here. A rock cannot hear your pleas.

Cannibalistic Life
Tyr Kieran

Life, all life, is cannibalistic. The temperate way to say this is ‘cyclical’, but let’s be honest, the transition isn’t exactly a smooth one. Some take the phoenix perspective, where life rises in miraculous fashion from impossible means. And, I say, that is nothing but ignorance. Nature survives on destruction, it requires death. This malformed wall, for example, was built with more than stone—a mortar made of mud and human remains. The bodies of Jewish children stacked atop their brothers and mothers by “superior” humans; Aryans advancing by killing. And, from this concentrated death, green nature shamelessly grows anew.

The Cave
Craig McGray

The secrets of the cave were no secret to Ravena. She’d seen what happened to those who wandered too close, and it fascinated her: the screams as the inhabitants revealed themselves; the panic when victims realized that there was no escape; the blissful sound of ripping flesh, the tearing of sinew as the creatures devoured their meal. Even as a child, she found delight in the slaughter and dreamt of the day when she might partake in the massacre. She would wait no longer as today was her eighteenth birthday and two adventurous campers had just strayed from their group.

Eve
Thomas Brown

Your bodies slid over one another, lubricated by sweat and the warming oil from your bedside drawer. I watched for as long as I could, hypnotised by your sinuous limbs.

“I’m sorry,” you said afterwards. You said other things too; empty words as hollow as the hole in my heart. “LonelyfrustratedIdon’tlovehimyouareneverhere.”

When your speech was finished, I took the bedside lamp to your head. You died in a flash of light. I buried you in the dark, beneath the stone wall between our garden and the fields behind. Nettles grow there now. In the summer, butterflies dance over your grave.

Immurement
Joseph A. Pinto

And now there is nothing, nor shall there ever be; from light I have walled myself. Immurement eternal; so shall I become one with stone. My fortress, my penitentiary – a fitting fate; obscurity wrapped as melded shawl round my shoulders. Yet still you find your way, flitting ‘tween cracks I believed mortared so long ago. Ivy seeks my companionship; so too do you seek to entwine my heart. But I have grown unjustly hardened, so wrongly decayed. Leave me, do you hear? I deserve as much. Let me solidify as I contemplate the ways I have erred, gone wrong.

Home
Nina D’Arcangela

From impenetrable depths I hear a single word drifting on stone-cold breath: Come. The shadows beckon me; an icy existence beyond pain calls to one of its ilk – a destroyed soul, my soul. The nether recognizes its own; the summons continues. I stumble forward, grasping desperately at sanity. Home, it murmurs seductively. I scream my need for shrouded deliverance. Reaching a desperate hand forward, I place it upon the stone, follow the path into dappled darkness, but no matter the length of my stride, sanctuary eludes me; the promise is shattered. I’ll forever chase shadows that reveal nothing but light.

Myth
Magenta Nero

Smell the rot you will soon become as your eyes close for the final time. You have always been within my grasp; you have always been mine.

Rest against my ancient skin; hard as rock, cold as stone. Flay yourself against my edge: sharp, cruel, merciless. Feel the warmth drain away, blood turns to ice in your veins. The pain of your myth subsides. Breath escapes as mist, a long held speechless gasp. Before you infinite nothingness, mocking laughter.

I will swallow you whole and fold the illusion of time. Rest against my ancient skin; you have always been mine.

Spelunker
Hunter Shea

Skulls. I’m surrounded by skulls.

“Wait, wait, don’t leave me here!” Sweat pumped from Jarod’s pores. Was it the pain from the compound fracture? Or was it the skulls?

“You can’t leave me here with all these dead people!”

Steve turned his headlamp into the crevasse. It couldn’t penetrate the pitch. Somewhere down there, his friend was losing it.

“We’ll be back with help. Just hang tight, Jarod!” he shouted.

“They’re only stones, buddy,” Steve added. “It’s the shock. It’ll wear off.”

Jarod stared at the wall’s rock face.

Only stones.

“Heh, heh,” something cackled.

The first stone shifted.

“Noooooooo!”

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author
and may not be reproduced without prior consent.
Image © Copyright Dark Angel Photography. All Rights Reserved.

Inside

September 2, 2014November 17, 2014 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 37 Comments

Day 1

I can hear them scratching – almost ticking, always clicking, as they move around inside my head. It’s maddening. Their tiny feet always touching, testing, feeling their way about. Each hair-coated limb sliding between the soft tissue and bone – scuttling through the crevasse in between. Feeding off the fluid…growing.

Sometimes, when I’m looking in the mirror, in the worst moments, the moments where I have to hold onto the basin to support myself and can barely catch a full breath, I swear I see a shadow scuttle behind my eye. The quick darting of a grotesque form moving swiftly past before I can focus on it. My own visage in the mirror is a horror in itself; long hair a greasy tangled mess, cheeks sunken and hollow, skin a sickly yellow hue from their rancid poison. Sinking to the floor, scratching at my face to be rid of them, I gouge my eye sockets with filthy, ragged nails. Will they find their way through the opening if I offer one? Covered in the blood oozing from destroyed tissue around my eyes, forehead slashed bare, with flesh caked beneath my fingernails, I crawl on hands and knees to the bed where I cower beneath the covers seeking refuge, hoping to hide. But there is no refuge, nowhere to hide; they are always with me – inside me, there is no escape from what is inside…

Day 2

I would have thought knowing they were inside me would be the worst part, but it’s not – the mind adapts to such things; it’s feeling their movements, their scurrying back and forth beneath my skin that is the most repulsive part. I don’t know how they were able to gestate inside me; they seem maddened at not being able to get out. Their constant frenzy keeps me up at night – I’m getting no sleep; it keeps me sick throughout the day – nourishment something I’ve not known in weeks; a prisoner in my own home – I’m terrified to go into the light, I look the part of a monster – a filth ridden hag.

I wonder: will they roast in the sunlight if I let myself burn in its glorious blaze? The sun beating down upon me, turning my skin the blistering red of cracked paint on canvas. Perhaps I should wander to the basement and embrace the furnace with its searing hot metal, cooking myself like meat thrown upon a hot skillet. Or simply douse myself with open flame; does it matter at this point? Tempted to try such things, my mind wanders to the possibilities: what if they panic from the heat and start to run, cascading in a black surging mass from my ears and shrieking maw? Nowhere for me to go, no way to escape them – more still coming, an endless flow continuing their frantic evacuation. What if they are no longer only in me, but all over me? The thought alone drives me beyond the limits of this tenuous sanity I now grasp.

God, the cacophony of their humped bodies sliding between the soft tissue of my brain and the hardness of my skull is deafening. I have to find a way to get them out! Nails gouge once more; I rip chunks of skin from my body sending fresh streams of puss and blood down my face, past my eyes – my mind shuts down and I feel no more.

Day 3

Oh God, I think I threw one up during the night. It’s lying on my pillow, but it doesn’t look like I expected it would. It’s far too elongated, thin and withered as am I, almost a milky grey color. Covered in mucus, mine or its own, I cannot say.

It twitched! I know I saw it twitch, I didn’t imagine it. Frozen in fear, I stare wide eyed at the collapsed carcass of the thing on my pillow, hoping it was my imagination. It twitches again; not my imagination.

I leap up, tangled in my own covers, screaming wildly. It still lies there making a feeble attempt to move; I think it’s dying. There is a sloshing in my head – I moved too fast, screamed too loud, they are scuttling insanely about inside my skull. I retch, and retch again. Vomiting up more, I realize they are no longer only in my head but have found a way to travel into my throat! The thought makes me retch yet again. They are agitated by my convulsions; I can feel their vibrating urgency to quell their host. Oh God, please get them out of me!

The pounding in my head is beyond bearable, the heaving of my starved body uncontrollable; afraid to breath yet terrified I won’t, panic begins to set in as my body spasms of its own volition.

Blackness.

Day 4

They are larger now, no longer simply sliding through the minute fissures of my skull. I feel a piercing pain with each stab of their clawed legs as they dig in and drag themselves forward. I can barely inhale for the number of them clinging to the walls of my throat. Coughing blood and eight legged bodies, I feel them holding on with their barbed legs so as not to be ejected with each contraction.

Swallow or vomit my only choices, I grab a bottle of water from my nightstand and begin to gulp the warm water. I can feel it sluicing over their swollen bodies like lesions grown from my esophagus, not just the intruders that they are. I vomit more, pulling one or two free that refuse to be expelled. The others grasp tighter, puncturing the delicate pink tissue of my already mutilated gullet. These, the ones spewed onto the bed, seem different, more frantic as they dance about. Their color more dense, darker – their bodies harder in form. Clearly blind, they dart in sporadic circles, slowly growing more sluggish, more translucent; collapsing like the first one I saw.

It seems they die quickly, they don’t survive long outside my body.

Day 5

Scratching my ear, I feel something long and thin move away from my finger. Something covered in fine wisps of hair, something that slithers backward and draws into itself, much the way I have snatched my own hand away, clutching it with its blood covered finger to my chest.

Crawling again to the bathroom and scaling the sink, I open a drawer and reach for my scissors intending to cut away a chunk of hair to more easily see inside my ear. As I grab a handful of hair, I realize that the clump I’m clutching is slowly pulling away from my scalp with a slurping sucking noise. Tendrils of a thick sticky substance adhere to the skin for a brief moment before slopping to the side of my face. The exposed tissue is raw, puss covered and stings – small globules of fatty tissue clinging in place.

With a terrified grimace, I turn my head ever so slightly to allow the light to shine on my ear. There! Just like the shadow scuttling behind my eye, something quickly moves further into the darkened recesses of my ear canal. Barely able to stand on quivering legs, weak from hunger and brought to the brink of insanity by this infestation, I pull my long tweezers out of the drawer – the medical ones, and with a shaking and still bleeding hand, I begin to reach into my ear hoping to extract what is hiding there.

A sharp nip warns me to go no further; I drop the tweezers and my other hand slips off the slickened sink as I crash to the tile floor. The coolness of the stone a brief reprieve from the molten pain I feel in my head and throat. The smack upon my skull barely noticed above the crunch of crushed bodies.

Day 6

I wake in a sticky patch of drying blood on the bathroom floor. Disoriented at first, I wonder how I got here, but the first subtle movement reminds me as they begin to rummage through my decimated body. Glancing downward, I can see the shape of one as it moves under my skin making its way across my abdomen and down my thigh. They’re crawling throughout my entire body now. They seem to be making their way to the cooler surfaces that are in contact with the tile floor I lay upon.

They relish the cool feel of the stone as much as I do. The clutter of them must have moved while I was unconscious. There is a pregnant hum to the silence, almost an anticipation of retribution should I try to move yet again.

The more aware I become, the more I come to realize that they are not all seeking to be dormant – not all moving toward the cool floor. The smaller ones still crawl through me, using their clawed legs to move in and around my organs. My body spasms from the pain, and I feel the frenzy of awakening. They nip in vague warning for me not to move, poke at my tender innards with their pincers and jab with hardened claws.

Exhausted from not eating, from the loss of blood, and the horror of knowing my body is their only source of food, I reach out towards the edge of the bathtub. As my hand closes around it, I feel their carcasses crunching between skin, tendon and bone. They bite and scrabble frantically to escape; I can’t help but feel a smug bit of satisfaction at this. Others awaken and join the fray, biting and stabbing with abandon at their host; my body. But I refuse to be coerced, I have found strength in their terror. I will drag myself to the bathtub – its cool surround offering a coffin of reprieve.

I manage to pull my torso up and over the edge. God do they hate this. The moment my abdomen is bent in two, head dangling in the tub, I begin to spew blood and small black bodies. Fatigued from my efforts and unable to go any further, I lay bent over the edge and watch as their slickened bodies scurry about, unable to find purchase on the smooth surface. Too drained to do more, I collapse in a heap half in, half out of my enamel coated salvation as the malformed creatures desperately crawl up my limp hair, trying to enter through ears and mouth that others are still using as a route of mass exodus from my traitorous body.

Day 7

Pressure, there is so much pressure building behind my eyes. My head feels like it’s going to burst. So many of them have returned to my skull – I feel them packed in there like the woolen stuffing of a doll. For some reason this thought makes me laugh. Stuffed like a doll I am with crawling monsters gnawing away at my insides. More laughter, hysterical this time. I hear it as if from a distance, but know it’s emanating from my own cracked and swollen lips, my own cracked and damaged mind. The laughter gives me energy, makes them crazy. I can feel their panicked agitation escalate with the flow of what little blood is left in me.

Heaving the rest of my body into the tub, my swollen and infested carcass is wracked with uncontrollable convulsions. A stream of small creatures emerge with the spittle that I cough up. They scurry for the darkness of the drain. Lifting one foot, I manage to flip the hot water tap. Immediately they begin to scale my body and climb my flesh to escape the torrid flow.

Twisting, contorting and clawing my way around, I manage to turn my body so that my head is closer to the near boiling stream. It is excruciating; gloriously agonizing. I rip handfuls of my own hair from my head, and stuff them into the drain effectively clogging it to trap the scalding water in the basin with me – with them!

Delirious as I am, a small voice in the back of my mind whispers that I may be imagining all of this, but as my flesh peels back from bone and sinew, and the smell of steaming meat assaults my nostrils, I can’t help but feel that I have finally won. They will die along with me in agony and pain. My final act – to slide shut the glass doors, trapping them in the swiftly filling watery grave I’ve chosen for us all.

~ Nina D’Arcangela

Leeds

August 22, 2014November 17, 2014 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 24 Comments

Feet pounding as fast as they can, I tear across the hard-packed ground. Tree branches slap my arms, scrape my face, tangle in my hair; I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I hear it chasing me, not quite on my heels yet, but close enough to make my skin want to crawl clean off my bones. At any moment, I expect to be snatched from the trail by god-knows-what kind of clawed hand. The thing is so near I can smell its stench. It’s enough to make me gag: make my eyes water and my nostrils burn. I set out to find it, to track it – to prove its existence. What a fool. I was never tracking it; it was tracking me the entire time.

If I can make it to the water, everything will be all right – that’s what all the stories say. Make it to that deep blue pool buried in the Pines and for some reason, the creature won’t come any closer.

I can’t be too far from the lake. Christ – I must have trekked thirty miles into the dense Barrens since leaving the road. It’s got to be around here somewhere; I’m right where the locals said the water would be. But there was something not quite right about the way those ‘Pineys’ were smiling…

My foot tangles in an exposed root where the dirt loosens and turns to a softer, sandier mixture. In near panic, I almost go down but somehow manage to keep my feet beneath me. The forest is thinning out quickly; I can see a much brighter patch ahead.

A guttural roar sounds from behind; it’s nearly on top of me. I can feel the air shift to the side as my eye catches sight of something black whipping by just off to the right. I scream – no sound comes out – but I don’t stop moving. Before I know it, the trees clear and I stumble onto a small beach.

I can see the water and whisper a silent prayer of thanks to those hicks who somehow managed to get me here. Flinging myself down at the water’s edge, I finally dare to look behind me. I can’t see it clearly, but I can feel it standing just under the dense canopy of the trees – hiding in the darkness.

Dunking my head into the cool water, I laugh when I realize what I’m holding. The entire time I was running, I was clutching my cell phone, but lost everything else. Can you hear me now? No! More hysterical laughter; the sound desperate even to my own ears. There’s no cell service out here. I can’t believe that in my panic the only thing I managed to save is this useless piece of crap. One last look at it and I hurl it as far as I can across the lake.

Leaning down again, I taste the water. At first barely a sip to make sure it’s safe, then small handfuls to quench my thirst. Making myself stop, I roll over and stare at the sun like it’s my newfound savior. The Pines are so dense; this small clearing is a godsend. I can still hear the thing rustling in the trees, but for now, next to the water, I’m safe.

I must have drifted off from exhaustion, maybe simple relief, I don’t know. When I wake, the sun is low and dim shadows have crept half-way across the small beach. I can hear it breathing and pacing in the brush. A spike of adrenaline slashes through me and I dive for the only hope I see; one long bow from a white cedar growing out over the lake. Scrambling to it, I climb as far out as I can, shimmying backward the whole while. From what I know of the Blue Hole, the water is deep as hell. Drowning is no better an option than feeding myself to Mother Leeds’ thirteenth son, and I would prefer to do neither.

As full night falls, I can see its red eyes glaring at me, along with the shadowy impression of a dark, winged figure. Its tail flicking from side to side accompanies the sound of tree branches being torn apart. Bellying down further onto the limb, I try for a little more distance. I know my chances of surviving the night are slim… Still, if I can keep my balance and stay awake, I might just make it until morning.

I hear a faint splash, and a responding roar from the woods – almost a challenge. Terrified to take my eyes off the beast before me, but more afraid of what lurks below, I chance a glance downward. Elongated, translucent hands reaching from the depths are all I see before I’m yanked from my perch, screaming for help that’s never going to come.

***

“Howdy there, Bob, Tomas,” the deputy says as he steps from his vehicle to greet the two men sitting outside the small shack that serves as a convenience store in this area of the Pine Barrens.

“Mornin’ officer,” they reply in kind. “What can we do you for?”

“Well, seems we found a car, one of those German import types, parked a ways down the road in one of the pull-offs. Little yellow thing called a Jetta. You boys know anything about that?”

Looking at each other, Tomas spits and says, “Might be we do. Some young girl in a yeller car stopped in here yesterday asking for directions to the hole. Could be it’s the same car.”

“Tell me you didn’t give them to her, did you?” exasperation plain in the officer’s voice.

“Might be we did. Don’t see why we wouldn’t if she asked,” Bob answers rolling a toothpick between his teeth.

The deputy reaches into his vehicle and grabs the radio handset. “Dispatch, we’re gonna need a tow out on Rt. 532. It’s a yellow Jetta – can’t miss it. Hang on just a sec.” He releases the com button. “Boys, she have anyone else with her?”

“Nope, but she had a crap load ‘a gear in the back seat of that foreign auto-mobile of hers.”

Clicking the mic back on, the deputy relays, “Dispatch, I’m gonna need a team on the ground looking for a backpack, tent, cell phone – any personal items they can find heading from that location toward the hole. Better make it a wide sweep, call all the guys in on this.”

“Copy that, Tim. Do we need a rescue team down there too?” the dispatcher asks with hope and concern in her voice.

Looking over the roof of his car at Bob and Tomas, seeing the grin on both of their faces, he answers, “Negative on the rescue team, just the cleanup crew and the tow.” Getting back in the car and replacing the now silent handset, the deputy tips his hat to the men on the bench as they nod in return. He puts the car in drive, and mutters to himself “Fucking city folk,” as he drives off.

~ Nina D’Arcangela

Damned Words 8

July 8, 2014March 7, 2018 ~ TheDamned ~ 27 Comments

Nothing Lives
Jon Olson

Reflections in windows tease and haunt, showing what was, and what is no longer. Do not look at the glass! Damn, too late. Reflected before me is a tree. Its trunk, branches, and leaves, all on display. I want it to be real. I roam these empty streets. Searching, hoping, and praying to find someone; something; anything. People, animals, and plants are all gone. Concrete, steel and glass remain. I call out and listen, but only my echo replies. This city is dead; nothing lives. The sky is grey; no sun or clouds. Life has abandoned this place; abandoned me.

In Everything
Zack Kullis

They watch and wait in everything. I can feel their hungry eyes and thrusting glares, pulling for the acknowledgement that would seal my fate. Stupid therapist called it Pareidolia.

Demons, creatures, faces and things of terror live in almost everything. Seeing them draws them into your head where they eat your soul. I avoided them until today, overcome by a single glance at a building, a window holding the tree and cloudy sky – all of them full. I heard them coming. Two ice picks saved me, one for each eye. With the windows to my soul ruined, I was free.

Apparition
Magenta Nero

It reflects her suffering, an enticing apparition. “Ease the regret, press your fingertips to mine. I can take from you the memories, I can turn back time.” Its huge empty eyes drip in black streaks, it twists and sighs evocatively. She reaches for its ghostly hand but she pauses, her fingertips tremble, hovering just above the glass. The apparition buckles with rage, the glass rattles as it slams against the surface, begging for release.

“Not yet.” she says and turns away. She wraps on her coat and scarf and heads quickly out the door; she is late for work again.

The Hill
Craig McGray

Neighborhood kids told stories about The Hill, regurgitating false truths that their parents told them. Tall tales about what really went on behind the mirrored glass and towering brick walls, but I learned early on that most parents were full of shit, mine included.

My father told me they did ‘things’ to bad people on The Hill and I should stay away from there. My dad was an asshole, but he wasn’t full of shit.

He should have taken his own advice because they, I mean WE, really did some horrific things to him when he came to The Hill.

The Mill
Nina D’Arcangela

I look out upon all that is left. Sunlight scorches this land; with morning comes heat, an assault upon existence. With evening, a frigid wind; though still a brief respite. I squint as I glare down among those who wallow at my feet. My stone begins its grind, my furnace stokes; a rival to the blistering rays without, but only barely. Their faces turn up, beseeching. I watch as they enter my opening maw; again as they depart in concert with the tenors screech from my bowels. Stragglers dally, grubbing for scraps. Something needs fill the stone on the ‘morrow.

Looking Out
Leslie Moon

curtains brown, tattered and torn

reflections were once welcome

swatting away evening’s flies

light, life, color, have been exiled

I wonder to where they have fled

***

Dark shadows of night interpose

greedily they suck the last drop of day

beating away the memories of her, of us

“futile” I murmur

there is nothing left to hold dear

***

In response the fluttering starts to sneer

night’s sinister incessant chuckle

It loves to remind me

there may still be bloodied remnants

in swiss dotted fabric that the flies have missed

white now turned rusty

I tell myself “better not to remember”

Nothing
Joseph A. Pinto

Nothing will stand between us; nothing will keep me away. The cruelty, locked in your silent world. All you hear is nothing, even as I shout your name. What see of you beyond the reflection of spirit-churned skies? What know of you within that haunted heart? I shall shatter your glass; recover your incarcerated soul. The cruelty, shackled in your listless words. All you think is nothing, even as I cry your name. What suffer of you behind bricked walls? You wait eternally; I say wait no more. Nothing will deny sky from its horizon. Angels of their fall. Nothing.

The Conductor
Thomas Brown

Fingers clutch at the crumbling windowsill. Outside, light spills across the apartment blocks and the gardens beneath.

He calls it a garden but it is little more than paving slabs on which she reclines and smokes and dies a little death each night. She loves cigars. Fat, Cuban things in her slim hands. The whole of her is slim. When she stretches out he imagines taking a stick to her ribs, beating them, making music with her bones. It is not enough, just to see. Beneath his practised hands, her bones could sing. A symphony of human sound, in harmony!

Glass Portrait
Blaze McRob

A picture forms in the panes of glass as it does every day before dusk becomes night. Clouds and trees tonight. Maybe an impending storm. Yes, that’s what I need. Evil must be displayed!

Even now the clouds twist and turn as they darken, and the trees are blown away from the glass portrait. The tranquil scene changes before me. An evil face forms in the glass, hideous in its deformity, mocking the world with its visual display of arrogant intent.

I walk inside and look in the vestibule mirror. “Dorian Gray, you look as young as ever,” I say.

Tainted View
Tyr Kieran

I used to love the view. I’d sit by the sill, mindlessly picking at the cracked paint and I’d watch life happening on the street below; the hasty flow of businessmen scattering off to hard-earned paychecks, health nuts jogging in tight clothes with their leashed, oversized dogs, even the filthy down-trodden vagabonds that stumble from meter to meter—all symptoms of life’s intricate dance; of life’s beauty. Oh, how wrong I was! Now, I see the gritty reality. Ever since my wife hung herself in that goddamn tree, I’ve realized that the window shows the truth. It only shows pain.

A Trip to the Old Country
Hunter Shea

“That’s it right there,” Donal said, pointing at a four-paned window on the second floor. It was one of the few that still had glass in the barren building. The clouds had begun to darken and the air smelled like spring rain.

Finoula pressed her hand against his cheek. “If it’s too hard, we can go back.”

“No, I’m fine.” He kissed her palm. “Professors aren’t supposed to diddle their students, but some do anyway.”

“Bastard,” Finoula said, her gaze locked on the cloud-swept window.

Donal grinned. “You’re standing on him right now.”

He gave the soft earth a stomp.

Damned Words 7

April 22, 2014March 7, 2018 ~ The Tale Weaver ~ 29 Comments

Anger Falls
Zack Kullis

It trickles at first, barely perceptible, moving slowly towards an inevitable end. Heat blooms, melting what once was controlled in an icy grip. The trickles collide, begin to coalesce, mingle and fuse.

The calm silence swiftly flows towards a thundering rumble. It pushes against its boundaries with a hint of its violent potential. There is no damn to hold back the deluge.

Anger swells, mounting, growing exponentially as I yield to the unstoppable. I feel the precipice as the fury carries me over and plunges me into the tumultuous abyss of wrath. This is fury’s terminal velocity – Anger Falls.

The Pool Below
Jon Olson

My heart beats rapidly; anxious with excitement. I brought the children like it told me to do. That was so easy. The water is still, like glass, before spilling over into the pool below. Somewhere in those depths, it’s watching, waiting; and hungry. It wants them. Laughing, the little ones are unaware. The movement is ferocious, the scaled grey hand frightening, the laughter silenced; and I am alone. I pull my eyes away from the violence, back to the calm. A deep breath, an exhale and I relax. It’s over, for now, until it grows hungry again. And it will.

Amber Vision
Nina D’Arcangela

Sluicing beneath the calm amber surface, she admires her own form; long sensuous limbs encased in umber scales glinting iridescent, claws meant for rending soft flesh, eyes the barest taint of rust. She floats these waters from another time, another place – all but forgotten. Spying one wading to catch its meal, she allows the flow to carry her near, masks herself as that of something much smaller, permits her seeming capture. A smile parts her lips as her hooked fangs insure its death. She playfully rolls onto her back, the two tumbling head first into the raucous waters churning below.

Spawn
Joseph A. Pinto

This; this place where first I laid eyes on you, beckoning from atop the crest. I would rip gods from the skies just to be with you. I fight the currents. I swallow deeply our Acheron; your vile taste leaves me reborn. Thunder in my ears, cascade a veil cross my eyes. I cannot refuse you; how I relish the way you bloat my throat. Allow me rest; but for a moment, will you…the gravel bed serves me well. Speak my sacrifice at the headwaters; slice free from me my spawn. Let me swirl like detritus amidst your feet.

Keen
Tyr Kieran

In this moment, I am keen. Saturated. Aware. A dominating flourish of life swarms my senses—every detail becoming known and prominent. The breeze caresses my face. Bugs and birds chirp in merry discourse. Dazzling, the sunlight peaks through the foliage overhead and crystallizes brilliantly in the water below. The wood planked bridge behind me sways ever so slightly, subtle creaking that hums in harmony with nature. I feel alive. My heart swells, pounding faster and faster, blood surging. Then, the gurgling lullaby of the creek and everything else ends suddenly as the bristled rope around my neck snaps taught.

Unknown
Craig McGray

Even as a young boy, I’d often wondered what was beneath the roiling water of the falls. Mesmerized by the clarity, clear and untainted before cascading onto the rocks below, crashing into the time-worn rocks huddled at the bottom.

Life, like a crisp mountain stream, starts as something pure, innocent, before running its turbulent course, eventually reaching a precipice and plummeting to something else, something we can’t be positively sure of.

Over the years, I’ve tossed many screaming souls from this very spot, and I’ve yet to hear back as to what they found at the bottom of the falls.

Trespass No More
Blaze McRob

Unseen hands hold Craig’s face beneath the swirling waters below the dam, rubbing it to and fro, the jagged rocks on the river bottom cutting his face to shreds. The unseen entity lifts Craig’s face from the river and says, “You fucking anglers think you can disregard signs. Stay out means just that. You’re not special. This river is mine.”

Enraged at the blood pouring into his beloved river, he shoves Craig under once more, slamming his head repeatedly against the moss-laden saws designed by Mother Nature. His job completed, he releases Craig’s body.

“You will trespass no more, mother-fucker…”

No Swimming
Thomas Brown

From the outside it doesn’t look like much: three warehouses painted a pale cream. Sometimes there is a van or two, parked in the vacant bay beside the river. Plumes of white smoke. A sign, announcing where I am:

The Dream Factory.

Visitors report to the holding bay for guided tours.

You couldn’t pay me to cross the low wire-mesh fence. I’ve seen what leaves this place; not in the vans, but the adjacent stream: transparent fat, pinkish globules, and if you look closely, long, effervescent faces, mouths stretched, eyes wide: nightmares, skimmed from the vats into the quick current.

Kiss
Magenta Nero

The all encompassing roar of the water, a frothing primeval anger that rises from deep within the earth, takes back each useless tear as it rolls off my cheeks. I have spent a lot of time here lately. Poised on this edge. Thinking. Your body slapped against rocks, broken and swept away downstream. Like waste. From the split in your skull leak your extravagant lies. You remember this place don’t you? The place of our first tender kiss. And now our very last. Your mouth open but silent. Your eyes, wide, incredulous, staring back up at me. As you drop.