Issue 3 of Surreal Grotesque

Page 1

Surreal Grotesque Issue 3: Serial Killers


Table of Contents Devil in the Details by Nick Wilczynski....7 Gallery of the Grotesque........................13 7 Questions with a Published Writer: Jack Ketchum........................................21 Serial Killer of the Month Club: Jeffrey Dahmer by Jenny Krueger........25 Ed Gein by Jenny Krueger.....................28 Almost Everybody Loves a Clown...........30 ‘A Hard Day’s Night’..............................33 Comic Book Karma: Purg.......................38 Book Review: Gigantic Death Worm........41 Reckon by Bryan Howie........................43 Charcoal by Keith Fink..........................49 Seed Review..........................................51


Alice: Madness Returns review.............53 Shit by Ryan Swofford..........................55 Love Letter from a Serial Killer.............59 Welcome to Hell....................................61 Suicide Notes........................................69 Stephen King: The Killing Wheel............73 The Ice Storm by A. Pulliam..................77 The Things You Pick Up, Bruce Priddy....81 Doomster by Alex Kane.........................85 Jacobs & Sons by Jay Slayton-Joslin....89 Blood Red by Grace Patterson................95 Hysterical Minds Gallery.......................98 A Night in the Country.........................109 The Dissection of How..........................113 9 Brief Scenes from the End of the World: T.W. Grim.............................................117 Grim: A Tale of Death...........................126


Letter from the Editor i honestly really have nothing to say this month except this issue is about suffering, emptiness and pain. The kind we all feel from time to time. It is a celebration of horror but it is also a cautionary tale not to fall too far into the abyss or you may never return like some of the serial killers you will read about here. We have a new columnist, Jenny Krueger who star ts the “Serial Killer of the Month’ column and 7 Questions with a Published Author featuring the always horrifying Jack Ketchum. We have an amazing ar t gallery with the lovely Lakuna whose photos are gothic grotesque to the extreme. We have “Devil in the Details” by Nick Wilczynski who gives us a glimpse of personal darkness while we have a series of back to back flash fictions which will hopefully tantilize and thrill you. They are for the ADD set because some people don’t like reading anything over 1000 words in this day and age. We have a shor t story in the back which is par t of a longer piece which is linked to called “8 Brief Scenes from the End of the World” and we have the allnew Comic Book Karma column. The ar t here is amazing and disgusting and vile and respulsive and we wouldn’t have it any other way. this magazine is meant to be a cerebral experience, I don’t want to just fuck with your mind but I want to dig into your soul. Consider it an inkblot test and tell me what you see in the ar t of Joseph Donald Myers. If you are repulsed or aroused or are you a vacant vessel, do you feel nothing at all? Many of these pieces come from a dark, terribly personal place and the authors within are sharing a piece of their soul with you so I encourage you to seek out those you like, read the credits at the end and visit their websites and tell them how much you like their stuff. This magazine is free because I want you to see a par t of my soul, for better or worse, we are sharing scars here. There is no need for judgment. If you hate me, I won’t hold it against you. Just be careful when the lights go out because you may feel my breath on your neck. When my hand goes over your mouth, you will scream but there will be no answer. Happy Serial Killer Issue! Daniel Gonzales, editor Surreal Grotesque magazine www.facebook.com/TheSurrealGrotesque Or on Twitter @RealGrotesque “What doesn’t kill us makes us stranger” --Aeon Flux




devil in the details nick wilcynzski

He pulls up the ragged stool next to mine and releases his breath as though it were a great burden, “We

all have our demons.”

I nod and toast him, assuming he means the drink. Tonight it feels like a vice. The ice tastes like it was

dragged behind a car on its way here and it melts quickly, dissolving it’s filth into my well vodka and orange juice. I gulp it all down and order another. The bartender is surprisingly prompt. There are bigger crowds on the other side of the bar but he seems to be keeping an eye on my new acquaintance as if he suspects trouble brewing. In any event, it gets me my drink.

“My demon sits on my shoulder, you know, and he chain smokes these fucking cigarettes. I just can’t get

rid of him.”

Even the most antisocial barfly might have a moment of curiosity at another patron. I lean back to take

another large gulp from the drink. Better get to it before the ice does. I have to admit that I check to see if there is in fact a little devil on the man’s shoulder. Maybe an angel to accompany it.

“Have you considered AA?” I ask him.

The creases of shock and exasperation reprimand me with intensity that his voice was clearly too tired to

get into again, “It’s not the drinking, Jesus Christ. I justifiably need a drink after this shit he just pulled.”

He keeps building these cliffhangers into his sentences, like I’m supposed to ask him questions. But

I don’t come to this particular dive bar for the company. I come here and order the drink specials and when people try to talk to me I ask them if they’ve considered AA. Teeth tight against one another I exhale hard.

“I mean, it isn’t like I tried to get him to quit cold turkey. I bought the gum. I got the patches. He didn’t

want anything to do with it and so I stopped buying the little bastard his cigarettes.”

He isn’t going to shut up, but “I can’t help but notice that there is not a demon on your shoulder.”


He laughs, “That’s what everybody says. You know? I mean, am I just crazy? Here, wait, take a deep

breath.”

I do, but the bartender beats me to the punch.

“You can’t smoke in here,” he summons all the authority of his tribal tattoos and shaved head, some sort

of ambitious bouncer who wanted in on the tip game.

“I don’t smoke,” the guy says, holding his hands open on top of the bar and offering a sympathetic look.

The gaze turns to me all of the sudden, “When have you ever seen me smoke here?”

“Assholes,” and the big, barrel shaped bartender turns a sharp gaze from one of us to the other before

lumbering down the bar.

I chuckle to myself, “What’s your name, demon man?”

Smoke wafts up from his shoulder, “Luke.”

“Nice to meet another asshole,” I extend my reach to shake his spindly hand, prominent veins bulging

below the surface, “I’m Dan.”

“Dan the Asshole, I wish you could see Dorian. He’s very excited to meet you.”

I shake my head. I’ve made friends with crazier motherfuckers in my day, but then again that has a lot

to do with me stalking dive bars alone for drink specials. The din of the bar grinds on around us. The crowd is older. Yuppies go to Moonshiners, the college kids go to the chain places and the people with nothing left going for them end up at Frontier. Honestly, this bar isn’t good for much but moping. The loud conversations try too hard to recapture a vacant spark. There are frenzied shouts from people arguing about Zeppelin or Skynyrd. Maybe I’ve spared myself any more conversation by introducing myself. The smell of tobacco burning smothers this end of the bar. People glare at us.

I return to inspecting the ice as it contaminates my drink. Wednesday, dollar well vodka drinks at

Frontier, not much else going on. Beer specials at Moonshiners, but only on the expensive microbrews and with my budget I’m pretty much stuck at Frontier with the shitty ice and the well drinks. Besides which I’d have to drive all the way into town and back later to go to Moonshiners and she probably wouldn’t even be there anyway. At the very least I don’t have to sit here though. I stand up and turn away from the bar.


“Wait,” Luke tells me, suddenly, an urgent strain in his voice, “Dorian wants you to stay. I think he

might come out of hiding.”

I laugh, but only to conceal very serious ideas about settling my tab and picking up a twelve pack at the

gas station down the road. The Citgo with the Jamaican guy. Try to avoid conversation. Just make it home and drink alone. Drinking alone gets a bad rap, but right now it seems like the safer option. God, I just need another drink. I tap my plastic cup against the bar, but I don’t sit down.

“I don’t know what your deal is brother. I don’t know how deep you are in the meth game. I don’t

know what sort of fucked up shit you have going on in your head, but I don’t have the patience to deal with it tonight.”

Another drink comes across the bar, “I thought I told you two to stop smoking in here.”

“Talk to him,” I point at Luke, “And let me see my tab.”

The bartender turns to his till and Luke turns to me, “You can’t go, when Dorian doesn’t get what he

wants…. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He does things.”

“Alright dude,” I look over the receipt and the soft paper curls and twists in my hand, I give the

bartender an extra ten and lean in to tell him, “Keep an eye on this guy he seems like he’s had enough.”

The bartender chuckles at my understatement, “I’ll throw him out if he keeps smoking in here.”

“At least cut him off.”

Luke cuts in loudly “Dorian doesn’t like what you guys are whispering about.”

The bartender pulls away from me, “Look, buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need

to settle up and leave.”

Well, that defeats the whole point, doesn’t it, “I’m sure there’s no need for that. He can stay for a little.”

“You want somebody to look after him, look after him.”

I shake my head. Citgo, right down the road. Twelve pack. Maybe a case. I can afford a case. Liquor

then beer… in the clear? Nah, who gives a fuck. I just have to get out of here without Luke and his little buddy. I just need a drink. I…


“You have to stay with us. Dorian really likes you. That’s what I keep telling you. If he doesn’t get his

way he gets dangerous.”

Standing on the doorstep of the bar the tightened muscles and jaw twitches of a major annoyance are

setting in. Luke follows me and presumably so does Dorian.

“Give me one of your cigarettes,” I tell him. Short, stern words.

“I don’t have any,” Luke replies.

“Yes, you do asshole, let me have a cigarette and stop fucking up my night.”

“Dorian has the cigarettes. I can ask him for you.”

“Just give me the goddamn smoke.”

He whispers at his shoulder, standing outside of Frontier. I can’t hear what he says but this is too much

for me, “Fuck it man. I’m leaving.”

“Here, here,” and he holds his hand out with the cigarette, a loose packed L&M. When I accept it he

holds out a lighter, “That’s what I was telling you. I was trying to get him to quit. But he didn’t like it. You really should do what he says.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Where is my car? I sip on my drink, ahhh, vodka. I take a drag

on the cigarette, God, that’s terrible. I cough and sputter, hammering sensations reject the nicotine and scream for release, the harsh smoke rushes back up through my nose. I spit.

“I tried to get him to quit smoking, you know. I have to buy those cigarettes for him. But he didn’t want

to quit. And so we were stopping at this gas station, because I had to get some gas. And,” he twitches nervously, “Dorian wanted cigarettes.”

Another sip. Vodka, why are you holding me back? Fuck this, I’m going to find my car and I am going

to the Citgo and I am getting a case, and maybe some MD 20/20, and maybe a 40 of King Cobra, just something to get me through the night. Another sip, God I love vodka. What sort of fucked up laws are there in this state that I can’t buy vodka from the goddamn gas station?

“You really shouldn’t leave. He’s going to do things. Like he did when he wanted his cigarettes. He


really did things. I’m not just imagining him. He wanted his cigarettes.”

There’s my car, “Whatever.”

Plastic cup into the cupholder. Maybe one more sip. Mostly gone anyway. Now there’s nothing left but

that shitty ice. Still… it’ll melt… there might be some vodka left down there for it to recover.

“He hurt people. I’m trying to warn you. He’s going to hurt you too if you don’t do what he says. The

man didn’t give him his cigarettes. I tried to explain that Dorian needed his cigarettes and that I wasn’t going to pay for them. I tried to explain it. But the black guy thought I was imagining things too. He didn’t want to give Dorian his cigarettes.”

Key, ignition, headlights flash in front of me, “That’s really good to hear. I’ll watch my back.”

“You aren’t listening!”

Cigarette thrown away, window rolled back up. It squeaks every inch to the top.

Left turn, for the Citgo, or right?

God, I need a drink. Too much crazy shit. I’m just going to find that Citgo, I’ll have my short, but not

unfriendly conversation with the clerk, get my booze and get out. Ten minute drive home and no devil is going to stop me. The lines on the road stutter and blur. I smack myself on the side of the head. Keep it together. One thing at a time. Mind the lines. I vanish into a crowd of trees after a few turns, Frontier is just about in the middle of nowhere. Edge of the county. Used to be a major stop back when there were dry counties around here, now it’s just cheap drinks if you have the gas. Or live in the middle of nowhere. I just need a drink. Three miles to the Citgo, another ten minute drive home, almost halfway back to proper civilization and lights bright enough to dull the stars.

Why is it that the craziest, most broken people are always drawn to me? If I had good friends I wouldn’t

spend so much time at fucking dive bars with lunatics. If I had good friends they’d tell me whether Tessa was working at Moonshiners. I mean, specials be damned. I should have just gone there tonight, just to see. Spend my time trying to chat her up instead of avoiding some fucking glorified bouncer because of the freak vibe I’ve managed to catch on to. Goddamn waste of time. Not even good ice. How do you fuck up ice? Mind the lines.

Roads go on and on, the moon hangs high and bright


I slip lanes, but correct myself, no one out here but the trees. Maybe some deer, but sobriety is no

defense from deer at night on country roads. Might as well drink your fill. Enjoy your life before its done happening. I try my hardest to draw out some vodka from the cup of ice, but now, all of the sudden, it won’t melt. A few drops congeal and drip into my mouth but I can smell more liquor down there. The trees peel away around the smoldering ruins of the Citgo. All four pumps are blackened stumps, the awning has collapsed, and the stubbly remains of the gas station itself still blister angrily. A few final plumes of smoke still dare to challenge the country stars.

A small pack of police cars still huddles in the parking lot. Is this what that crazy asshole was talking

about? Did he burn down the fucking Citgo? I mind the lines, but with all the thoughts racing through my head it’s too hard. Focus damnit, focus. A car pulls out from the gas station. Mind the lines. I can keep up the act, keep driving. The next left is good, gets me towards my place at least. Goddamnit I need a drink. Where am I going to get one now? Do I have anything at home?

Headlights come alive behind me. And then sirens.

Run? Bolt for the turn? But my submissive instincts take control and despite the panic that flutters up

and down the hairs of my arms I pull over to the side of the road. I roll down the window, again it moans with every stumble of progress. I get out my paperwork. Goddamnit, why now? I put my hands on the steering wheel. Behind me, my trunk starts screaming.

The officer pulls up his gun, pointing it clearly towards me, “Sir, get out of the car and put your hands on

the hood.”

Trembling, stumbling swerving I comply slowly, “I don’t know anything about the trunk, sir. I must

have left it unlocked back at the bar,” I speak too quickly for my own good. The officer takes a suspicious whiff of the air around be before asking “Who do you have in there? Hand me the key.”

Again I slowly comply, each trembling moment a confession of unknown guilt. He’s got me dead to

rights on the drunk driving.

He pops open the trunk and pulls Luke out, halting the screaming. Luke takes a moment to look around

before he starts to rant, “We all have our demons, we all have our demons, we all have...”

The poor bastard is covered in cigarette burns.


www.miss-lakune.deviantart.com


www.miss-lakune.deviantart.com








7 Questions with a Published Writer: Jack Ketchum 1. So on your website, you have the quote by Stephen King calling you the scariest guy in America. People often think of King as the king of horror. So do you think you are the scariest guy in America? No, though I thank Stephen for saying that -- it’s sold a lot of books. But I think the scariest people in America mostly belong to the Tea Party. Or else they hunt humans just for fun. 2. So what do you find scarier: the idea of the thing that lurks in the dark or the evil hiding in a neighbor’s heart? The supernatural or the serial killer? photo courtesy of Steve Thornton, 2010

The supernatural can still entertain and thrill me if it’s done exceptionally well. But that’s rare. For the most part I’m bored with gods and demons. Perhaps because over the last couple of decades or so I’ve become extremely hostile toward religions -- “faiths” -- of any kind. Belief systems, ancient or modern, don’t interest me. What does interest me are the kinds of evils we perpetrate for gain or pleasure. Those things, seems to me, are worth reading and writing about. 3. For a horror writer trying to make it in the genre business, what would you tell them? It’s hard to avoid all the clichés and the stigmata of horror in the mainstream, what can they do to stand out in the flood of vampire retreads and twist endings? You’re unique. So write from the heart. Write what truly scares you about the world you live in. Write about love and the lack of it. And study up first. Do your goddamn homework. 4. Of all your books and short stories, is there anything you have ever written where you scared yourself a little and questioned that you were able to go there mentally?


Hell, yes. A whole lot of what I write has put me in a kind of moral danger. But that’s the point. If I can’t scare myself, if I can’t address my own darkest thoughts and feelings, how can I really scare you? For me, anything short of that is just another dip into a bag of tricks. 5. I know in your literary essay called “Splat Goes the Hero”, you mention that it’s important not to look away but to show the reader everything, even the things that make them uncomfortable. Do you ever think there is a time when we should look away as a writer and not go there? I mean in regards to pedophilia or even excessively describing a rape or should we force a reader to face all forms of horror head on or should there be taboos. Taboos, never. Nothing humans are capable of doing should be a taboo subject for examining, in fiction or elsewhere. But it’s a matter of gravitas. Of seriousness of purpose. On occasion I know I’ve tread a thin line between telling what I consider to be the whole truth of a very dark subject, as best I can, and pornography. THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, for instance. I have no problem with pornography -- in fact I’m all for it! -- but it doesn’t belong in a story about child abuse any more than it belongs in a story about animal cruelty. You need to walk the line with stories like this, to be empathetic as hell and responsible. Not turn away, but not exploit either. 6. I read, “The Girl Next Door” and saw the film. It was very disturbing to think it was based on a true story, does it sometimes surprise even you the depths of depravity human beings are capable of? Should horror writers use real life horrors in their writing? There’s no reason they shouldn’t. Looking closely at how bad we can be to one another throws into relief how good we can be. I try to mix the two in my stories -- lack of empathy and compassion as the evil twin of love and caring. That’s another reason I usually have little patience with the supernatural. Why bother with Lovecraftian demons and “nameless horrors” when there are serious, real-life fears to consider all around us? 7.

What is the most bizarre fan encounter you have ever had or letter received?

Well, I’ve had death-threat e-mails on my message board. But that’s maybe to be expected. I tend to touch some nerves. At conventions I’ve signed a machete, a chain-saw, a bottle of single-malt whiskey and a woman’s left breast. And one guy wanted me to sign his bicep so he could get a tattoo later. I never found out if he actually did.

Book Review: Book of Souls Review by Alex J. Kane Jack Ketchum has made a living scaring the hell out of people, picking at his own wounds and then watching the blood dribble out onto the page. The resulting stains can be found in books all over the world—in the wonderful oasis of Book World in Galena, Illinois; at the Books-A-Million where my favorite Borders used to stand, pre-bankruptcy; in the used paperbacks section at the back of my local party-supply store. On one recent visit to my hometown’s Family Video, I noted at least three DVD cover inserts with titles beginning, Jack Ketchum’s . . . In the nonfiction collection Book of Souls (published electronically in February 2011 by Crossroad Press after a signed limited edition paperback release in ’08, which currently goes for about a hundred bucks—plus shipping—on Amazon), the author collects four heartfelt essays on loss.


The first, “Henry Miller and the Push,” finds Ketchum recalling the monstrous temper he’d developed while working as a New York agent and the realization that he had one final mission before he could hand in his resignation: to meet and thank, in person, author Henry Miller, who eventually served as the literary catalyst for Ketchum’s own career. The author traces his own development as a reader and writer, and the manner by which Miller helped to steer it, and then goes on to document his interview with the man. This first essay serves as a beautiful, deeply personal introduction to the collection—and also eases the reader in, as with the carefully structured opening of a novel like The Girl Next Door, before unleashing the greater darkness yet to come. The second essay, “The Dust of the Heavens,” begins with the following sentence: “Kenneth is dying of AIDS.” From that point on, the short memoir only gets grimmer, but not without paying loving tribute to the tragic life and downfall of a dear friend whose battle with paranoid schizophrenia has found him increasingly delusional, dangerous, and forever changed. The writing is comparable to the harsh but uncompromising voice that pervades Gary A. Braunbeck’s own similar book, To Each Their Darkness. In “Risky Living: A Memoir,” Ketchum recalls an early lover whose addiction to mainlining methamphetamine caused the author himself to experiment with various harmful drugs, before finally succumbing to reason and calling the girl’s sister, begging her to tell their parents and put an end to it. Of all the pieces, this one seems the most universal: a tale of self-destruction, passive enabling, and finding the courage to confront the ones we love about their troubles in order to help them, to save them, even if it means alienating a friend or lover in the process. Ketchum concludes the collection with a hopeful meditation on the state of the Big Apple in the wake of September 11, 2001; and in doing so reveals a perhaps unobvious characteristic of his work: that he spots the essential goodness, the glimmers of “heaven,” in each and every living person he meets, in the midst of every natural disaster, every unholy, manmade ruin . . . that he can’t help but see the divinity within each of us.

Film Review: The Woman Review by Daniel W. Gonzales, editor The film, “The Woman” by Lucky McKee is one of those rare modern accomplishments where a film manages to be creepy, grotesque and believable all at the same time. It starts out simply enough with a strangely wholesome family man who seems to have it all together, he has the perfect family, the obediant wife (played expertly by the very talented Angela Bettis from the cult hit “May”), the only thing missing is apparently a sex slave in the basement. When hubbie goes out hunting he finds the feral woman who he decides to capture and then bring home for his family to ogle over. The film’s strength is that it keeps us in a state of eerie precise tension, we see how secretely afraid the wife is of her husband and the daughter who is harboring a secret of her own. The son, however is a sociopath in training whose actions through the film escalate from being a peeping Tom to a full blown sociopath. This is really a film you have to see to believe, for all the talk of people claiming Ketchum’s stories are full of misogyny, this film doesn’t glamorize the torture of this feral woman. It doesn’t take joy in the rape scene but rather gives us a clinical look into a family dissolving from the inside. The Woman is never really a victim, she is a feral creature who has been living in the woods with no human contact and has a ravenous zombie-like quality. Everyone is more afraid of her than she is of them. When she finally does get loose in the epic climax of the film, there is a cathartic movie relief that the viewer takes and revels in the graphic violence when it is done to someone who really derserves it.



Serial Killer of the month club By Jenny Krueger, staff writer Disclaimer:” I am in no way trying to condone or justify the crimes these people have committed. My heart goes out to the families that lost loved ones to these killers. I am not trying to embodied them as a hero or a villain. I am trying to embodied them as a human. These posts are simply here to get a better understanding as to why they could do such awful crimes. Maybe one day we can put an end to this horrific lifestyle.” Out of all the serial killers out there, I’ve always loved learning about Jeffrey Dahmer. I connected with him the most. My heart breaks for this man, I actually feel sympathy for him. Jeffery Dahmer was born on May 21st, 1960 in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Jeff was born into a loving home of Lionel and Joyce Dahmer, that shows every one that you don’t have to be born into a dysfunctional family to be a killer. Jeffery was a happy kid until the age of 6

when he had to have minor surgery which followed the birth of his brother. The events seemed to have a huge impact on Jeff, he became extremely closed off and lacked self-confidence. About the same time, a career opportunity came along for his father which ended with the family moving to Ohio. Jeffrey’s insecurities worsened, by his early teens he was disengaged, tense and had no friends. During his teens, his parents went through a bitter divorce which was Jeff’s reasons for his behavior. He admitted that he first had thoughts of murder and necrophilia when he was 14 but it was seeing his parents marriage breakdown right before his eyes was the cause for turning this fantasy into a reality. Jeffery graduated from high school, in June of 1978. While his family was out of town, he picked up a hitchhiker by the name of Steven Hicks. He went home with Dahmer where they drank beer and had sex. When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer got upset and killed him by hitting him over the head with a barbell. Dahmer’s reason for killing Hicks was, he didn’t want him to leave. That right there made me almost cry. Jeffery is so desperate for friends and approval and that he didn’t want to be alone so he killed him. He felt the only way he would stay was if he killed him, that way he was still “with” him and he wasn’t alone. Information obtained from Bio.com


To hide the evidence, Jeffery dismembered the corpse of Hicks, packed it in plastic bags and buried them in the woods behind his house. Jeffery just happened to have a pet cemetery located out by his house where he buried Hicks. At the same time of the murder of Hicks, Dahmer’s alcohol intake became out of control. He ended up dropping out of Ohio State University after only one term, due to his drunkenness. His father, who is now recently remarried forced Jeffery to join the Army and he was posted to Germany. His drinking problems got worse which resulted in his discharge from the Army two years later. Dahmer got arrested in October of 1981 for disorderly conduct which made his father send him to live with his Grandmother in Wisconsin. His problems with Alochol didn’t seem to get better and his next arrest happened during September of 1986, for masturbating in front of two young boys, resulting in Dahmer receiving a one-year probationary sentence. He would spend his time in gay bars, “hunting” as some people call it for young boys. Usually African-American or Asian. While he was there, he came upon his second victim, Steven Toumi. Nine years apart from his very first killing. They checked into an hotel room where they drank heavily. The next morning, Dahmer claims to have found Steven dead besides him. Dahmer brought a large suitcase to transport the corpse to his grandmother’s basement, where he had sex, and masturbated on it, before dismembering it and disposing the remains in the trash. Over his thirteen year crime spree, Jeffery developed a pattern of murder that persisted throughout the years. He would always find his victims at Gay Bars and lure them home with him with promises of money or sex. Once he achieved that, he would pursue them with alcohol spiked with drugs. He would strangle his victims, have sex with the corpse, masturbate on it, then dismember the corpses and dispose of them. He would usually keep their genitals or skulls as souvenirs. He also liked to take pictures of his victims from different stages of the murder, that way he could recollect each act afterwards and relive the experience. He found gratification by assembling the skulls and masturbating in front of them. His grandmother grew tired of the late nights and drunkenness, not knowing his other activities, forced him to move out in September of 1988. That wasn’t till after he had killed another two victims on the premises. Jeffery had his lucky escape when he was charged for the sexual assault of a thirteen year old Latino boy. Dahmer claimed that he thought the boy was much older and the arrest made him see the errors of his way and it marked a turning point in his life. His defense counsel argued that he needed treatment, not jail time and surprisingly the judge agreed. Handing down a five year probationary sentence, with one year prison sentence on “day release”, under which he continued to work at his job, but returned to the prison at night. He was released after ten months, despite Dahmer’s father having written to the judge urging that Dahmer be held until he had received appropriate treatment. He spent three months with his grandmother on his release, where he does not appear to have added to his body count, before moving into his own apartment in May 1990. During the fifteen months that followed, up to the time of his capture, Dahmer’s victim count accelerated; twelve more lives were taken using his modus operandi. Necrophilia is generally associated with issues of exercising control over victims. He developed these rituals as he progressed, experimenting with chemical means of disposal, and he also consumed the flesh of his victims. He attempted crude lobotomies, drilling into victim’s skulls while they were still alive, injecting them with Muriatic acid to see whether he could extend his control to the living. Most of these victims died instantly, but he claimed that one victim had survived for a number of days in a zombie-like state, with limited motor function. On May 26, 1991. A woman noticed a young Asian boy running around the street naked. The boy was incoherent and he was bleeding from his rectum. Dahmer explained to the police that he was his 19 year old lover and they had gotten into a fight while they were drinking and he wandered off. Not noticing that the boy had a hole in his head and ignoring the woman and her daughters pleas, the police believed Jeffery’s story and drove the boys home. Once home, the police left the boy in Dahmer’s care not noticing the strange smell


coming from his apartment. If they would of taken a look around they would of found the body of his twelfth victim decomposing in the bedroom and enough photographic evidence to arrest him on the spot. Because of this incident, the police involved with this call have been relieved of duty. Dahmer’s luck finally ran out on July 22, 1991, when two Milwaukee police officers picked up Tracy Edwards, a young African-American, who was wandering the streets with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. They decided to follow up his claims that a “weird dude” had drugged and restrained him, and arrived at Dahmer’s apartment, where he calmly offered to get the keys for the handcuffs. Edwards claimed that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom and, when the officer went in to corroborate the story, he noticed photographs of dismembered bodies lying around, which included one of a head in the fridge. He shouted to his colleague to restrain Dahmer, who fought back fiercely, but was nevertheless subdued. A subsequent search revealed the head in the fridge, as well as three more in the freezer, and a catalogue of other horrors, including preserved skulls, jars containing genitalia, and an extensive gallery of macabre photographs. Despite having confessed to the killings during police interrogation, Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges. However, against the advice of his legal counsel, he changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity. His defense then offered every gruesome detail of his behavior, as proof that only someone insane could commit such terrible acts, but the jury chose to believe the prosecutor’s assertion that Dahmer was fully aware that his acts were evil, but that he chose to commit them anyway, returning after only five hours deliberation to find him guilty, but sane, on all counts, on February 17, 1992. Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms, a total of 957 years in prison. On November 28th, 1994 after only serving two years of his sentence. Jeffery along with another inmate were beaten to death by inmate Christoper Scarver. Jeffery was 34 years old. Say what you want but I feel bad for the guy. He had a hard life, he didn’t have any friends and he didn’t feel accepted by everyone else or loved. I sympathize with him because I myself didn’t have a great childhood. I have a great family and supportive parents so I didn’t lack the love from them. I didn’t have any or a lot of friends growing up. I wasn’t popular in school and I was teased cause I was an out cast. I was timid and kept to myself. I would spend all my time in my room cut off from the outside world just for the fact that I didn’t feel accepted by anyone else. I didn’t feel love or have love from anyone besides my family. I felt awkward and alone and singled out. That’s how Jeffery was, he was sad and alone. He wanted friends and wanted to be accepted by his fellow peers. He struggled with trying to deal with his feelings and short comings and trying to find his place in life. He never really found his place. He felt more at “peace” when he was with his victims, he felt that he was finally accepted and that’s sad. It’s sad that the only way to feel loved or accepted by someone else is when you’re with their corpse. It breaks my heart knowing that people go through this and ultimately results to them becoming a killer. I wish Jeffery had more friends in his life, I wish he had more love and I wish he didn’t have to feel the pain that he felt. No body knows how he felt and what he was thinking in his mind. No one knows why he felt that he had to kill people. He admitted the reason for his killings but I don’t think anyone can fully comprehend the true reason for doing it but him. People will look at him and see a monster. I look at him and see a sad, lonely man looking for love and acceptance and willing to get it anyway he can. More of Jenny Krueger’s writing could be found at: http://memoirsofascreamqueen.blogspot.com/


Ed Gein by jenny krueger When police went to Ed Gein’s Plainfield, Wisconsin farm home to investigate the disappearance of a local woman, they had no idea they were about to discover some of the most grotesque crimes ever committed. Ed Gein was born August 27th, 1906 In La Crosse Wisconsin. Ed lived with his older brother Henry, his father George and his mother Augusta on their 160- acre farm a few miles outside Plainfield Wisconsin. His father was a major alcoholic and his mother was an over bearing psychotic mess. As far back as the boys could remember, Augusta was either dishing out farm work for the boys to perform, quoting versus from the Bible or trying as hard as she can to teach Ed and Henry about sin. Especially about the evils of sex and women. George died in 1940 as a result of alcoholism which left Ed and Henry in full control of their mother. Henry died four years later and left Ed fully responsible of his mother’s welfare. He took care of her and attended to her over demanding needs until her death in 1945. Now all alone, Ed sealed off all but one room and the kitchen of his large farmhouse. After the Government started paying Ed as a part of a soil conservation program, he no longer had to do any farm work. Yay for Eddie! Now he has all that time to devote to his special “hobby”. Ed was a recluse, didn’t spend anytime with people and kept to himself. He spent hours being obsessed with his sexual fantasies and reading books on the Female anatomy but no one had any idea. Since his mother filled his head with the thoughts of how evil sex and women are, he couldn’t get rid of the images of sex and dismemberment. He was also fascinated by the experiments performed in Nazi camps. Ed befriends another loner, Gus and they spend some boy time robbing graves for bodies so Ed can perform the experiments he’s always wanted to do. This little shindig went on for more then 10 years including Ed removing his mother from her own grave. His experiments became more gruesome and bizarre over time including necrophilia and cannibalism. Gein’s obsessive fantasies centered around his over powering desire to turn himself into a women. He would skin his victims and construct the items so he could then drape on himself such as a female mask and breasts. He even made himself a female-like body sized jumpsuit. Gein’s desire for a sex change escalated when he thought the only way to perfect his plan is by having fresher bodies. On December 8th, 1954, Gein at the ripe old age of 48 killed Mary Hogan, owner of a local Tavern. The police weren’t able to solve the strange disappearance of Mary, but the blood found at the Tavern made the police suspect foul play. They weren’t able to convict Gus since he was already institutionalized before the


killing began. Only Gein knew how many women he has killed. On November 16th, 1957, Gein entered the hardware store owned by the lovely Bernice Worden. Ed has been in that same hardware store before so Bernice had no reason to fear him and suspected nothing. Bernice didn’t give it a second thought when Gein removed a .22 rifle from the display rack and inserted his own bullets into the gun. Right after Ed loaded the gun he shot Bernice and stuffed her body into the store’s truck then came back for the cash register cause serial killers need money. Once Ed got home he unleashed his perverted psychotic fantasy upon his newest victim, Bernice. Since Gein wasn’t very good at covering up his tracks. Bernice’s son Frank who was a deputy sheriff noticed his mother was missing and found blood on the floor in the store and found a store receipt that included a half gallon of antifreeze. Frank remembered seeing Gein in and out of the hardware store the previous week and Gein did question Frank about going hunting the next day. The police decided to pay the lonely Mr. Ed Gein a visit even though he has never been involved in any known criminal activity. Gein was located by police in a store near his home. The police then went to Gein’s farmhouse in hopes of finding Bernice Worden but little did they know what exactly they would find. The shed was the first area searched. Officer Schley opened the shed door to find a woman’s naked corpse hanging upside down, the body disemboweled, and the throat and head missing. The body was, you guessed it Bernice Worden. They later went on to search Ed’s house. The house was dark so they used oil lamps to guild them through. Once their eyes adjusted they saw something more horrific then anyone could ever imagine. Every where they turned they saw various body parts, some used as household items such as skulls made into bowls, jewelry made from human skin, lips hanging, chair seats with human skin upholstery, facial skin that was well preserved and resembled masks, a box of vulva’s among which was his mothers, painted silver. You see, if you raise a kid filling his head with the thoughts of how evil sex and women are he’s going to become obsessed with the sexual side of nature and take that obsession out on you. And in Ed’s case, he did just that. The body parts identified came from 15 different women and some weren’t able to be identified. They also found Bernice’s heart in a pan on the stove. The police officers who witnessed that gruesome site would never be the same again. Gein was committed to the Waupun State Hospital for the rest of his life. He admitted that he killed older women because of his love-hate feelings he had towards his mother, well duuuuh! He never would admit to his cannibalistic or necrophilia activities even though there had been some strong reasoning’s behind it. Gein died from cancer at the age of 78 and his body was buried in his family plot in Plainfield. The property eluded the horrific and evil memories for the people of Plainfield and later it was torched by citizens. This bizarre and gruesome crime caused by Gein turned him into a “celebrity.” Several horror movies were loosely based on Ed Gein’s life and crime spree. Movies such as Psycho with Norman Bates and his unnatural relationship he had towards his mother. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even though there wasn’t a character that was an exact Ed Gein model, Leatherface did take on some of Gein’s infamous traits such as the removal and wearing of his victim’s skin. Years later, Ed was an inspiration for another character. Serial killer, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Just like Ed, Billy treasured women’s skin and wore it like clothing in some strange transvestite ritual. Other movies that were based on Ed Gein were the 2001 film Ed Gein, also titled In the Light of the Moon, in which Steve Railsback plays the main role, it has been said that this film comes closest to the true account of his life and crimes. The 1974 cult classic Deranged was strongly influenced by the Ed Gein story. Roberts Blossom plays Ezra Cobb, a man is dominated by his mother, who loses his mind after her death. Poor Eddie, if only his mother wasn’t crazy and didn’t mistreat him and his brother and filled their heads with nonsense. I totally understand that a lot of religions believe you shouldn’t have sex until you’re married but come on. There is a right and a wrong way of teaching your kids that. Augusta did it the wrong way. She went overboard on trying to convince the boys that sex and women are evil and they should stay away from it that she failed to show her kids love and compassion. There’s no surprise that he turned out the way he did and how obsessed he was with the female body. All information obtained from bio.com, analysis is the opinion of the writer and not meant to imply fact.


john wayne gacy in almost everybody loves a clown By Kevin Milligan Underneath the floorboards of the house, the boy crawled. He moved even though his body felt broken and bruised, dried blood covered his eyes and he heard the sounds of footsteps above. In the dark there was a smell, a deep pungent scent like death cascading. He could vaguely remember the incident that had come before. The boy had come about an ad he saw in the paper, an ad for a used car and the fat, almost blimpish man who had answered the door gave him a friendly smile. He stared too long and when they shook hands, the man’s hands lingered too long on his own. The boy had just turned sixteen a few weeks ago and got his learner’s permit, he rode his bike all the way here and was curious about the car. It was such a nice price that it seemed something he would be able to afford after saving up from his job this summer. He wondered if the man would hold it for him until he got his paycheck on the first.

“I’m here about the car,” the boy said. “Come in,” the fat man smiled, “Did you see it out there? What do you think?” “It’s nice, sir. Is there anything wrong with it? Is there a reason you are selling it so cheap?” “No, it’s just old and I need to be rid of it. I thought a nice young man like yourself might appreciate it.” “It sure is a beaut,” the boy agreed. The man grinned wider, staring at him, “You have such beautiful hair. My name’s John.” The boy averted his eyes, “Hey, I’m—“ “Do you want something to drink?” “Um, water, I guess.” “Are you sure you don’t want a pop? I have a Dr. Pepper.” “Sure,” the boy said. He looked around the man’s house and glimpse onto a nearby dresser where a


clown costume laid. He saw the small containers of bright makeup and laughed. “What’s so funny?” John said, from the kitchen. “Are you a clown or something?” “Sometimes,” Gacy said, “I dress up for charity events.” The boy grinned. Gacy came back in the room and handed him a glass with his drink. “I’m Pogo,” Gacy smiled proudly, “Everybody loves a clown.” “Not me,” the boy said, “They creep me out. Always have. No offense.” For a moment the boy saw a flash of something from the man’s face, it looked like rage but then as soon as he saw it, the smile had returned. He sipped from his glass. “So are you going to make me an offer?” Gacy said. “Well, I’ve been working all summer and I have some money saved up but I get paid next week and—“ Suddenly the boy felt the urge to vomit, the room spun and he felt his head throbbing. Gacy continued to smile, “Go on.” “I-I—“ The boy dropped the glass and it shattered on the ground. He felt himself slip into momentary blackness. When he awoke, he felt the sticky skin of the fat man on him, he felt his rotund hairy belly on his back pushing up against him and horrible pain below. He did vomit then and realized the man was fucking him, fucking him like men did in prison movies and he was bent over the sink. Gacy had it filled with water and dunked his face in it. The boy tried to scream but only made bubbles. He blacked out again. Gacy stroked the boy’s hair and whispered sweet nothings in his ear. He thought of his father and could still feel the sting of his words, “You little queer, you are always going to be a little queer.” They were all right about him, his father, the boys who had made fun of him in school and even his wife. “You aren’t a good person,” she had said to him, “Something is wrong with you.” The boy’s soft blonde hair and green eyes reminded him of his first. When he was working as a mortuary assistant in Vegas, the first boy he had touched that night when he was alone, as he climbed into the coffin with the dead teenage boy and caressed him. It was better this way, he thought, better when they couldn’t tell. When they couldn’t talk back. He felt the boy jerk in his arms again and smashed his head into the side of the bathtub, blood squirted. He took the boy to the bedroom and laid with him as he died.

The boy didn’t die though.

He was near death but he teetered on the edge of consciousness, crawling through the dirt of the crawlspace, spiderwebs and the smell of putridity around him. That was when he saw them. The other boys all in various stages of rot. Some of them looked like him, wide-eyed and innocent, their young skin yellowed and black blossoms of decay forming. There had to at least be twenty of them down here. The smell was so overwhelming that it permeated his senses, he felt himself dizzy from the intensity of the smell. A fresh crop of blood dribbled down his head, he put his hand to his left temple and felt the opening. His skull was cracked, blood crept down into his eyes. There was the sound of the man’s heavy footsteps above, his rotund body creaking the floorboards with his weight. The boy knew then there was no escape. His mother would be wondering where he was. The girl Alexis who he was going to ask out would go with someone else. His best friend would forget about him. Life would go on. His parents would probably think he ran away. Then his father would blame himself because the last time they spoke they had a fight over him wanting to buy a car. The boy felt heaviness come upon him and he lay down then with the other dead boys and listened to the sounds of summer outside. The crickets were chirping and there was a light breeze. Then there was nothing.



Jack the Ripper in “A Hard Day’s Night” By Joseph Shackleford Foul Beginnings The street smells of foul air and the dismal black fog pumps out of the factories. The nighttime refuse have come out to play, they stagger drunk and hopeless through the cobblestone streets. The Ten Bells is full now. Whores,

gamblers, sailors, drunks and the sort fill its floors and rafters with laughter and loud drunkenness. The gas lamps bathe the streets in a sickly yellow plume of foggy light. The smell of coal and rotting humanity make the air thick. This is Whitechapel, where people scrape a living off labor and sweat and filth. The human rubbish keep living their miserable lives working, sweating, defiling. Day after wretched day, making humanity a scab over a festering wound overflowing with puss and infection. The Ten Bells is where I forget all of this; I fill my brain with spirits and let the night take me where it will. Tonight however, is special. I sit in my corner sipping Irish whiskey watching her. She is a whore, a pretty one. Her name is Mary Ann Nichols. They call her “Polly” for short. She is a petite girl. Her brown eyes keep me in a broken trance; they give my heart a sudden chill when her muddied eyes meet with mine. Her delicate features and coffee skin perfectly complement her black hair. Mary’s hair drapes over her shoulder cascading over her breast as she sits at the bar chatting and laughing. Tonight is special I remind myself. I admire her form across the room working over every detail of her angelic body. She will be working soon. Mary will leave the Ten Bells and begin working the harsh streets of Whitechaple. Where mongrel ape-headed men will defile her for a-penny-a fuck. However, tonight is different. I will approach Ms. Nichols with something that will free her. She will belong to me soon. Mary leaves the bar and pays the tab with the little


money she has, I slip out back, unnoticed. I follow her for a block or two waiting for the perfect moment to deliver my news. The night is electric. I feel it in the air, summers majestic nocturnal discourse speaks to me under the pale light of the gas lamp as I begin feeling holy again. Her features spring to life under the lamps glow. Her humble breasts and highcheek bones entice me. Mary stops, she knows I am here. “Be a penny a go sir.” Her eyes meet mine, that chill is back. Her neck is as soft as butter under my leister knife. I open it without much pain. No screams just a muffled gargle of blood and air rushing out of her. Her eyes fix to mine as

she breathers her last breath and blows it in my face. It tickles my cheek. “Good night Mary,” I whisper. I begin my work. I will purify her by removing the retched vessel that carries her disease. I open her from chest to groin. A crimson rush and I find it. The gore is a testament to our love, I have freed her and now I cleanse her. The ruby painted sidewalk around her will be our marriage, my knife and her blood. I leave with warm hands and a warm jar. My knife is freshly painted and will be painted again soon. A Vulgar Portrait The air around me is thick. Tonight The Ten Bells is full and brimming with disease, people stagger in from the cobblestone streets squandering their bread money. The hum of voices and crashing of glass pollutes my thoughts. The stench of rotting men and filth breaks my concentration. I see her leaving in a rush. Her stout figurer pushes through the hordes of foul patrons with ease. Glasses shatter and curses are yelled but she does not stop. She knows I’ve been watching. This one is different. Her name is Annie Chapman. She is older and her hair is curly and black. This only rekindles my love of her pale skin, no doubt caused by the consumption that kills her inside. The black cancer eating her lungs like a parasite. The waves of her hair sway elegantly with a quick rush and slam of the door exposing them to the gales of the streets. The soft moon mixes with the yellow gaslight making her skin glow like a seraph. This gives me the supreme desire to free her from bondage. Her sexual perversion, her sin of fornication, I will erase it with my edge of my knife. I follow her from The Ten Bells, her pace quickens with her sturdy legs stomping along. The tails of her long black petticoat fly out and spread like wings as her pace hurries with my mocking steps. She leads me around, alley after alley, trying to confuse me. She is playful, I enjoy her. Her scarf tails along and waves to me, I grow eager, much too eager. My pace quickens. She has no time to react; her immediate turn makes it easier to slice through her elegant swan-like neck. I grab her chin and cut. The red flows nice and smooth as she mouths her last words; I blow a simple kiss to her, she staggers and falls. I begin my purification.


I lay her open, the first slash gives me a bit of trouble but I manage to saw her chest down to the soft easily cut sinews. The rush of the blade sprays the crimson liquid on the wall, speckling it beautifully with rubies. The rest is simple, her rotten womb will be cleansed, I take it. I get carried away with her, she is so well dressed and I want to adorn her with beauty. I place her entrails around her shoulders like the scarf. I make her a masterpiece, sprawled-out helpless on the sidewalk dripping blood and fluids, adored with her entrails, a vulgar portrait. Two of a kind The air tonight is cold. The winds blow down from Flower and Dean Street and chill my bones. The thick fog over London blows in and covers this dank hellhole in inky black fog making it unusually dark tonight. My recent affairs have driven the city into fear. Whores are afraid of the dark now. I have trouble working. The Bobbies patrol the streets at night trying to catch me in my purification ritual, but they will never know who I am. I am invisible to them. I am the shadow cast by moon, I am the breeze down their necks, and I am the phantom sound echoing down a dark ally. I have chosen another women however, an occasional whore, she goes by the name “Long Liz” on account of her tall stature. I saw her last Tuesday at the Thames Court, accused of drunkenness and lewd conduct. Her tall body will make the knife and me very cheerful. She lives not too far from where I am standing, I wait for her to pass in the dark. The patrol lanterns dot the city with orange light creating a lighted mist around them. They will never catch me. The sound of soft feet on cobblestone perks my ears. She is coming. I am growing eager. My blade is salivating and keen. Her tall shape looms in the darkness. I wait for the perfect moment to sever her arteries and make her whole again. This is an art and cannot be rushed. Her crepe bonnet and pale skin tease me, I can no longer wait, I thirst for her. “Misses Stride?” I bait her and ready my knife. “Yes, who is this?” Her innocent tone sickens me. I show her my face and beckon her to move closer. I am careful to hide my knife from the gaslight, its gleam will frighten her. She moves in like a dumb cow in a slaughterhouse, eyes wide, probing hands, and nervous smiles. I make it quick. A grab of her wrist and a flash of red across her neck and she is no more. I bite too deep. The blade hits her spine, the ligaments split and crack, she grabs firmly on my coattail. I am sorry for the horrible pain. Her grey eyes tell me she felt it all. They show much fear. My ears tickle with noise. Hard footsteps on cobblestone. Patrolmen’s boots. Some bold bastard interrupts my purification; he shines his light on my work defiling it before it is complete. I stand back hidden in the dark fog with a ruby dripping knife. I am invisible to them. His cries and whistles tell me it is time to move on. I know another girl, another whore who will have to do tonight. She lives across town, she knows me, an old friend her name is Catherin Eddowes. Tonight she is lucky I have sympathy, I will free her from fornication. I find her by Mitre Square. She is not drunk yet but her instinct drives her. I spare no time with this one. I approach her and let my presence be known. She warmly smiles at me and begins to open


her mouth to say something friendly. I snatch her auburn hair. Those hazel eyes look scared. I grip her pale neck-squeezing firm to let her feel my love. I let go, no time for screams, she chokes writhing on the snot and spit. I want to see what you have learned, how long can you last. I push my blade in her neck and sever the flow of her crimson fluid. The red on her pale flesh makes me burn with desire. No screams. She fades faster than I hoped. I am disappointed. I begin my cleansing. I open her, slicing gently, leaving her precious organs whole and pretty. The tendons split nicely and her guts open properly. I have very little time before the sunrise. I must work fast. I remove her kidneys and place them in my jar, I find her livelihood and cut it out with a jagged twist. I take what I please. With so much left I make her beautiful, more than the last girl. I place her intestines on her right shoulder with her red handkerchief. I make the design of the cross with another piece and place it between her left arm. I sever her right ear and place it in her coat pocket, something for the mortician. My night is complete; the sun will rise soon and present the world with my shrine to madness. From Hell

I observe all the letters they send, claiming to be me. Those silly muckraking journalists know nothing. They defile my work, making it little more than morbid pornography. The last batch was my favorite. They gave me a name, a catchy title; I am the ripper of Whitechaple, Jack the knife, the Eastside Butcher, or my favorite Jack the Ripper. They try and dishonor my work. They call me loony and savage, a mad butcher. People don’t understand my labor, my holy sacrament, freeing those women from fornication. They know not of my love for them, my tender quietus and fragile wounds. The bloodsucking leeches in the papers pick up any scrap of rubbish and say I am related, graffiti on walls or false leads. A girl named Fairy Fay; another unknown whore hacked to death by a pimp. She was gutted in an alley not to far from Miters square, too sloppy, not my work. I am not to blame nor are the Jews. I did no such things. The confession letters sent straight to Scotland Yard shame my efforts. The local magistrate receives nothing related to me. A disgrace really, they toil so long and hard trying to keep the working girls safe. Mr. Lusk has his work cut out for him, in charge of such a retched little town and now has to deal with my work and no credit is given. A poor little incompetent fellow deserves a little slice of reward even if it is from hell. Which is why I penned a letter to him a few hours ago and sent it through the post. I gave him something I took, something from Mrs. Eddowds. I will make it apparent who and what I Am. Not a monster like the papers say, but a humble working-class gentleman who has taken up a higher calling amongst his art of embalmment. Closed-casket elegy Her name is Marry Kelly, she goes by Ginger around The Ten Bells. She is the fair skinned angel of my dreams, golden hair, milk white skin, and sapphire blue eyes. Her beauty is untouched. She is a clean woman; she gives lodgings


to whores on bitter cold nights but does not work the streets. Her virtues entice me, she will be my magnum opus. The house where she stays is around Millers Court, it is a notorious place of sin. The whores gather here and work their diseased vessels till they rot from the inside out. The sickly yellow glow of the moon and gaslight make me impatient. I have brought along my black leather bag, it has all of my favorite tools–bonesaw, Leister knife, shears, and straight razor. An artist’s plethora. I linger in the foul air anxiously waiting for her lover to leave. His impurities and intentions sicken me. My heart is palpating, pumping my nervous and excited blood though my veins. I see his shadow moving in the window, candlelight silhouettes dance in a macabre circle. They embrace, my nauseating thoughts transpire to rage. The betrayal of the fair skinned angel spills over in a cascading thirst for her blood. My instruments cry out for her flesh. I hid in the shadows as he leaves and embraces Marry for an exchange of goodbyes. Her eyes twinkle in the moonlight giving me a sudden chill. With her lover’s footsteps now fading in the void, I approach her door. My knocking startles her, a pale specter in the candlelight, her hair glows so wonderfully and I burn with coarse desire. She opens the splintered wooden door, eyes sparkling again in the light. I rudely grab her pastel neck squeezing firmly. No screams escape. Writhing on snot and spit coughing violently, her helpless form vomits the words “Oh Murder!” I grab her golden hair and drag her to the bed. I grip her squirming chin, her cries still gagged, I laugh. Her wet eyes go dead as I cut. A rush of crimson. Her trachea exposed. Gurgling air and blood, a liquid suffocation. Ear to ear her the pulsating wound smiles. Her struggling stops, she gives into my will. She is now at my mercy, I open the black leather bag. My tools grow fervent as they catch sight of her pasty flesh. I begin my work. The sapphire eyes that betrayed me I remove to place in formaldehyde. Her beautiful face I hack with my bonsaw, chewing the flesh under its teeth removing traces of her existence. The supple breasts I expose, my vulgar appetite grows. I shear them off in a circular slice and place them on the table next to her. No man will want you now. My mind boils over in ecstasy as warm blood is splashed on my face with every slice and wound I afflict. The insurmountable force to disfigure compiles me foreword. I saw open her pliable young chest. The fluids of the dead leak on her cloths and clot on the floor. The coagulated blood fills the room with an iron stench. Her organs exposed I make use of them, gory decoration for her din of fornication. My ecstasy wanes, my art is finished. I have given this angel my best work. The walls around her drip with rubies and the room stinks of iron. The room is adorned with her entrails. Her face is hacked and chewed properly and her sapphire eyes are forever mine. I leave for Singapore tomorrow to find new work. I have finished my reign in London with a masterpiece of gore. A closed-casket elegy for this angel of mine.


Comic book Karma interview by Daniel Gonzales

1. Who came up with the idea for the comic? Who writes and draws it? Me, I write, pencil, ink & color. 2. So you describe the comic as cyberpunk with a Lovecraftian twist, what are your inspirations? Oddly it being a comic, most of my inspirations are from movies or tv, rather than comics or manga. Specifically movies that I researched as being either cyberpunk genre or lovecraftian inspired and watched any that I could find (since I love said genres). Akira, Ghost in the shell, Serenity, Bladerunner, Matrix, Mouth of madness, Jacob’s ladder, Clockwork orange & many more. For the surreal or drug-related stuff: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Spun, & Go. For the Old school punk reference (my “Malcs” are based of this) Sid & Nancy, SLC punk, This is England & lots of oldschool punk youtube videos. TV shows that inspire: Buffy the vampire slayer, Firefly, Dollhouse, Black Lagoon, Bubblegum crisis, Elven Lied, & Heroes. And of course I read ‘Neromancer’. 3. What is the basic plot of the comic and how long do you see it running? Basic plot: In a dark near future a girl gets powers, girls life changes, girl and her friends do their best to overcome the challenges they face together. Challenges from living in a miserable non-elite 1% of a dystopian society, and challenges from things more dark and supernatural. I have a minimum of 5 comics worth of ideas


for this story. If I get enough people interested, I’ll want to write more. I have a lot of story to tell in this world and could easily do 100 issues, unless I get bored of it myself of course. 4. I see you are trying to raise funds for a print version, have you thought about doing a kickstarter account? I am currently on Indiegogo to put my comic to print. I would love to get on Kickstarter, but they use a payment system that requires a U.S. address, me being Canadian makes that not happen. 5. How long have you been writing/drawing comics? Were you more of a Marvel or DC guy? This is my first comic and sequential art. I am an illustrator primarily and wanted to make this story happen in comic format, and wanted to challenge myself. I’ve learned a lot! and am continuing to learn as I go, and I hope Purg isn’t my one and only comic creation. As for Marvel or DC... >MARVEL<, sorry DC fans, I like the extra darkness to the writing, however any Batman/Joker DC stuff is equally loved. 6. How far would you like to see this comic go? A hardcover version or even selling it through Comixology maybe? Hardcover? If fans want it I’ll make it happen, but I am a cyberpunk, so if most readers just view for free it online or download the .cbr that’s fine by me. I’m just happy to tell a story they like enough to read. Of course I won’t get upset over donations. As for Comixology, I was oblivious to it, and I thank you for sharing with me that it existed.

For more on the comic and to read it: http://purgcomic.com/



Necronomicon Gigantic Death Worm By Vince Kramer Review by S.T. Cartledge If this book were a movie, it would feature Vince Kramer playing multiple characters in many different wigs and costumes that are all obviously him. Some comedy is like that. The Mighty Boosh, Monty Python, all of that far-fetched stuff that could only exist from the creativity of those lunatics involved. They go for the crude, the vulgar, the obnoxiously entertaining, and you feel like you’re not just getting wild stories out of it, you’re also granted passage into the minds of the people that created it. You pick up Gigantic Death Worm and you get a large slice of Vince along with it. It’s a combo-package deal. His writing style reminds me of an artist who did a series of pictures where he got a whole bunch of kids to do a whole bunch of drawings of monsters and he redrew them to look more realistic. And the kids had all sorts of strange, crooked shapes and limbs and eyes and things sticking out in odd places, and strange ideas like baseball monsters and things.

There was no point to it, but it was crazy awesome. It’s like Vince sat down with a bunch of kids and got them to tell him all sorts of crazy and nonsensical junk, and then he took it and made it more crazy and nonsensical, violent and pornographic, and then strung it together in a single, crazy, nonsensical story and polished it up a bit. And there are copious amounts of that youthful sense of wonder and spontaneity and excitement and imagination. It doesn’t need to be poignant. It’s got shit blowing up and shit being awesome. What more do you need? This book is about these totally awesome frat dudes and this chick who get stuck out on a ski lift, and there’s bears that spit wolves, then there are these gigantic death worms and these Mexican ninjas and it’s totally badass, and it’s the end of the world. It’s gross and comedic and violent and vulgar and crazy and wicked fast paced and fun. Reading should be fun. And you can tell that Gigantic Death Worm is all about fun. It’s crazy, stupid, afternoon-killing fun and it serves as a reminder not to take everything so seriously.



Reckon Bryan Howie

Around here, the folks say, “I reckon” to mean that they know something true but that it’s something they

shouldn’t say. That feller over there killed his baby. They say the babe choked on a grape, and the dumb bastard shook that little baby to death, but there was bruising on the brain and they showned it in court. Said it was some days old and came from smackin’ the kid into the floor. I reckon he done it.

In the fall two years ago, there was a boy looking through the muddy, slanting windows of a single-wide trailer

without a foundation, who caught his momma fucking his dad’s best friend. Now this boy, this Little Jesse, he didn’t know what to do. Even in the hills, it takes a moment to figure something like this out.

Crouching outside the bedroom window on a trailer hitch, chain smoking American Spirit cigarettes next to the

propane tanks, he listened to his mom get fucked. He tried not to watch, because the sight of her on top, and those pancake titties swirling in wide loops did a number on his stomach. Without food for two days, mostly living on cigs and coffee and beer, he was two years into a hell of a ulcer and puked blood every other weekend.

Little Jesse peeked at his momma bucking and screaming as Carl laid into her. Noises Little Jesse had heard his

whole life.

If’n it was me, I guess I’d be smart about it, be sly and be quiet. I don’t think I’d tell nobody, especially if my

daddy was pretty well known about for getting the devil in him. But this ain’t about me.

Little Jesse had a gun on him, a little .22 for shooting whistle pigs, which is also known as groundhogs. He was a

good shot and knew what a bullet did inside a body and, to hear him tell it, he could have put a bullet in that fella’s head from the window and not hardly spilled a drop of blood on his mother’s good sheets. But he didn’t bust in and shoot his mother’s lover, like he felt he should.

He waited for his daddy to get home. After a bit, the fucking noises stopped. Talking started and ended. Little

Jesse sat on that trailer hitch, the setting sun casting long shadows across him. Carl came out whistling auld lang syne. Little Jesse lifted up his gun slow, put the sights on the shadow of Carl. His finger went to the cold trigger. Carl got in his truck and spun out, peppering the trailer with gravel as he took drove off.

Little Jesse took the butt of the stock from his shoulder, lit up another cigarette, and stayed perched on that trailer

hitch, waiting for his daddy to come home.


Jess Senior, Little Jesse’s daddy, was a big, mean son of a bitch. He logged until he got lucky enough to pick

up an injury that could get him on disability without actually disabling him. He ate pills like anyone else, but his were actually prescribed to him.

Where Jess was or wasn’t, Little Jesse didn’t ask.

Jess pulled up to the trailer in his scraped and busted ‘84 Ford. When the truck door opened, beer bottles fell out

and Jess pulled out a half-empty twelve pack from the passenger’s seat. He left the headlights on, watching a shadow carrying a rifle walk up from the brush around the trailer.

“There’s something we need to talk about,” Little Jesse said. He still had his gun in his hands. While he smoked,

he switched hands back and forth between gun and cigarette.

Hearing his son’s voice, Jess relaxed and flicked the lights off. Bottles clanked in his hands and he slammed the

door shut. The rubber insulation around the door had rotted away. When he drove, the wind whistled through the cabin. When he shut the door, metal on metal snapped through the air. The radiator boiled down, ticking and leaking a little green pool.

“It’ll wait,” Jess said.

“Won’t wait this time,” Little Jesse said.

Jess wasn’t a smart man by some standards, but when you’re measuring intelligence, you got a lot to take into

account. He could take apart an engine and put it back together and there wouldn’t be hardly any extra parts. He could hunt and track, but ever since he was disabled, he preferred just to road hunt, shining a spotlight into the fields and freezing the deer in their tracks. Aim for the shiny, bright eyes. He took in three or four deer and maybe an elk or two each year. He gave extra to older family or to the little cousin girls who’d married poorly and didn’t have fresh kill every year.

Little Jesse walked to the shed where they’d hang the meat without waiting for his father. Plywood and two-by-

fours, a small barrel-stove old as rock, and hooks hanging from the ceiling. Clay floor almost cement strong from years of blood soaking into the dirt.

The fire burnt, warmth trapped in the room skulked out the open door. Light played through the cracks in the

welding and lit the room in dancing shadows, casting hooked silhouettes on the ceiling.

With his back turned to the door, he waited until he heard his father finish a beer and twist the top off another

before he spoke. His voice didn’t shake. He had practiced this in his head for better on two hours, but whatever he planned to say disappeared and he said, “I caught her going at it with Carl.”

Jess drained his beer. Didn’t say a word. Twisted open another one, roughly this time and foam ran down the side

to drip onto the ground. He drank that one too.

Little Jesse said, “I didn’t shoot him.”

“Good,” said Jess.


“Think I should have.” Little Jesse held the gun across his chest, like he’d seen the Army fellows do. A cigarette

hung dead between his thick lips.

“Not ‘ten,” Jess said. “Not ‘en yet.”

“When?”

“Just shut it up and come on for dinner. I suspect your mother’s waiting.”

His father’s voice convinced Little Jesse that the matter was settled for the night, but not for long. There wasn’t a

bit of shock to the tone. Nothing but calm. He’d heard that voice before, just after shooting a egg-laying chicken. Twenty whoops on the ass with a leather strap. Not a bit of anger from his father. Just another chore to be done before bed.

They left the shed slower than they had walked into it.

***

It wasn’t until a month later that I first heard the story. Two weeks after the first snow, drunk on Coors, standing

around a bonfire up an old logging road that had been blocked off by a locked gate by the Forest Service. Somebody had a plow on the front of their truck and had taken out the lock on that gate. Rumor was that the Forest Service put up cameras to watch for this type of shit, but I haven’t ever seen or heard nothing coming of it.

The logs for the bonfire came mostly from the stripped poles and ground up brush of an old logging job. Usually,

the company that logs out the State land have to clean up their mess. They come through and burn these big piles of brush and little logs, which smolder for days in a slow burn.

Sometimes they left them, and we’d come up in the middle of the night with a couple gallons of gasoline and

make ourselves a good fire to chase away the winter chill. Get it hot enough to convince the girls to strip down. The guy with the best stereo system got to be DJ. Music in the middle of nowhere. A hill emptied of trees, the flames lighting up miles of snowy land.

Little Jesse was there when I got to the party. He was telling stories. He didn’t tell nothing about the shed or about

his father’s coldness as they sat and ate bloody raw steak while the momma gossiped and jabbered. Not until the beer was gone and the whiskey came out did those little pieces start falling out of his buck-toothed mouth.

Until then, it was bravado. Little Jesse bragging on stalking the trailer, sensing something amiss. Circling, he saw

Carl’s truck in the driveway, but that didn’t take away that suspicion. Something wasn’t right. So he come up from the woods just as quiet as a tick and peeked in the windows so silent and smooth you’d have thought he was Special Forces. And when he saw what his momma was doing, he just sat as cool as a cucumber and waited. “Like waiting in a tree stand,” he said. “Just wait. Calm.”

None of the crying he told me about when the sting of Jack Daniels washed down his throat. Not Little Jesse.


Before the whiskey, though, you couldn’t get Little Jesse to shut up about how tough he was. I elbowed him in the

stomach and said, “You keep your mouth shut, you fucking idiot.”

“Don’t piss me off, Ted,” Little Jesse said. “Or I’ll do you the same as Carl.”

“Carl took off for California,” I said. Everyone knew Carl had family in California. Carl’s brother was a well-

known meth cook, and Carl made a trip every month or so.

“He’s gone,” Little Jesse said. “But not for California. I told them and I’m telling you. I killed him.”

Nobody believed Little Jesse a bit. Wasn’t unusual for somebody to get a little drunk and start exaggeration about

beating somebody’s ass or how they was going to kill someon. Sometimes it led to fights around the fire, and those were good nights. Blood on the melting snow made for a festive holiday look.

The thing was, I knew that Carl had been sticking it to Little Jesse’s mom. I knew for a long time. How I knew

ain’t nobody’s business. I didn’t tell about them fucking and I ain’t telling how I knew. Don’t tell nobody nothing.

Here was Little Jesse telling everything. “I beat his ass first, though. Broke his leg with a baseball bat. Dad

watched me do it. Told me it was my kill, since I had spotted him first.”

Donna called bullshit on the story. “Can’t break a leg with a baseball bat.”

“The fuck you can’t,” Little Jesse said. “I hit him right below the knee and there was bone sticking right through

the skin. It was fucked up looking and he rolled around crying a bit. Then I took out my pistol and shot him in the guts.”

His back to the fire, Little Jesse’s face was a shadow that lit red when he took a drag from his cigarette.

“Where’s the gun?” Donna said.

“Dumb bitch,” Little Jesse said. “I dumped the gun. I dropped it in-”

This was where I really hit him. I stepped to his side to get a good angle. The first one had been a warning, just in

case he was telling the truth. This one was a kidney shot that punched out his voice and arched his back. “Shut the fuck up,” I said. “You’re saying a lot of stupid shit.”

If Jess had been there, he would have beat the holy living shit out of him. Not only for talking about killing, but

for shaming his mom like that. Jess wasn’t there, though, and my punch slowed Little Jesse down for a while, but the beer got him spilling his guts again.

I’d had enough of it. He wasn’t nothing special to me, and there was a good chance I’d catch a fist in the nose

later for that kidney shot, so I kept the fire between us for an hour or so. But I heard second-hand some of the stories he told. And I was still there when he finally flipped out for being called a liar for the hundredth time and stalked over to his pickup truck. He rooted around under some junk in his truck bed before he came back to the fire with a severed foot in his hands.

The skin was shrunken and yellow. I thought it would stink, but it didn’t smell like anything much. The foot was

cold and dried out, bones visible in lumps beneath the skin. Little Jesse handed it around, but I wouldn’t touch it. I wasn’t gonna get my fingerprints on that fucking stump.


“It feels hollow,” Donna said. Her eyes were wet and round. She smiled at the foot.

A lot of the party ended after that. I didn’t stick around. Everything about him drinking whiskey and crying about

his momma and about killing, I don’t know that it’s true. Mostly Donna told them tales. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut for nothing. But she stayed up drinking with him all night while he went on about it. I reckon he was upset. A person don’t carry around a severed foot for a month without having something wrong in their head.

Somebody had to tell Jess that his son was blabbing, but it sure as shit wasn’t me. Little Jesse didn’t show up the

next night, though. Didn’t show up for a while. I think his dad taught him a lesson about running mouths.

It wasn’t a surprise when the cops started poking around asking questions. It wasn’t a surprise when nobody said

a damn thing, either. The foot had disappeared, and the cops couldn’t get anyone to admit to actually seeing it. The closest the cops got was people saying they heard somebody say that somebody said they were there.

Cops can’t act do much with rumors.

Everyone closed up tight. Even the people that hated Jess and Little Jesse, and there were a considerable amount of them, kept their mouths shut. There wasn’t a body, there wasn’t anyone to report him missing, there wasn’t anything.

What was a surprise, it turns out, snow falling so early in the year and with such ferocity that some of the logging

companies left the back hills without cleaning up the dump brush piles, leaving the burning for later in the year when the snow would melt off the roads.

And the quick thaw in the spring was a surprise, too. Because otherwise you’d think Jess or Little Jesse would

have got up there, hours back in the woods on shitty roads, and moved the fucking body. Or maybe they thought the animals would have at it. I don’t know nothing about what they figured.

I heard they found Carl under a burn pile, just before a logging outfit’s cleanup crew lit the son of a bitch up. Just

a moment more, or a spark, and that body would have been gone. But beneath the crushed pine needles still frozen dead to stripped off branches, a hand was sticking out. Somebody didn’t light a match and went to look at that strange, yellow hand. Still frozen, reaching out from beneath a gray dead pile. That’s how the cops found the body, and if Carl had both his feet, maybe it wouldn’t have been so obvious. Both Jess and Little Jesse claimed it was bullshit. They said they didn’t kill no one. The momma said she never fucked Carl. Everyone clammed right up.

I reckon they were guilty. The jury reckoned the same thing. But it’s been ten years now, and Little Jesse gets out

next month. Jess Senior has two more years.



Charcoal Keith Fink

The sky was black, like ice.

It started with several unexpected solar flares. Then the world’s climate fell into dismay and the planet’s natural gravitational pull had quickly unwound itself leaving our world spinning and teetering into an unnatural oblivion. The planet scarred itself, once, twice, then three times over. Earth was a greasy backroom bare-knuckle brawler, ready for its last fight. Drawing its last breath, chalk white tape had covered most of the swelling and discoloration. The skin was flat and loose and tied tightly around all the wrong places, it was worn but tough. It reminded some of spoiled milk mixed in with unidentifiable chunks of whatever, carelessly swirling around in a small tin bucket. It was disheveled and bloated, with now callused eyes, its mouth trembling, silent in prayer. It’s balled up fists went numb and they shook with violent tremors.

There was ash.

Pieces of ash fell from the sky like thick drops of rain, and each piece was scathing. Each street was littered with black. It all piled up now, like snow. The trucks would soon push the black snow to the side of the road as if it were plagued. It became so that people had to rake it into neat little piles on their front lawns. Our perfect neat little world was developing its first blemish. Then the smell came. People choked in the streets over the smell, and then they would breathe through scarves or ball caps and it never helped. People wrecked dozens of cars across every highway intersection and people would stand out of the welded iron heaps beneath them in the middle of wherever and scream at the skies. As the cars crashed, and the heat and speed of the vehicles embraced one another, people saw the raw beauty of fire and speed and contortion, and now the human race cheered and embraced without prejudice each and every demolition. Finally, on one morning several months after the solar flares and black flakes started to terrorize the planet, there was a sudden eerie silence spanning as far away as anyone could hear, it was truly deafening. The blackness was complete and whole and it was something purposeful and quietly threatening. I felt like years had passed, and I was beginning to become engulfed in another reality. It was my own reality with joy created chemically, one where fun was manufactured on an assembly line and I would drool, sucking my thumb watching the conveyer belt pull and spin as the gears beneath the machine would grind carefully, in a calculated sort of way. There were levers and strings and everything worked in a sort of perfected harmony, one that was beyond the understanding of us mere mortals. And then shrill, sharp and painful shrieks of men had beckoned from the gates of hell. The white noise had begun to rip and fight its way through the old streets and soon, the decaying alleyways of my block. And then I was crashing back into my previous life, it was deformed and ugly with rotting yellow teeth and wagging tongues. It made me frantic and dizzy and soon, short of breath. Sweat would trickle down my warm, loose skin, and it all would gather together in my palms or through the spaces where my twitching digits formed. I was nearly alone in a shady bar. It was in a bad part of town and since the sky was shattered apart like cheap glass, it was a very bad part of town. Everything had the same smell of spilt liquor and stale peanuts, it was present in every other bar and I found it calming. I had my hand clasping my glass, my fingers lax, and my wrists lying on the cheap wooden table in the back of the bar. Back in the corners the shadows would come out to dance sometimes. The flame dancing over the candle-wax on my table knew it had my attention, it was waiting, biding its time, and now the good


moves were coming out. I sucked in some air and choked. I blew smoke from my mouth and nearly fell from my stool. Strong thin arms helped me up to straddle the bar once again, and I was always the cowboy. And when I looked up, there was a young woman sitting across from me and she looked like a pale temptress, a vixen with wild eyes and white teeth. I saw her long thin arms now, fully, and they didn’t seem quite as muscular as they had before, but they were pale white, and her fingers looked sharp and thin. Her nails were painted meticulously in a color that could only be described as ‘blood red’. After I finished my some-teenth drink of whatever, I look to her, and she looks back to me. The woman isn’t drunk yet but she’s on her way. And her shaking hand had leveled out two drinks ago. The bracelet and ear candy are fakes. But they look real enough. And she’s obviously lonely and she never veers her eyes away from the bottom of her glass. She has a simple sleeveless white dress on and it has deep dark stains curling up into the fabric of her dress. Dirt and blood are along both sides of her dress, but along her arms, blood is dried and crusted, some of it her own even. A long-bodied mosquito lands between us on the bar. We hesitate and we lock into a glare. Then the sound of her leather purse thumps onto the cheap table and it echoes throughout the room. And nobody looks up, nobody is here anyway.

Then the bartender starts to say something but starts coughing into his rag again and waves his hand away.

She picks the bag up and there is puss under the snap where she killed the bug. She takes a handful of napkins and looks at her bag and decides that she doesn’t know where to start. Then a small squeak sneaks its way through her throat and then it echoes into her now open mouth. And then she drops the purse and the napkins and finally, in defeat she signals for another drink.

Insects. She says laughing, swallowing.

Your drinks dry. I tell her quietly and pour half of mine into her glass.

me.

She then exhales and sits for a moment without moving. And then she smiles and turns to me. And she thanks

I mouth the word ‘yup’ but I don’t make the sound come out.

It feels like, she tells me, pausing to think.

It feels like there should’ve been more. She says her eyes now tired and weary.

What would give you that impression?


Seed by Ania Ahlborn Review by Courtney Alsop The occult fascinates me. The thought of bending or contacting supernatural forces of extreme evil (or good) gives me shivers. And when bad things happen to good people? When you have to be afraid of your own kids? If you are like me you will want to read Seed by Ania Ahlborn, who brings domestic devils to Louisiana. Jack is driving his old car with his wife and two daughters inside. On a dark and deserted road his headlights flicker, and go out. A pair of eyes gleam in the darkness, he swerves, and flips his car. His family is unscathed, but he recognizes those eyes, and his youngest daughter Charlotte saw them too. It quickly becomes apparent that something sinister took root in her. Jack should be determined to discover the cause and a way to cleanse his daughter, but something similar has always haunted Jack. What started with him as a child has surfaced with his daughter and it threatens to rip his family apart. Ahlborn has a very clean and direct style of writing, yet it does have some beautiful lines like “...a nobody who had come from nowhere, like a ghost that had gotten stuck in the bayou”. As the

story progresses the terror mounts as the violence rises and it is the climax that gets the reader’s heart pounding. The innocence of Charlie slips away and a parent’s worst nightmare begins to emerge. Charlie alternates between adorable and frightening, jerking the reader between adoring her and hating her. My only criticism with Charlie is that her dialogue is too advanced for a child who has just turned six years old the same day the story begins. I have met my share of intelligent children with advanced vocabulary and none of them sound like her. The protagonist, Jack Winter, gets my sympathy. He is trying to have a day job, a family, and an artistic dream. It is hard to do all these things. Pile on top of these issues a snobbish mother-in-law who is from an uppercrust society he was not born into and cannot give to his own family. Yet he denies and deflects and sabotages his wife’s efforts to discover what is wrong with their child. Do I hate Jack? No, not really. I can see why he does not want to resurface what he has buried, though he could use a good slap in the face. Nobody is perfect, and the protagonist is fighting his own inner demons (and communication problems). By the end of the novel, every question that the reader has is not explained away to the last detail. There are still gaping questions in our heads. What exactly has been haunting them? Lesser demon, minion, or the actual devil himself? Why did it choose Jack? A wonderful aspect of the horror genre is that sometimes it is much scarier when we do not get all the pieces of the puzzle. Without a full understanding we might slip into the same mistakes and have the same fate. It also makes me wonder if we might one day see a sequel to get these answers.



Madness Returns: American McGee's Alice a review by Courtney Alsop “I don’t want to escape. I want to stop it.” --Alice to Mock Turtle. Alice: Madness Returns is the long-awaited sequel to American McGee’s Alice. Orphaned by a house fire that killed her family, she was wracked with guilt and spent about ten years in a catatonic state at Rutledge Asylum. Previously she has conquered her inner demons, manifested in her mind as The Queen of Hearts, and she departed from Rutledge Asylum with a clearer mind. A year has passed and she is sucked back into the familiar, yet utterly damned Wonderland. There is corruption in her mind that is destroying Wonderland. The source is the Infernal Train that leaves behind the Ruin, monsters bent on killing Alice. But who set this train in motion that will destroy what she has left of her mind? Unconsciously she is desperately trying to tell herself that her memories are flawed, and that the death of her family may not be her fault. With this game you mostly see it plunked into the genres of action-adventure or as a platformer. This game is a horror with a mystery to solve. There are the grotesque Ruin, the humanoid denizens of Wonderland who seek to kill Alice, and friends who now have murderous appetites. There is blood and gore as Alice’s Vorpal Blade goes “snickersnack” through enemies. The first stages you enter are lush and vivid, lulling you in to a familiar security. As you plunge further into Wonderland, the more broken and sinister it becomes. The Red Queen’s castle is infused with living, pulsing tissue, reminiscent of Silent Hill. The Dollhouse levels might not be outright frightening on the surface, but it is what the childish imagery, now torn, disfigured, and dangerous, represents. The Mysterious East area has a calm and tranquil nature with a massacre occurring, forcing Alice to juxtapose it with the tragedies that are occurring in real-life London. There is real horror in this game outside of Wonderland. As Alice is conscious and exploring her life in Victorian London, the player is faced with what used to be reality. London is filthy and so are the people. There are lost children with pedophiles looming nearby. Unattractive prostitutes sell their bodies. Violent pimps squeeze out every coin that does not belong to them. There is no solace for Alice anywhere. Not necessarily a horrifying experience, but in a dark way it is intriguing. The whole game has a twisted and macabre edge to it that makes the underlying story of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland go beyond the cute and normal. The game even uses animated illustrations to taint your childhood just a little bit more.

Overall, if you adore dark twists on innocent childhood tales, Alice: Madness Returns will not fail you.



Shit Ryan Swofford Let me start by saying painting with poop is not for everyone. Specifically, it is not for normal people. People with good taste. Good morals. Good advice. All that. Shit painting is for the deranged, to say the least. I can’t really judge you, though, if you like to paint with your shit. All I can say is it reeks to high-heavens and stays on your hands for weeks—that is, if you decide to use your hands. Most deranged people, they don’t care if they get poop on their hands. It just isn’t a big deal to them. Most deranged people, they just smear it all over the place. On the walls. On the carpet. On their face. It doesn’t really matter to them. It seems, sometimes, that deranged people just want an excuse to play with shit. Fling it around. Finger-putt it. Taste it. I mean, come on: You can’t just sit there and pretend you’ve never thought about tasting your own crap before. You have. I know it. You smell it and you hear it and sometimes, if you wipe wrong, you feel it, but seldom do you actually taste it. This is because normal people have good morals. And eating shit is not morally acceptable. You’d be shunned and spat on. You’d be stoned, and then they’d drop stones on your head. If you ate shit, you would be excommunicated and ignored and no one would wish you happy birthday or come by your house to visit—none of that, because you ate shit. Change one letter: Because you are shit. When I enrolled in art school at Pacific University in Forest Grove, my mother was beginning to develop dementia, so I had to drive down to Redmond every weekend to see her. One weekend, she wanted me to have sex with her because she thought I was her husband, my father, my abandoner—she was half-dressed in lingerie and diddling herself on the bed when I walked in and she groaned, “Do me, Meester Belofsky!” with her bruised cunt and frenzied with wiry black pubic hair, and she kept slapping it so hard it looked like it was going to fall off. I explained to her, over hot coffee, that I was her daughter. “I’m enrolled in art school now,” I told her, placing my hand over my mug. “You always wanted me to go to art school—to, you know, follow my dreams. So I did.” I paused. Looked in my mug at the ink, smelled it. Some kind of Mexican bullshit. And I asked her: “Are you proud of me?” My mother—the widowed Elsa Belofsky of Soviet Russia, stealing the American Children for Peace to raise them, to let them be my brothers and sisters and then getting them taken away by asshole Commies and then pissing on the Kremlin to prove her point—my mother gazed down at the mug and a thread of drool went kerplop. She looked up. Took a quick sip. Back to life, now. Snapping out of it. She looked at me and said, “Of course,” and the little black hairs on her chin sparkled in the lamp when she moved her Soviet jaw. She sighed. “And now, dear, I am in need of a cigarette.” She got up and looked for a cigarette while I gulped down the rest of my cold ink-coffee. I stared off into space— the golden light of the lamp and the insects dirty dancing on the walls—and thought about art school. I wanted my mother to be appreciative, of course, but I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that she was just too sick to see all the good things I was doing with my life—as in, I wasn’t killing people. I was benevolent, perhaps for the first time in my life. I wasn’t killing anybody, and it felt great—I felt free from some burden that was weighing me down long ago, and I was doing what I loved—paining. Specifically, though, I loved shit painting.


See, shit paintings actually make quite a bit of money. If you’re good at smearing poop on a canvas (and, keep in mind, there are certain methods the professional poop-smearers abide by), you can sell each one for—oh, maybe four grand. The more you sell, the more prestigious you get—and the more your shit paintings will cost. And the more money you’ll make. Shit painting is perhaps the oldest profession apart from storytelling and prostitution. Cavemen would run out of paint and, the artsy little chimps they were, would be resourceful—they saw that shit was brown and sometimes green, so the right mixtures with other caveman-poop would actually result in an array of shades and hues and textures they could use to paint on their cave walls. Later, of course, as civilization became more advanced and inventive and curious, the need for shit painting became obsolete. People started painting with chalks and pastels and acrylics and so, naturally, shit painting was just sick and disgusting and anyone who doodled with their own feces was mentally instable and needed to be hospitalized right away. But then came a few contemporary artists during the Harlem Renaissance and the Beat Generation who said that shit painting deserved to be looked at by others. Poop in jars, they told critics, was the highest form of satirical comment anyone has ever made about modern art. And so, the critics, they ate it up. They priced shit pieces are ridiculous amounts. Someone could just poop in a box, tape it up, and sell it for thousands for dollars. It’s a critical statement about America, they said. These artists aren’t lazy—they’re so brilliant they don’t have to work hard. And today, shit artists, they’re stoned and shunned. Spat on. Ignored. Me, I’m a shit artist. I began smearing poop when I met a girl named Nicolette, a freshman who was attending the same MFA program I was. She always wore baseball caps and big T-shirts and sweatpants and her lips were always cracked with a cigarette hanging on for dear life. And her hands—they always smelled like shit. Everyone called her Shit Hands. But Nicolette wasn’t a shit artist. Not at first. At first, she just liked to eat poop. You know: The whole derangedperson-thing about smelling and feeling and hearing poop, but never tasting it—she tasted it, and in large quantities. Once, I visited her apartment to find her seated at the table for dinner, a handkerchief around her neck, fork and knife in each hand, with a six-inch turd on the plate in front of her. At that point, she just looked up. Smiled big. The walls of her apartment were brown. At first, I thought it was wallpaper. I was wrong. Nicolette is perhaps the most shit-brained person I have met in my entire life—and I’ve met some pretty psychotic folks. I was constantly being shocked by the stuff she would do—if eating shit isn’t enough, I once walked in on her in the bathroom trying to shove a turd back up her ass, but it kept falling from her hands and hitting the ground. She didn’t see me until she had successfully replaced the piece of poop—and even then, she just looked up. Smiled big. Little flecks of brown in her teeth. Of course, she wasn’t my friend because she was fucked up. That was just an unavoidable truth I had to live with, and mostly, I was okay with it. I grew indifferent. I told myself that there was no way Nicolette could ever disgust me more than she had in those past few weeks—and to some degree, I was right. Everything that disgusted me about her either had to do with her feces, her butthole, or her smell. The rest of her, however, was actually quite classy. She wore high-heels whenever we’d go out to dinner. And she had dresses galore—her whole closet, if you looked, was full of designer dresses. Gucci. Louis Baton. Chanel. Bob Mackie. Little flapper dresses and James Bond dresses—you know, the ones where you’d expect to see a holster strap on


the woman’s leg—and cute sailor dresses and bell dresses and ballerina tutus made to look like dresses…she also wore make-up like nobody’s business. If you wiped your hand on her face, you’d need a napkin. No joke. It was that bad. That was when she wasn’t busy eating shit. And later, when she wasn’t busy painting with it. She and I would stay up late talking about her poop-eating habits. I would ask her why she liked eating poop—or did she even like it at all. We were both fried during these conversations, so we often forgot we talked about anything the night before when we’d wake up on her bed with searing head-aches and morning breath. And it was around that time when we would set up the canvases, wash our brushes, and head into the bathroom one at a time to produce our “paint.” And once we had our precious colors on our platters, we would get to work. Stroke against the grain for a more rigid, chunkier look. Stroke with the grain for a smoother, fuller look. And if you still need to fill up a big section on your canvas, but don’t have enough “paint” left to do so, just add water. And smear. Say the color is too dark—add water and spread out the dark to make light. How about if the color is too light? Just add more paint. Smear it in. Smudge the heck out of it. Make circles with your brush, or, if you’re courageous, use your fingers. We did this every morning with the bright Lake Oswego light burning our drunken heads. We smoked hash from a water pipe and kissed each other. We did this for two years. We told no one. And then, after we graduated and I was a master at something, although I wasn’t sure what yet, after all that, Nicolette caught the bug. Metastasis sucked out her soul. And her breasts. The doctors, they performed a mastectomy— when they cut a breast off because there’s a malignant tumor that won’t go away otherwise. The doctors—those idiots who were masters at something—those doctors cut off the wrong one. When the landlady came over to clean out Nicolette’s apartment, she had to wear a mask. She paid some teenagers eight bucks an hour to help clean up—poop paintings, mostly. They wore masks, too. I stood in the doorway with my arms crossed. Just breathing—trying not to break. The ball in my throat wasn’t a ball at all. It was a fucking lemon. “What a freak,” one of the boys said. “What kind of shit is this?” another asked. And the boy who called Nicolette a freak, he answered, “It is shit, dude.” He put his foot through a fresh canvas— she called it “Hard Earned Cash.” Basically, what it was, it was my birthday present. That’s all that was.



Love Letter from a Serial Killer Bryan Howie

Dear Sarah Polenski,

I walk the dog every morning from five AM until five-thirty AM. It’s about a half mile walk around

the park I live near. A beautiful park with loud families picnicking every weekend. There’s a small pond where the ducks gather. The ducks chase small children and it’s a joy to watch.

My dog loves me. He’s a mutt, but he looks like a small German Shepard. I get along well with dogs

and children and old people. I like people. I think he’s a point in my favor, Sarah. If the dog loves me, I can’t be bad. Right?

Not all bad.

I like you. It’s more than just liking you. I tell my friends, of whom I have many, that a couple should

make each other more than they were separately. I believe this. I could make you a better you. You could make me a better me.

You get up early, too. We could exercise together. I love the way you smile when you answer the

phone at work, as if the caller can see how happy you are to hear from them through the phone. Your voice on the phone is a warm breeze of cheerful enthusiasm.

I know being a secretary isn’t what you went to school for. There are ways to be a philosophy major

and get paid for it, I’m sure. We’ll find that way together.

You’re so organized. The shoes on the floor of your closet are arranged in the hues of the rainbow.

That took me a while to figure out. Roy G. Biv. Red orange yellow green blue indigo violet. In my experience, the women who organize their shoes do it by shape, such as high heels, dress shoes, boots, tennis


shoes, etc. Not you, though. Colors. I love that about you. It’s so creative, yet disciplined.

Which is what I’m looking for in a partner.

By partner, I mean a confidant, a friend, and a lover. That person who finishes the sentence I have

started.

I know we both have things that we need to work on. I’m not blind to the imperfections in myself or

you. Nobody is perfect. You eat with your mouth open when you think nobody is watching, and that does gross me out a little. You watch the worst television. I hate your perfume.

I’ve killed seven women who look a little like you. That’s got to be a turn off. But all that is behind

me. I don’t need to kill my mother over and over again. With you, I think I can finally start moving on to other outlets for my needs. I truly believe that together, we can start bringing in new women to explore and catalog. Creatively.

I don’t want to make a skin suit from your flesh. It’s not that type of thing. I don’t want to own you

or keep parts of you as a trophy. I don’t even want to kill you. I really like you. I’m not a bad person.

I have a cabin out of town. It’s next to a lake. My nearest neighbor is a thick forest mile away. It’s

ideal to get away. I’m working on a basement. It could be our little secret.

There’s no reason to keep going on. By now, I know your answer. But just in case, go ahead and circle

one:

YES NO and then slip the letter back under the door. I’m waiting for your answer. We can be together forever.

As long as you change your perfume.

Love,

Timothy Walter Stimson


Welcome to Hell Joseph Donald Myers









suicide Notes

pagan poetry for the damned Apocalypse by Bianca B.

Sombre red skies burn the sun. Our feeble hearts turned inside out. Bloodshed, slaughter, destruction unsung, Death brings forth damnation, Drought. The screams of ravens Rupture black seas. Hells cold hands gripped around my neck. Ravenous winds spread the world’s disease: A plague of deception, lies and deceit Walks all over me just like an insect. Stinking of dried blood Scraped from the guillotine. Conspiracy among lost souls of the deep Obsidian. Flames engulf the sand. A plot to destroy the like of me Will reign havoc across the land. The earth crumbles beneath our feet, Into darkness we descend. Here I stand, deaths gaze paralyzing me And I realize that this is the end.

Into my Cherry River by Bianca B.

Can you hear them too? The voices… Can you hear them? They follow me Everywhere I go. I hear them But I can’t see them. The ghosts, They haunt me

Their cries fill my head. What started as a whisper; Soothing And soft, Now grows to a terrible shriek. They’re screaming. Screaming at the past, Screaming at me. Their voices Carry their pain Straight through me, I shudder Every time. It gets louder And louder And louder. They scream at me, And I scream back Locked in a never ending battle With each other. Their cries deafens me And I can’t hear anything But the ghosts that haunt me. I can’t take it anymore, Their pain Is infectious, I have to end it. I take the knife and Drive it Into their very souls, I twist it And pull it out. The blade trembles in my hand. I stab them again And again And again But they won’t go away, The voices


Won’t stop Screaming At me.

Blood, My blood, I’m dying.

I feel An agonising pain In my stomach, I look down And see Blood. So much blood Pouring from my body. Crimson. Red. Blood. Flowing into the cherry river Beneath me.

The screaming, The ghosts, The voices, It was all me. I was battling Against my self And I won. I’m dying, I have defeated The enemy, My enemy, Me.

The voices are fighting back. I feel weakened But I Will Not Let Them Win!

Blood, So much blood. Crimson. Red. Pouring from my body, Sinking Into my cherry river.

I draw the knife And lunge at them. The blade cuts deep But the ghosts don’t die. I feel it again Another sharp pain In my stomach. Blood. So much blood… I take one more shot And it hits me, Right in the chest And then… Silence. The voices stop. Its over. They’re gone. I’ve killed the ghosts! No… Not the ghosts… Me. My hands Are covered in

I breathe in One more time, I take my time Enjoying my last breath, It’s peaceful Without the voices Screaming at me. I exhale. My last breath leaves my body And with it, My life.

Inside Her Mind by Bianca B.

Sitting in a dark room Four walls closing in on me I feel a slight breeze Are there any windows open? No, surely not. Not unless I am imagining things. There are no windows in this room. No doors. No way out. Nothing but a single chair in the centre of the room Bolted to the floor. That breeze, it irritates me.


Where is it coming from? I can’t quite sense a direction. It seems to be every where at once But no where at all. Its cold. My skin is covered in strange little bumps Hundreds of them Over my arms and legs Small hairs are sticking up On the back of my neck. Why do we have hairs on our arms and legs? They all have little-circle-dots at the base of them. The breeze is more potent A twitch in my neck My hands go numb. My left leg, its shaking I can’t control it. What is happening? The breeze from nowhere and everywhere at once Turns into a hurricane Spinning around me I see faces of the murdered-dead An axe, a dagger, a knife and a hammer Scenes of scary-bad-things flash all around me Bad-people-killers and pretty little girls With tomato-sauce-stains on their pink dresses Pretty little dead-girls and bad-demon-men They scream hurt-blood screams help-me-im-dying My ears bleed tomato sauce too Hahahahaha! Funny funny suffocate - I can’t breathe. Whole-body convulsions, Get me out of here! Escape escape no escape No door no window Only a chair Its arms gripping me tight Suffocating. Funny funny bad-demon-man-chair Holding me down with sharp-knife-claws Let me go! The breeze from nowhere and everywhere at once Where is it coming from? Pretty-little-dead-girl smiling, happy Laughing funny funny – dead.

Hemorrhage by Brittany Warren Hemorrhage, pessimism’s host invite naked thoughts of old while caustic blood shimmers. The cerebral maze, once happy nerves break, the cause of spasmodic tension grab your head, deserve this. Iris oozes, wring the teardrops from your lashes soaked, colored red see only what’s bad deserve this. Womb like new, fresh breath precious baby spoils from inside, angry view blood due deserve this. The ways we hemorrhage, aggression’s host Invite naked thoughts of old, While caustic blood shimmers. Half Baked by ~Nikita Driscoll Harebrained scheme, little jackrabbit Jumping in the pot. A slow, rolling boil Like a frog, comfortable in its own Cooking sauna. Let him leap; Be a half-baked lunch to your Half-baked ploy. Plotting the land, Sewing the garden. You kept your Distance. An inch-like-mile For a seasoned pro. A touch Of garlic, hint of rosemary Heat ‘til raw.



Stephen King: The Killing Wheel Jeff Barr Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again. ­--Stephen King, The Stand Serial killers are like insanity. Insanity grows, like a cancer, in the most unlikely places: slumbering in the sun of an idyllic California town. Holding a stop sign on a tree-lined suburban street, watching your kids walk home from school. Looking at you from the mirror. Insanity, like the serial killer, waits beneath the surface. When it emerges, it kills. Stephen King, the man who launched more American nightmares than communism, gay marriage, and marijuana, has one overshadowing fear: insanity. Stephen King has written about serial killers. It seems natural; after nigh on thirty years of his work in bookstores, it would be downright odd for him not to have touched on modern man’s most prominent boogeyman. The serial killer hides: behind that bush, beyond that streetlight, underneath your window at night, breathing in rhythm with you. Sooner or later, the killer invades your every waking moment. The fear you feel is the fear of your own death, waiting behind that closed door. From the hammer murderer in ‘The Man Who Loved Flowers’ to the amusement-park killer in King’s next book, Joyland, Stephen King has always faced up to his greatest fear. That insanity and murder are closer than we think. Like all of us, King is product of his times. Charles Whitman was a University of Texas at Austin student who killed 16 people, including his wife and mother, in 1966. He inspired the creation of King’s Curt Garrish (‘Cain Rose Up’), and young serial killer Todd Bowden (Apt Pupil). After killing 16 people, Whitman was discovered to


have a brain tumor. His insanity grew behind a smiling face, only to emerge one seemingly random summer day. Spring Heel Jack, from the short story ‘Strawberry Spring’. The loner in the fog. Annie Wilkes from Misery: the sadistic care-taker, who kills with deluded kindness. John Wayne Gacy--the killer clown--re-imagined by King as Robert Gray, aka Pennywise the Dancing Clown. In Kings’ 1986 novel It, the killer represents the culmination of decades of fear swimming up out of the sewers to prey on us at our most vulnerable. And then there is Frank Dodd, the sexually repressed, murderous crossing guard and police officer from The Dead Zone. Frank Dodd was a monster; a monster formed from insanity. King makes references to Oedipus, and manic-depression, and sundry other symptoms present in Dodd during his killing cycles. As King’s first ‘major’ serial killer, Dodd illustrates how insults to the childhood psyche can circle around and later manifest in the brain of the adult. He is a grown man terrified by the specter of Sex, so often an issue with close but uncomfortable ties to childhood and parents. Frank’s mother, Henrietta, instilled him with the rabid fear of Sex and those who would practice it. The nasty-fuckers, in the parlance of the Dodds. The nasty-fuckers were Henrietta Dodd’s version of the boogeyman. People of loose morals who went around having sex like wild animals, picking up diseases like party favors. She illustrates this to young Frank by clipping a clothespin to his penis to show him how those venereal diseases would feel. Also, and raise your hand if you heard a variation of this one: she admonished him that should he continue to play with that vile and sinful instrument, it would turn black and fall off. Strong images, custom made to burn their way into Frank Dodd’s impressionable mind. Dodd’s reign as the resident evil shadow of Castle Rock lasted five years; from his time as a gas-stop attendant to his final job: a crossing guard for children. He was finally stopped by Johnny Smith, The Dead Zone’s flawed prescient hero, after Dodd’s final murder, that of a nine year old girl. Nine years old, the same age Frank was when his loving mother planted the seed of insanity that would bloom into the Castle Rock Killer two decades later. We are left with a haunting image: Frank Dodd, crossing-sign in one hand, dressed head to toe in a black rain coat. He gestures for you to cross the road, and as you pass him, he looks at you and smiles. There’s something odd about his smile, and his eyes are as shiny as quarters.


With The Dead Zone, King struck on a chord that would re-emerge again and again in his later work (especially during his ‘prime’ – the 1980s)—the cyclical nature of evil in the form of mental illness. Frank Dodd killed during his manic cycles, forced by his guilt and fear into equating sex with murder. For him, murder wasn’t the crime—sex was the crime, and he the punishment. With his killings, came the fear—the fear that no one was safe from the Castle Rock Strangler. Two years later, with the release of Cujo, King would write again of Frank Dodd; this time as an old wives tale, used to frighten children. The man once considered the worst serial killer in Castle Rock now relegated to the status of a boogeyman. Though it is never referenced, it’s possible that the connection between Dodd and Cujo is closer than it would appear. In the King universe, people and places can store up evil, storing it like a battery until it finds a suitable vessel. Perhaps Cujo and Frank Dodd were examples of just those sorts of vessels. Stephen King’s wheel as it comes round again; and no matter where it lands, nobody wins. The wheel makes appearances in The Stand, It, and of course, his magnum opus: The Dark Tower series. Some of King’s more recent novels, such as Cell and Under the Dome, have mined the collective unconscious of some of the bigger fears of our times: terrorism, climate change, and political instability all have their place in this brave new world. But King still knows what makes us afraid. With Joyland, he’s getting back to his roots: the crazed killer that walks among us, looking for his next victim. Will it be you?

jalsdjfalks@ d f j k l s @ k a d l f j s k @ dalfuipru@



Ice Storm A. Pulliam The girls slip and slide over the ice on the sidewalk. Laughter floats on the wind as they cling to each other. They are too preoccupied to notice him standing in the shadows, watching and waiting for his chance. Sleet stings his face and

hands, but he only cares about the girls. The blonde is so small and graceful, like a figure skater on the ice. He wants her and he will have her. She reminds him of the others and he anticipates the way she will fight as he wraps his fingers around her neck. The brunette is unable to keep her feet and falls. Her purse lands on its side and her things scatter. Gathering her wallet and makeup, she fails to notice the white rectangle sitting just off the sidewalk. Making their way to the door of the building, the blonde holds her badge in front of a black box and the door opens. He is more sure-footed than the girls. Striding over the ice, he makes his way to the rectangle still lying on the ground. He stoops and picks it up. It is a hospital badge. There is a picture of the brunette on it and it reads: JULIE Admitting Registrar Smiling, he melts back into the shadows as more female voices come to him over the wind. Two women come around the building and he is able to make out snatches of their conversation. “...going to be the worst ice storm since 2006, combined with the snow storm of 1982. The weather isn’t that bad yet, but I don’t want to be on the roads when it gets bad.” “I’d rather be at home with my family, though.” “At least the hospital’s letting us stay in the surgical center. I heard we each get our own room and bathroom.” “What’s the point of us being all the way across the street? We still have to get out in it in the morning to get back to the main building.” As the two women continue on their way, he relaxes. He is glad he decided to try the small building, instead of


the larger one across the street. The older woman waves her hand in front of the black box and the door again opens. “...hope Julie and Ashley figured out...” floats back to him as the door closes. Ashley. That must be his little blonde. Shivering, he whispers, “Ashley.” Excitement builds, but he must remain calm. It has to be done right. Making his way to the door he looks through the small window. The hall is shrouded in darkness. He waves the badge in front of the black box and the door swings open. He can hear sweet laughter on the other side of another door at the end of the hallway. Making his way down the corridor he is a ghostly figure. Peeking through another window he surveys a brightly lit lobby. Certain it’s empty, he pushes the door but it remains closed. There is another black box on the wall and he waves Julie’s badge in front of it. The door opens and he heads across the lobby. Laughter echoes and without hesitation he follows the signs down a small hallway and into the men’s restroom. “Ashley, are you getting something from the vending machine?” “No, I’m not hungry. What time are the others coming over?” Her voice is the tinkling of tiny bells. “They don’t get off until eleven.” Julie’s voice is nails on a chalkboard, but this is valuable information. Venturing from the bathroom, he wants to take her now and just deal with the brunette. “I’m in room eight if you need anything.” Longing stirs in him. Ashley. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’m in room one.” He will lose his mind if Julie talks again. He is silent behind the girls and they notice him as much as they notice their own shadows. The brunette goes into a room and closes the door. He hears a curtain sliding, and as he creeps by the room he doesn’t need to worry about being seen through the window. Ashley enters another room and again he hears a curtain sliding. Vibrating with energy, he waits until the light turns off. Opening the door he steps into the room. Her breathing is soft and steady. Soft light shines from a nightlight under the bed and he can see her small form as he looks around the curtain. Hair the color of spun gold lies across her pillow. Sliding into bed with her, he is enveloped in her scent and he lightly touches the soft velvet of her face. Her gasp is cut off by his fingers wrapping around her throat. He wants her and she is his.




The Things you Pick Up Bruce L. Priddy There are things you pick up, around the sixth day, sometime between the marathon gangsodomy and the crucifixion, ropes not nails, still excruciating. Past the film, grainy, in color, played on the wall behind your teachers, eyelids sutured open to allow the blood, gore, and instructions spill in. Past the drugs that make every word they speak as clear as the ones you hear between your ears, replacing your own voice, your screams so distant they might as well belong to someone else. After all, you couldn’t possibly be making such noises, could you? Through, past, because of all of that, more, you know. This is not torture, this is not pain. You are not being violated and bled. This is the spit of Christ. You are the blind man. The things you pick up, these are not things you carry with you always. Only incidental memories, triggered. But you know where you learned them. A semi-trailer. Always a semi-trailer. Where? They have many places. The Everglades, more alligators than people, fat on the failures. Appalachian Kentucky, mountain bare-rock, stinking slurry-spill scoured away animals, plants, people. What is one more body? Two? Ten? Utah, I-70, one-hundred miles of highway, six exits, no gasstations. Who would find you? The most desolate areas of the most populous cities in the country, warehouses, factories abandoned, falling into their lots. Where even the gangstas are scared to go, and the homeless clogging the ERs faking chest-pains for a turkey-sandwich and a Vicodin, have a story of somebody someone else knew, snatched up by something fur and scales, taloned-tentacles and membranous-wings, somebody left open for the birds, rats and roaches. Sometime, in the years that follow, you’ll hear a preacher-man mention Bethsaida. You’ll laugh. We are the blood-dimmed tide. But we are not mere anarchy loosed upon the world. This is ritual. We are the hand that performs, steady and controlled. Our masters are conviction. We are passionate intensity. Bethsaida teaches us well. You’ll see that little girl, pigtails, sundress, and you will crave her. Why, you won’t know, only that the faceless thing howling in the caverns at the center of the Earth craves, craves something unknown, unquantifiable, possessed in all humans, and that is enough. That same Eater of Souls dancing at the core of our planet hungers, but has peculiar, particular appetites and through those appetites the girl is saved. The fruit must ripen. Whim does not direct the kill, we are not savage beasts, not ravening monsters. Ritual, rules, are to be performed, signs to be searched for. The strongest magics come from fertile women, young boys, queers, and their defilement. The howling faceless thing prefers their taste. Piping plays when you are buried, cock, knife, both, in your sacrifice. You’ll remember that thing, in the shadows of the trailer’s corners, bloated, gleaming, throat-sac extended as it piped the soundtrack to your torture, your awakening.


Those who become the rough beasts, who see that little girl and give in, their strings are severed, allowed to be caught. Myths created. What was cut, drilled, raped into you is declared insanity, liars call you a liar. They make believe with a willing public. The kine need to believe, are needed to believe, the comfortable fiction of the psychopath, hockey-mask clad and chainsaw wielding. The good neighbor, never caused trouble, is forgotten in favor of the lunatic. Cities would burn if the truth were known. The men you see on the evening news, these men who invade our homes every commercial in during every election, these are the same men in suits who hand you a knife and say “kill.” You will know there are worse things among them than adulterers and moneygrubbers and hypocrites. These men with cravings as endless as the Eater of Souls, appetites as peculiar, train you not just in the sacred rituals, but the satisfaction of their appetites as well. Sometimes, you’ll get the urge to just start driving. Then, you’ll wake up, somewhere in the desert, a child in your backseat, young boy, probably, minority or poor because the media will ignore his disappearance, delivering him to star in films the FBI says don’t exist, his co-stars the men in suits. You’ll come to back at home, reeking of sweat, blood and you don’t want to know what else, no idea how long you’ve been gone or where you were. And hope, hope, hope, that this child is different. In Bethsaida, or that ranch you took the child to, you pick up on the fact none of this was random. They did not snatch you off the street at twenty-two and make you a killer. Reach back into the fog of your childhood, remember that time you disappeared for a couple of days and came back scared of the dark. All this because a long time ago, something filtered down from the stars. And no one will believe a word you say. But you are not to talk. And the kine are not to listen. Fifty-six stitches to close his neck taught Berkowitz to be silent. Those who listen, labeled conspiracy-theorists, regulated to late-night talkshows, websites deemed hate-speech by the proper authorities. And if they are too powerful, like those in Franklin, Nebraska, they are put down as would be any rough beast. You pick up that the faceless thing howling at the center of the Earth does indeed have a face. Corll, Berdella, Berkowitz, Ramirez, Lucas, Toole, Holmes, Fish, me, you, are among its multitude of visages, shifting, growing. The Hand of Death, 4-Pi, Order of Dog Blood, Starry Wisdom, the Meraz Family, Church of the Sacrifice, the Lighthouse, different names for the same organization. There are others things you will do, you won’t know you are doing them, outside of yourself, watching them happen. One day, the police will pull you over, find a twenty-something man in the trunk of your car, bleeding from every orifice. Words, phrases you aren’t speaking will spill out of your mouth, hands making movements you have no control of. The officers will nod, get in their cars and drive away. Like what happened just now. There are other things, so many other things, you will pick up on. I cannot possibly tell you them all. Just remember, what waits for you in that trailer ahead is not pain. It is not violation. It is the spit of Christ and you are blind. Welcome to Bethsaida.




Doomster Alex Kane One minute, we’re all standing around a beat-up old cassette recorder, guitars slung low, listening back to the evening’s rehearsal and slurping soda from our Taco Bell cups, next thing Jared’s phone rings to tell him the girl he’s been seeing was raped and killed last night. He drops the cell on the concrete floor of his grandfather’s machine shed, and the battery pack snaps off and skitters away into the dusty corner of the room. All he says is, “She’s dead. Holy fuck, she’s dead.” None of us can decide what to say. I mean, think about it: You grow up in a quiet farm town, dead probably isn’t a word at the forefront of your vocabulary. Chances are, when you hear someone say “dead,” it’s because somebody’s Great Aunt So-and-so has been dead for a few years, now. Or maybe a new season of The Walking Dead starts up on AMC next month. It’s probably not because an eighteen-year-old, a fucking kid really, just wound up bruised, bloodied, and motionless out in the woods near the local golf course. You spend your life in what used to be called America’s heartland, you might start up a death metal band because in Kosciusko, Illinois, rape and strangulation aren’t the everyday, and maybe the utter predictability of your tiny, boring world cries out for a little rage. A little harmless bloodshed. But you sure as hell never expect to get a phone call like this. I’m trying to think of what to say—what can you say, really?—and I fall silent when it hits me that, above all else, shit, I’m mostly just glad it wasn’t me who got the call. Glad it wasn’t my girlfriend. Shame keeps me silent. I think, who in this town could do something like that? Everybody knows everybody. Our drummer, Donovan, says, “You gonna need a ride home, man? Maybe you ought to stay with one of us.” Jared heaves a sigh, lifts his bass over his head, and sets it on top of his amp with a loud wooden plunk. After a moment of painful silence, still shaking his head in disbelief, he says, “I’ll be okay, man. I’ll, uh, walk.” “Bullshit,” I say. “We’ll give you a lift home, and if you want we can stay with you till lunchtime tomorrow.” “That’s . . . Well, okay. Maybe that’d be best. Yeah. Sounds good.” I say, “If you want, just throw your bass in my trunk and we’ll go for a ride. All of us. A good cruise always helps me clear my head.” Meticulously, morose like I’ve never seen the dude, he takes the strap off his bass, folds it neatly into a pocket along the inside of his case, and snaps the case closed. “Oh, fuck.” The tears come, now. You can see in his eyes he’s just living it all over again. A year or more—and happier than most couples you see right out of high school. I think, This is the kind of tragedy people never forget. The kind that haunts them the rest of their goddam lives, shaping them, whittling their souls into something ugly. And I feel it, sure, even if I’ve never had to deal with anything that even remotely compares. “The call was from her dad,” Jared says as I turn on the ignition, and we speed off into the total black of a starless night, the hushed whisper of tires against road the only music. I click my tongue, and nod slowly. Jared tells us, “It was the first time I’d ever talked to him, really heard his voice.” Our singer, Damon, he doesn’t say a word. This whole time he’s scary-quiet.


He probably knows where this is going as well as I do. That this is only the beginning. That we’re only just starting down the road to hell. Because I’ve read the history books. I’ve seen the true-crime specials on A&E. These kinds of incidents, they’re never isolated. You take a small Protestant town in the center of Bumfuck, Egypt, and you let it fester for a couple centuries, eventually you’re guaranteed to get some loonies in the mix. Inject a fair dose of twenty-first century desperation, and before long you’ll get what you might call a centennial sociopath. You’ll have yourself a killer, and then a trail of blood. Like I said, a road to hell. I hate to break it to you, but this is pretty much the American way. Hey, it’s a mathematical certainty; don’t slaughter the messenger. Just think of this all as being inevitable, because really, isn’t everything? But I can’t tell my band any of this. They’re as bad as I am when it comes to taking bad news. I can’t just tell them, Hey, plenty more people will die before long . . . I can’t just tell them, This shit has all happened before. Here in Bumfuck, Egypt, Illinois. In the ’70s, there was Pogo the Clown, having his way with thirty or more young boys and tossing them into the river after he’s done. Or that as far back as the ’60s you had another Illinois wacko, right here in Warren County, branding himself Born to Raise Hell, and then living up to the tattoo’s obscene understatement. This is where my head goes, but it’s not the kind of thing you say to your best friend—one of your bandmates, who are maybe more than family—when something like this happens. Instead I say, “That’s awful, man,” and it’s almost as big an understatement as the ink on Speck’s arm. And Jared, he says, “Damn right it is.” Teary-eyed and shuddering: “Every bit of it.”




Jacobs & Son Jay Slayton-Joslin Peter Jacobs stood at the counter of his butchery, staring out onto the San Francisco streets and thanking god for making the sun shine especially hard today. His wares laid on the ice in front of him, each slice of meat renown to the neighbourhood. Steak, chicken, pork and Jacobs’ special meat, the dish on the menu that the place was famous for. A local business thriving on its reputation and the local dedication of the neighbourhood. Peter looked out the window, his eyes following a car driving past and let out a sigh that said, ah, it’s good to be alive. The little bell hanging above the door dangled three times when Gertrude and Henry came in. Henry was only a young boy of five and his Grandma held his hand as they both walked in so that Henry can choose some food for his sixth birthday. They both walked up to the counter. “Hello, Peter,” said Henry, through gapped teeth. “Henry, address him as Mr Jacobs,” said Gertrude. Peter laughed and smiled at Gertrude and Henry. “No, Ma’am, it’s fine. This little one can call me Peter, or how about Pete champ?” The boy stuck his face in his hands, hiding the embarrassed red, eyes peeping through split fingers. “What can I get you two, anyway?” Peter said. “Well, it’s this little one’s birthday,” Gertrude said, running her hands through Henry’s hair, “and we want something special for his birthday meal that everyone can enjoy.” Henry started pumping his fists in the air. “Special meat! Special meat! Special meat is our treat!” Peter laughed, “Well the boy’s certainly enthusiastic about it, and I’ll give him that. How much would you two be looking for?” Gertrude started counting on her fingers, she looked at the amount of special meat on display. “Well, we’ll certainly need more than that, could we take all of that and another batch?” Peter looked up, thinking, then broke into his signature Jacobs & Sons smile. “Let me have a quick look out back for you,” he said. Peter walked out through the back door, closing one safety door to get to the freezer, then opening the other to get into the freezer. The freezer kept the meat extremely cool and the double door separation kept bacteria out among other things. He pushed past the cows hung up on the hooks until he found what he was looking for. Peter grabbed the stock around the body, checking that it would have enough to supply the young boy. “Please, let me go,” said the body. “No, soon enough,” said Peter. The body tried to wriggle off the hook but its hands were tied together, impaled through like it was suffering for everyone’s sins.


“You’ve certainly got enough meat on you,” Peter said. He picked up a butcher knife, spotless as a result of the man who takes pride in his work. Peter dragged the knife across the man’s chest from nipple to nipple. Blood started to cascade down his chest like the red curtains were falling down on a stage. Peter collected the blood on his finger, put his finger in his mouth and licked the sauce off of his teeth. Peter walked out of the freezer and back onto the shop floor. The place was empty other than the two still stood there, Henry pointing at different slices of meat and trying to guess the animal. “No, Henry,” Gertrude said, laughing, “It’s not an alligator.” “They supposedly have alligators in the sewer,” Peter said, smiling. Henry’s eyes widened, the white void surrounding his iris grew. “I can get the meat for you but I have to, prepare it,” Peter said, “Can you give me a couple of minutes?” Gertrude nodded and Peter disappeared into the back room. He secured himself in the freezer again and instead of using the knife picked up a chainsaw. No-one could hear the revving and cutting of the flesh, nor the crying that led to the screams then silence. Peter walked out, putting the two trays of special meat together, wrapping them up for the child. “Hey, kiddo, I hope you enjoy. Have a great birthday too, alright? Threw a bit extra in there so it would stretch fine.” “Thank you,” Gertrude said, then Henry by prompt. They paid and walked out the shop. Peter washed his hands and stared out the window, reminding himself of the joyous day. People were still reported missing in the area, but on the bright side at a party a few adults and lots of children went to sleep with their bellies full.




The first 5 people to post a comment on Issuu about the mag will win a copy of Blood Related by William Cook. The first person to post on both Issuu and the Surreal Grotesque Group on Facebook gets an autographed copy.



Blood Red Grace Patterson The blade slowly cut across Damien’s skin, and he shivered, crying out as the thin object drew blood. Zade’s dark smile grew a bit, as he tightly cupped the other’s chin. “You’re enjoying this…aren’t you?” He whispered with a cruel smirk, his lips parting as he slowly drew the knife down Damien’s stomach, feeling the skin part under the sharp edge. “H-hhhnn!” Damien bucked against the chains holding him to the wall, his eyes fluttering, but not in pain. “Yyes…” He whispered, his lips quivering as the blade nudged into his body a bit deeper, making him cry out. “You really are strange…” Zade purred, tilting Damien’s neck so he could suck at the soft flesh, his finger nails digging in a bit as he licked up to the other’s ear. “How much can you take, I wonder?” Zade whispered, slowly sliding the knife back up, circling one of the bare nipples, light enough to only leave a thin, angry mark as Damien withered under him. Damien’s lips were parted and a shiver stole over his body as the blade moved, feeling the warm blood dripping down his body. “Ahhg~” He choked out as Zade bit down, the sharp teeth sinking into his neck, and drawling more blood. “I wonder…if I cut here…” Zade whispered, drawling away for a moment, his lips stained red as he watched Damien, slowly lowering the knife to Damien’s twitching erection. Damien’s green eyes were half parted in ecstasy. “M-master-” He whispered, a sharp thrill going through his body as the knife edge pressed against the very tip of his dick, sending pleasure crashing through his body. The dominate demon smiled darkly. His blood lust...could no longer be controlled by Ezekiel…so he’d found a new toy. He lightly nicked the tip of Damien’s dick, lazily sliding the edge along the other’s underside, not drawling blood. “Beg for it…” He whispered, his dark eyes gleaming as pre cum slid along the knife blade from Damien’s pleasure, mixing with the blood from earlier. “Give it…to me…” Damien whispered, his hands limp in his bonds, his body shuddering in bliss from the torment. Zade chuckled softly, and moved behind Damien, slowly cupping the other’s leaking dick as he kissed the neck wound he’d made earlier…and then harshly bit down, sucking and gnawing against the skin and muscle, tasting the other’s blood in his mouth as Damien screamed, arching.


The fallen angel let out a soft noise into Damien’s skin as he sucked on the other, leaving a horrible mark, and he slowly pushed the knife blade into Damien’s side. One inch…and then two… The dark jade colored eyes of Zade’s partner fluttered as he screamed, his voice nearly cracking as cum exploded out of the tip of his dick, trailing off into a low, exhausted moan. His seed dripped down to the floor, mixing with blood as he shivered in afterglow. “Are we satisfied?” Zade whispered, moving his blood red lips up, kissing Damien’s blood covered neck as he slowly began to twist the knife in deeper. “Ghh-aaann! Ghhhnnn-” Damien was making low noises in his throat as the knife twisted and he panted, his member starting to harden again from the feeling as Zade moved turned his head. “Or do you need something else inside of you?” “S-something…else….” The green eyed angel begged, his body trembling in anticipation, making the chains above him rattle. He bucked as he felt the tip of the knife slide out of his body. “Ghhhaaa~” Zade threw the knife blade to the floor, and circled around his angel, his eyes flickering over his handwork, feeling himself harden almost to the point of hurting. He moved, sliding back behind the other, his hand twisting cruelly against the other’s wing joints while his other hand spread the other’s cheeks apart. Damien’s eyes had glazed over. “Yes…yes…” He was whispering it, over and over, begging and ready. The other’s hands tightened, and he moved, pressing himself against Damien, and then pushing inside, burying himself inside of the other’s begging hole as he groaned in bliss. He let go of Damien’s ass, so he would have more resistance when he trusted, and grabbed the other’s long red hair, forcing Damien’s head back to his shoulder. “You are mine. Mine.” He growled, forcing the other’s neck line back, looking into the bleeding wound he had created earlier, and he pressed his lips to it. Damien was gasping, his eyes fluttering. He didn’t have words…for how he was feeling. Crying out each time Zade forced his walls apart. Bucking and withering in the chains as Zade’s teeth tore into his neck. Shivering as the blood slowly leaked down his body with the pre cum from his dick. Lost…in sheer ecstasy. Zade worked harder, letting the taste of blood fill his mouth, and letting his pre cum fill up Damien’s hole, fucking him harder, ramming into the other’s prostate with no mercy. He pulled away from the wound for a moment, pressing his blood soaked lips to Damien’s ear. “Scream for me,” He breathed, and his nail’s raked down Damien’s back, tearing through the wing joints. “Gh-hnNNNNHHHAAAA!” Damien willingly let out his cries of pleasure for his lover, his body convulsing, his spine bowing against the nails as he hit that edge. Cum leaked out of his dick as he screamed, his eyes rolling back as his wing tips fluttered, his insides tightening with desire. Zade’s own body bucked for a moment as he felt the other go, clenching around his member, squeezing it, demanding that he cum. He snarled against it, and gripped Damien tightly, managing to thrust in once more before it hit him. The squeeze of the other’s hole sucked him dry, and he shivered, panting softly now. He pulled his lips away from Damien’s neck, and slowly pressed them to his angel’s lips. “How was that Rapunzel?”


Damien’s face glowed with happiness at the small nickname, and he sank against the other, tired now. “It was wonderful….you are wonderful…” He breathed, returning the kiss, and getting blood on his lips. Zade didn’t understand the angel before him. A large angel with green eyes, and red hair that flowed down to his knees. An angel…that liked to be hurt, and that wanted to be hurt…and more confusing still…one that wanted to be with him. These thoughts filled his head as he took Damien down, and into the shower. The angel was weak with happiness, afterglow, and blood loss, and he leaned heavily against Zade in the shower, humming softly as the other turned on the water, and began to rinse out his wounds. Damien wouldn’t heal them. He liked having the other’s marks and scars on his body. He closed his eyes, and let the other work. Zade was slow and carefully as he washed away the blood, his eyes watching it swirl down the drain. The water was warm, and Damien’s weight against his chest was comforting. He felt a small smile tug over his face, and his chest felt…fluttery. He didn’t understand…what he was feeling…but he liked it, and he pulled his angel close, hugging him, and breathing in the scent of his bloody, masochistic angel. Damien smiled against the other’s chest, and he fell asleep against his lover, in the shower, letting the warm water and the first feelings of love lure him to dreams.


hysterical minds an online exhibit The international artistic collective Hysterical Minds presents this month their tenth online exhibition, coinciding with the third birthday of the group and just right after their international exhibition debut and the introduction of their book “Retrospectiva” AT the Parallax Art Fair in London. After two powerful releases such as “Shadowness” and “Twisted Essence”, this time the collective shows us a collection of pieces inspired in music, of which you can discover a small selection here. “We have entitled this release as “Symphony” because we want to bring a visual concert to your house, generated from a common passion that unites us as artists: Music. We have given room for expression and creation, reinterpreting our favourite tracks, genres and authors, from classical music to industrial tunes, from black metal to dance pop, travelling through a wide spectrum of shades to bring you a diverse but coherent collection. We are sure that you will find some of your favourite music themes visually re-created in this exhibition from the personal visions of the collective’s artists, since we have material for everyone’s tastes. Plus! Don’t miss out the tracks that our musicians have created for this release, getting inspired by classical works of art and moreover, from the very visual pieces of this art-pack! We offer you a moment to get delighted, relaxed and to let yourself go. We hope you enjoy it and don’t forget to turn the volume up!” The collective is preparing a series of events and editorial releases that will see the light during this year, meanwhile they are starting to produce what will be their next exhibition,in which, judging by the raise of quality level of their latest releases, promises to mark a turning point on their career. For more works, go to: www.hystericalminds.com


Bowie´s fantastic voyage by Dementiraman


Deep by Mar


rio S. Nevado


Help me by Daniel Torres Storni


Everything dies by Liran Szeiman


Hierarca by Martin de Diego Sadaba


Paraiso oscuro by Jose D. Rodriguez


Written in waters b


by Marcela Bolivar


Comfortably numb by Mario S. Nevado


A Night in the Country Joseph J. Patchen Their bones are clean: bright white with just a tinge of yellow and brown glazing about the joints. They’ve been out here a while and the sun has made them hot to the touch. What remains of their clothes are in shreds. What the coyotes didn’t get, the buzzards and rats surely did. I count nine, and recounted the same; when you take into account all their parts just scattered about; some pieces just hidden and some, as noted, out in the open, but all clutching their guns with slender digits on bodiless hands. This must have been one hell of a gunfight: nine dead - slumped, fallen, grinning and yet alone. I’m not looking to disturb them. They can keep their pistols and belt buckles, their spurs and coins. I’m just in awe of the wake of the carnage. The sun hangs high and straight. The clouds are too far away to matter. I usually don’t stop until the night when sleep demands, but this remnant of a town has drawn me in. There’s no wind to speak of, not even the whisper of a breeze – just the sun and dirt. Not a single bird, lizard, fly or gnat – just me and my horse and the sounds of our footsteps upon this scene. The deep red clay street that divides this handful of detached buildings – all facing in on one another – is so smooth and clean as if just laid anew, devoid of a single wildflower or clump of grass or weed; sans any stones, divots or impressions. The buildings look to be bare: little furniture - mostly twisted into piles of sticks and fabric; no books or jars except at the saloon, where the bar’s stocked with dusty but fully sealed treasures. The joint is flush with tables and chairs; even the piano is in tune. I am tired from a long ride; tired from the life I’m looking to break from; and in this quiet place after a lifetime of civilization and violence I can recharge before deciding if I want to go back or further away. Here I’ll push a few tables together and spread my roll on top. At least I’ll sleep indoors tonight with all the gin and whiskey I can handle. I’ll sleep above the rats and won’t have to wake up under a coyote. The straight, strong and thick wood from the table tops will also do my back a good turn. I’ll still secure that door tonight even though I know my neighbors from down the street won’t disturb me. If I can find it, you never can tell who might stumble in. I drink and watch the night fall. I sit and ponder my future and those gunfighters’ past. I never do hear a cricket or rustling in the brush. Nothing ever moves or makes a sound; except my horse and the alcohol being drained from the bottle. I know I was wrong to leave; to abandon my obligations. No excuses or twisted rationalizations can clear that low level hum of guilt tugging at my ear. I just know I was wrong. So all I can do for this time is continue to drink and fabricate histories for the bone yard out there. Maybe in the morning if I am so inclined, largely because of my growing ambivalence, I will see my friends out there present themselves more completely; like puzzles for me to help pass the time.


Sleep is what I truly need. I should let my ‘unconscious cerebration’ lead me to some more important form of action, other than amateur anatomy, in the day to follow. I don’t know when or how long my contemplation had gone before I rubbed my eyes and this place changed. My sleep must have been deep. From the angle of the sun crashing through the windows, it must be late, late morning, possibly early afternoon. I only remember closing my eyes a second or two ago. Probably because of the alcohol my head is heavy and my sweat thick. I am drenched right through my clothing and bedding. It actually was the chill and not the light that finally woke me. As I yawn and try to stretch, only my left arm can be raised. Scorpion or spider bite? I tear the blanket off my right side to find my lifeless arm and hand, from shoulder to fingertips, stripped as clean as the men lying outside. There is no blood; no sinew; the wound seems to be cauterized and yet I am not in pain. I can feel the arm and the hand; I can even feel the fingers and the nails that are supposed to be there; but it is all lifeless, flapping and clanking like a broken latch. I could scream but who would hear? Maybe the drink has created a nightmare and I am still in repose; but I can feel the warmth of the sun on my face; I squint in its glare. I can hear the bones, my bones where my fingers are supposed to be smack together with each movement. To what end did I make this bargain? And what did I really give up? I struggle to my feet, clearing my throat and wiping my good arm across my eyes. I am filled with flight but to where? I knock over a quarter filled bottle of bourbon and at the end of the sound from the smashing of the glass I hear a gun cock behind me. I wheel around, pistol in my left hand and there he stands by the piano. There calmly stands a man, covered in blood; not on his clothing as he had none, but saturated through what appears to be his entire body. In the sunlight he glistens in spots, but otherwise he is muted. I can clearly see his heart, his liver and his intestines. I can see all of his internal organs in place in his body held together by some manner of opaque casing like you would find on a sausage; that and blood. His pistol is firmly held in his right hand of healthy pink skin from fingertips to shoulder. This is the only extremity; the only portion of his body covered with any healthy flesh. The muzzle is squarely pointed at me. I can’t tell if he smiling or it is merely because he lacks that human covering on his face. In his left hand; blood red twisting with muscle and vessels yet to be covered he is clutching a hunting knife. I don’t see his mouth move but I do clearly hear him tell me that he has to go into town and requires the use of my face. Despite all of my problems to date, all the angst that I carry and the danger staring into my eyes; all I can think about is that all I have ever been in all of my life is hopelessly and religiously right handed. into my eyes; all I can think about is that all I have ever been in all of my life is hopelessly and religiously

right handed.



http://bleepneversleep.deviantart.com/


The Dissection of How Rhiannon Thorne When they asked me how I could do it, I told them it was like making love. You start slowly, with your eyes on the skin of your beloved. You take your time. You notice if she is cream or churning butter, any layer of milk fat, really - and if she is, if she’s dotted with freckles (and you almost don’t want to wait to find the rest.) Or, perhaps, she’s semi-translucent and you can see her tiny blue veins on close inspection. You notice that maybe she is none of these things. She may be copper, beer-glass brown, or even two minutes from melting into the night. Her eyes. You look past the fear for now, as there is plenty of time for reveling. Take a minute. Take five. Take them both in: the huge orbs, the delicate pupils. Remember the bag of marbles you had a small child, the glistening greens and heavy blues. The browns that melded into each other like twining cats. She has eyes like one of these with lashes to match. If you blow on them, they will dance in the breeze as she squints. Her lips, oh this is a favorite. Roll slowly from her irises so you aren’t caught unaware by the pair of them. Down the bridge of her nose to the pout or the pant or the sharp intake of breath and you will find her screamhome. You may have to move your hands, for a minute, to get a good look. Don’t worry, if you tell her not to scream with the squeeze of your thumb and fingers on her windpipe, it will be an easy endeavor. Here is a personal recommendation, from having loved and lost: leave your hand there, just underneath the line of her jaw. Gentle, because she is fragile and not ready to be broken. You will not lust to rush the moment, and the simple suggestion will leave her speechless. If you want, turn her head to the side, her ears are shaped like dried apricots. Small, bloodless, chewy. Coax her head farther and a soft line of hair on her neck will hit the light. You learned to read colors in her eyes and the flesh of her limbs, but now you will become an artist. Later, you will want to repaint her hair in your memory. Don’t we want to, with all great loves? Do not hasten yourself with a quick look; you’ll regret it. What was the exact hue? The low lights? What color was the gleam? You will find a prism. I will not lie; from this moment on my own resolve begins to fail. It is my personal torment. Fingers begin entwining in her mane, and the locks are so soft and your fist gets hungry. You’ve been starved for a week, for months, with no body to feed on. When your stomach growls and your hands remember they’re starving you must remind yourself to keep your other throat caress steady. Do not press. Not yet. Oh, if there was a god, he would surely understand. The young bird neck has grown warm beneath your sticky palm and you can feel her quickened beat. Do not feel less of a man if your desire begins to move against your pants, it’s only natural. You’ve begun to notice the shape of her limbs with your wandering hand. The sharp elbows, the thin-branch shins. When they’re good, they begin to glisten and grow moist beneath you. Do not forget yourself and she will not forget you. The right gaze and her eyes will remember. Each artist must portray his subject in his own way. The way he knows how. I will not bore you with my personal details; the precinct has them in minute detail. The samples of skin and semen, the photos of the aftermath, the questions they asked me after how could you, the clinical dissection of how. I would not tell another sculpture how to mold his clay anymore than than I would teach Dali how to go mad. But when she shudders beneath you and the eternal quiet begins, you’ll understand. It’s like making love.





Nine Brief Scenes From The End Of The World I.

Early in the morning, a deliriously excited group of research scientists from the SETI Institute gathered to listen to and analyze - incredible - an alien radio wave signal that they had been receiving every ten minutes since three AM. Over sixty years had lapsed since the original radio signals had been beamed into space by hopeful, forward-thinking men, and now they were finally getting a reply. It was a top secret meeting. The group played the transmission several times at the beginning of the meeting, first in awe, then with rising disquiet. It was an indescribable, harsh, nasty ten-second blast of noise, and it induced a strange, splintering headache in all of them. Ten minutes later, a trusted research assistant who was present at the meeting suddenly doubled forward and sprayed vomit across the board table. His nose began to bleed profusely and he stumbled around the room, bellowing profanities. The scientist whom he assisted, a small Japanese woman, rushed over to quiet the man, and was smashed with lethal force in the face by a metal stool. The raving man was subdued, but he continued to thrash and snap his teeth, and was finally chemically sedated. All the others that had been present for the playback were starting to feel very odd by then, themselves.

II. Morning traffic was as thick and slow as always. Tim hated how the drive to work was always at least twenty minutes longer than the drive home. To add to the aggravation, there was some sort of annoying static interference on the radio, an awful squawking that hid low in the mix. He snapped it off and impatiently crept forward with the rest of the poor dummies caught in this shit. Abruptly, a big Chevy Silverado jammed on its breaks in the right lane a few vehicles ahead of him, stopping the lane dead. Horns blared in protest. Bemused, Tim tried to get a good look at the idiot behind the wheel of the truck as he crawled past. As his car drew abreast of the truck, Tim was treated to five surreal seconds of a heavy-set blonde woman, staring straight ahead with a bizarre grin on her face, cutting the fingers off of one hand with a pair of garden shears. He didn’t believe what he just saw. The shears sliding shut with little resistance, the fingers tumbling down, the spray of blood that hit the dashboard and splattered the windshield. One finger had stuck to the blades of the shears and Tim was sure that he saw her shake it free absently, staring straight ahead and grinning insanely the whole time. I didn’t see that, he decided. No freakin’ WAY that happened. His head was starting to hurt.

III. A man stood on the sidewalk across the street from a restaurant called Giorno’s and watched the waitress


work her section of the patio. The man had caught sight of her ten minutes previously, as he had been walking, dazed and uncomprehending, down the street. She was pale, pretty and possessed a cascade of red hair that shimmered and flowed onto her rounded shoulders and down her broad back. Impassive and unmoving, he watched the waitress as she hurried back and forth from her customers to the fancy glass door that led back into Giorno’s. She appeared attentive and jovial, a hint of earthy sexuality in the tilt of her impressive chest and the toss of her hair. A tall girl, big ass and tits and hips. Full, red lips. The man stood and watched and hungered. The man wore a tailored suit from Ralph Lauren, his hair shaved impeccably close to his scalp. His eyes were covered by mirrored sunglasses of the sort that one might see being worn by celebrities in photographs taken on the red carpet of an awards show, glasses that would cost your average working man a month and a halfs’ worth of wages. He did not care about their monetary worth, nor that of the designer suit he wore, or the patent leather shoes that clad his feet. Just a few short hours ago, the man had been very close to obsessed with his appearance, and material things. Now, he couldn’t recall why something like that would matter. There was a hum in the back of his head, a harsh and alien insectile buzz. His brain felt like it was vibrating, itching, thrumming. The jagged pitch eliminated all sane thoughts from his mind. It was obvious to him now that only important thing in his present existence was to attack this girl and kill her. After a few more minutes, the girl caught sight of the man, her eyes lingering a few moments too long as she scrawled an order given by a young couple having a late supper. Her expression seemed unsettled, as though she could feel a vibration of the black desires that roiled, like a sewer whirlpool, behind those sunglasses. The man felt that he couldn’t wait much longer. It was getting hard to think. His teeth ached, his head buzzed. His hands longed to rend and tear the girl to shreds. IV. Shyla was ten. She lived across the city from where the man was presently eyeing his prey and thinking his murky, primordial thoughts. Shyla’s family was as poor as the man was wealthy. She lived with her mom and younger brother in a townhouse complex that had been erected many years before, to house young families just starting their journey through life together, and seniors who didn’t want to have to take care of a lawn anymore. Now it was government subsidized housing for low-income families, crumbling and shoddy. Shyla sat on the cracked steps to her front door and played with something in her lap. The parking lot and common area before her swarmed with the complex’s residents, mostly black and latino youth and young adults, but the crowd was peppered with some decidedly drunk-looking older folks, too. They all milled in large, loose groups; arguing, laughing, drinking cheap beer and passing ill-concealed joints in the hot, fading sunshine. Spontaneous dancing sometimes broke out as people were suddenly compelled to jive, grind and gyrate to the sounds pumping from a car stereo. No one took notice of quiet, chubby little Shyla. She hummed a popular song tunelessly and toyed with the pathetic, horrible thing that was balanced on her already-expanding lap. Shyla was introverted, and well on her way to being the whale-like woman that her mother was. As a rule, she was universally ignored by the other kids in the complex (excepting the odd occasion when jokes were told about how fat her three hundred-plus pound mother was, or about how black she was), so it was not unusual that it took so long for anyone to notice her or the small, dripping object that she held. Shyla’s face was an expressionless mask as she studied the awful thing, eyes unblinking. She turned and manipulated it in her hands. Her hands and arms were smeared to the elbow in maroon, but it was not very visible against her dark skin. The black T-shirt and dark blue jeans that she wore were stiff with drying blood. Flies were beginning to find her. Rakim, a teenager who lived in the unit two doors down with his sprawling extended family, ambled past where Shyla sat on the steps. He had extremely red, glassy eyes, and a mean smile on his acne-pocked face. “Yo, Shyla, where your moms at, gettin’ baptized at Marine Land? She better get back before tha sun go down, they lose that big black bitch in the dark.” Rakim snorted laughter at this witticism, then noticed the flies buzzing around the girl, and the smell. “Man, you a stanky lil bitch, flies an’ stink lines like yo moms.” He


hissed air between his teeth in disgust, and his nostrils flared disapprovingly at the sour, meaty odor wafting from the girl in the thick summer air. There was no response. The girl stared vacantly down at something on her lap. Her face was ... strange, blank, emotionless. “You fuckin high or some shit? You too young, girl, yo moms ‘ud slap yo ass up if you was gettin’ high an shit,” he intoned seriously, completely unaware of the irony in his statement. Still no response. Rakim took four big steps forward and stopped dead. He had finally gotten a good look at what Shyla held in her hands, and his drugged mind struggled to process what he saw. “Ahhh shiiiiiit. Tha fuck?” he choked. “That a ... doll? Tha fuck is dat shit?” “It’s my baby sister,” she muttered. Her voice was thick and slow. Shyla looked up from the bloody, torn fetus in her lap and fixed her enormously dilated pupils on Rakim. The teenager froze and involuntarily squirted a thin stream of urine down the left leg of his sagged jeans. The girl’s round face was a mask of insanity. One cheek twitched spastically. Up close, he could see the blood smeared up Shyla’s arms, around her mouth and chin and neck. The smell was sickening. Her eyes rolled wildly, then focused on his terrified face again. “She isn’t ready yet, but I got her. Got her outta my momma so I could ... play with her ...” The little girl trailed off, and seemed to consider the fetus in puzzlement for a moment. Rakim tried to speak but could only manage to feebly breathe out “... whaaa ...”. This couldn’t be happening. This was a fucking horror movie, right out of nowhere, in real life, right now. Shyla picked something up that lay beside her on the top step ... a paring knife. She jabbed it into the fetus’ torso, right up to the handle. Rakim felt his mouth drop open, and a high-pitched scream tore itself out of his throat. He turned to run, and felt the blade slam home between his shoulder blades. V. June was worried and frightened of how her husband was behaving tonight. He had come home from work looking pale and distant. Not acknowledging her at all, Harry had walked right by her and into the living room, where he’d sat on the love seat and stared at nothing. It was beyond strange. She let a few minutes go by and when she had finally asked him what was wrong, he ran over and seized her painfully by the upper arms, screaming “AHHHHH FUCKING FIRE ANTS! IN MY FUCKING HEAD!” right into her face at full volume, his eyes bulging. She had flinched back from this sudden and entirely unexpected outburst, cringing as far away as his iron grasp on her would allow. He immediately let go, his mask of hatred now eerily blank, and had said, “I’m sorry honey, but this weasel in the hen house won’t fucking stop killing my brain chickens, you know?”, and walked away. She had leaned against the kitchen counter, stunned and trembling, and listened as her usually gentle and placid Harry plodded up the stairs and into the bedroom. She had heard the bedroom door lock. This happened three hours ago, and it was getting dark out now. The street lights were on and supper was cold on the table. Somewhere in the distance there echoed the pervasive and howling sirens from police and various emergency response vehicles. The sound kept rebounding and swelling, instead of fading away. What was going on out there? June sat in the gloom of the stairwell, back to the wall, looking up the stairs into the darkness above. Up there, Harry was making strange sounds, muffled by the bedroom door but audible. Crying? Keening like an injured animal? Her neck and arms prickled with goose bumps. Should she check on him? Call ... somebody? The sounds were freaking her out very badly. They did not sound sane. Was Harry having some sort of nervous breakdown? He could be dangerous ... She summoned her courage and called out, “Harry? Honey, you’re scaring me. Please talk to me?”


The keening sounds stopped dead. Silence for a long second, then a BANG against the bedroom door that made her jump and shriek. Another BANG and she heard the bedroom door fly open and slam into the wall. June immediately leapt from carpeted floor and ran for the front door, scooping her purse and keys up off the coffee table as she ran past it. There was a rapid pound of heavy feet as Harry charged out of the bedroom and thundered down the stairs. He was roaring like a monster out of a horror movie. She wrenched open the door and ran like hell down the steps and to her car, jumped in, rammed the key into the ignition. She was dimly aware that she had no shoes on, but that was unimportant right now. As the engine kicked over and caught, Harry exploded through the open front door of their modest home and ran down the steps at her. He was naked save his dress socks, his penis erect, his face contorted horribly. The unreality of her naked husband attacking her in their driveway threatened to freeze her, and she barely locked the doors in time. Harry slammed into her door and wrenched futilely at the handle. He peered in at her through the driver’s side window, and to June his eyes looked like dead fish eyes, all black and glassy. “GET AWAY!!! I DON’T WANT TO RUN YOU OVER HARRY STOP IT!!” Why was this happening? How? Harry slammed his fist into the window hard enough to crack it, and June put the car into reverse, squealing the tires as she tore backwards out of the driveway. She ran over and snapped Harry’s leg in the process. June belatedly looked to the left in time to see a pick-up truck bearing down on her, accelerating. For a split second she could see the driver’s face behind the windshield, and it was a visage of madness identical to that of her husband’s. She stomped down on the gas pedal in an effort to accelerate back and away, but it was too late, and the truck’s impact was terrible. VI. At the Coventry Estates Nursing Home, all but two members of the staff on shift had also succumbed to the insanity that was spreading across the world like wildfire. The two sane staff members had tried barricading themselves in a supply closet once they realized what was happening to their co-workers (and many of the residents), but the ones who had turned were very energetic door-kickers, and within minutes they had demolished the barricade and dragged the two screaming people out by their hair. With unspoken lunatic agreement, the insane held down the two terrified souls and bit them over and over and over, until their shrieks had faded to gargles and then silence. In the background there was considerable havoc, as the more ambulatory of the insane old folks attacked and feebly murdered other residents. Finished with their unfortunate colleagues, the staff joined the psychotic elderly in their hunt for the remaining survivors that cowered in bathrooms and closets. VII. Two young teenage siblings, a brother and sister, hid the attic of their family’s home amidst boxes of old clothes and discarded appliances. They were watching a newscast online, on the sister’s Iphone, their faces drawn with terror. Downstairs, their parents were smashing the place apart and howling and screaming. The sounds of destruction they wrought echoed the chaos outside. The world they had always known had turned into hell in a matter of hours. On a CNN newscast, an official-looking man spoke of an epidemic, of martial law, and a situation rapidly getting out of control. A reporter asked if the madness was caused by a genetically engineered virus. The official-looking man replied that no one knew yet. Avoid contact with anyone and everyone, he said, and lock yourself indoors. Turn out the lights and hide. Wait for rescue. There was a resounding crash on the second floor, and cackling laughter. The girl silenced the Iphone and they huddled together, staring at the trap door in the center of the attic room. They had slipped away to the attic a couple of hours ago, when their parents had been out shopping, after seeing the first news reports online and observing the psychotic behaviour of their neighbours through the windows. The kids had called Mom and


Dad’s cell phones repeatedly, but there had been no answer. Half an hour ago the kids observed their parents arrive home from their shopping trip through a small slit in an attic window curtain. The family minivan now had a large dent in the front end, and a scrap of bloody cloth fluttered on a sharp point along the edge of the dent. It rolled too fast up the driveway and smashed into the garage door. Mom and Dad had lurched out of the still-running van and ran like cavorting demons into the house, to begin their murderous search for their offspring. In the meantime, the siblings preyed fervently that their parents wouldn’t find them, and quietly watched any news report they could find online. “Kids, come out here. Come out, pig shit fucking fucks.” This was from their mother, somewhere below them. Her voice was a cracked, evil hiss. The kids looked at each other with wide wet eyes and shivered. “Listen to your mother, kids, I want to fuck your skulls, get out here, get out here getoutHERENOW!” Their father’s bellow shook the house. Both teens sobbed quietly. On the silenced Iphone, the official-looking man was now grappling with someone in a highly-decorated military outfit, who had previously been standing in the background in a small line of other official-looking men. There was a sense of pandemonium in the shakiness of the camera’s image, the people running through the frame in frightened blurs. The official looking man was being overpowered, bitten repeatedly on the face and neck by the military man. His face was twisted into a scream. One of his eyes appeared to be missing. They fell into the microphone-laden podium and tumbled out of sight. Someone knocked the camera over, or it was dropped, and all that could be seen now was running feet. “Oh holy fuck,” the brother whispered. A sharp knock made the trap door jump, and the kids shrieked in unison. The brother had screwed it shut with a drill and three-inch wood screws, and the screws held. “Ohhhhh, you’re up there. Pig fucks, Opiggieeeeeessss.” Mom crooned on the other side of the door. The daughter curled up into a ball on the dusty plank floor, and started to rock. Another heavy thud against the trap door. Another. They came in rapid succession now, WHAMWHAM-WHAM-WHAM, and the old wood groaned and cracked. The brother grabbed the baseball bat he’d brought up with them and advanced, slowly, toward the splintering door, bat poised to strike. VIII. A big-screen television in a sports bar informed the empty room that the madness had spread worldwide, and that there was no known cause or cure as of yet. Stay tuned for upcoming developments, stay indoors, keep the lights off and do nothing to attract the attention of the wandering maniacs, whose numbers were growing rapidly. IX. Missile silos in China spat nuclear death. The resulting mushroom clouds and associated devastation could have been seen in all its awful detail from the space station, had there been anyone left alive on board. Note: this story was generously included in the Season 2, Episode 2 /r/nosleep Podcast, which is an excellent source of auditory terror. *Note #2: I expanded this into a full-length novel! You can get it at Amazon.com or Amazon.uk, and all other Amazon domains. Available on Kindle, too!


“And how long exile and loneliness were rusting and embittering his soul, light dimmed, went out with the eons ... and it was his blue-black fur, so deep and so are the colors that paint the depth of the sea, as the black void of infinite space, as cold as you embrace the black and drowns in the last breath of life. And was his step compared to the worst catastrophes of slow movements after he left a trail of death and loneliness, swallowing any light that came. His hands, man to mere appearance, were big, too big to keep some proportion. Many who had seen and kept low to keep talking sanity were told that the manipulative hands of a god, an entity which incomprehensibly, even though a gaunt face, weathered and petrified by drought was emotional in his eyes where wasting time and space in deep black eyes if possible, a look so wise and calm expression terrified her warm while massacring all life and tore him to approach him.� by BPuig


special thanks and credits Chris Morant-cover, table of contents http://50lbhead.deviantart.com/ Buster Fisher, 7-12, 28-29 http://busterfish.daportfolio.com/ www.miss-lakune.deviantart.com, pgs. 13-20 Joshua Dobson 4, 21-23, 30-31, 49-51, 53, 85-86, 89-90, 93-95 Trez orbscurarium 48, 83-84, 87, 91, 92, 94, 97, 114 website: www.orbscurarium.com Borja Puig p. 122 http://bpuig.deviantart.com/ Bleepneversleeps pgs. 72, 76, 79, 80,112, 130 http://bleepneversleep.deviantart.com/ Picture by Phil McAllen, pg. 88 http://philmcallen.deviantart.com/ Christine Ann Beatty pg. 77-78, 81-82 http://theaphelion.deviantart.com/ Joseph Donald Myers on pages 5,6, 24, 32, 42, 54, 61-68, 111 http://www.facebook.com/DonGalaxyArtist/info http://josephdonaldmyers.com/ Chris France, pgs. 52, 58 http://www.denebalgedi.deviantart.com/gallery/ TheEmptyKissofDeath.deviantart.com, pgs. 115 and 124



NEXT ISSUE SEX DEATH Like us on facebook: www.facebook.com/TheSurrealGrotesque. Friend us on twitter: RealGrotesque Coming soon: the online web community



Lewis McGregor, Creator of ‘Grim: A Tale of Death’

For the past two years myself and a few other artists have been developing a web series entitled Grim: A Tale of Death. At first it was a quite light hearted series but as the years passed we’ve developed quite a dark tale. We follow the tale of a number of Reapers; Colossal, Andras, Gusion, Bathin, Shax, Nina and Valac, who’s tale becomes entangled with everyone else’s. Valac is a Grim Reaper who was once human (over 600 years ago) and was promised that he would regain his mortality once his contract with the council of death was fulfilled. The year is 2011 and Valac’s contract is completed but regaining his mortality is not as straight forward as was promised; layered with deceit and coated with betrayal Valac, with the help of his friends, has to find a way to escape the in-between and return to humanity, with the recent return of Colossal, a great warlord of the Reaper realm who was banished many centuries ago because of Valac’s testimonials against him. Time is running out and the odds are stacked against Valac. As stated before stylistically it’s like Lord of The Rings/Game of Thrones but much


darker. The whole reaper realm is filled with these forgotten creatures, there’s murder, there’s betrayal, there’s torture and most profoundly there’s insanity. Throughout our normal lives each day we are faced with troubles and emotions that detach us from the world around us. Imagine that you’ve been around since the dawn of time, all the wars, the innocence lives taken, the families torn apart, the little children butchered. As the reapers have to harvest the soul they are usually present for the death. Even the immortals can only take so much and now there are signs that they are cracking, the reapers are the beings who dwindle within the darkness but now they fear they are not alone. Death becomes afraid of death. We have a fantastic following for this project already but we fear it never grace the internet as we have no access to funding. Through production we’ve always involved the community in this project and now we’re hoping to involve the online community in making sure we can finish grim. We’ve started a Crowdfunding scheme and so far have raised $2059 but we still have quite a long way to go http://www.indiegogo.com/ataleofdeath




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