PRAISE FOR SIDESHOW P.I.

“A fun read all the way through. Better than Arnzen’s

Licker and I read it cover to cover. This was very intelligently
written, humorous, well paced, and beautifully edited.”
D.W. Green, author of KIM CHI FLYING FISH

“Magnificently Grotesque. Nathaniel Lambert and Kevin

Sweeney are creating a new genre and dragging us all happily
kicking and screaming ...”
R. Scott McCoy, author of FEAST and the man behind
NECROTIC TISSUE

“A tsunami of pulp-fiction violence, bodily fluids, and

perverted sex. SIDESHOW P.I. is a weird but impressive twist
on the private eye subgenre with a unique anti-hero that you
won’t soon forget. This book will mess with your head in the
best way possible. You can consider it horror fiction for gore-
starved carnies. A true freakshow.”
Jordan Krall, author of SQUID PULP BLUES

“Nathaniel Lambert and Kevin Sweeney have worked

seamlessly to create a page-turning powerhouse of a book.
Vivid and brilliant, SIDESHOW P.I. is a must-have for any
horror/bizarro collection.”
Rio Youers, author of EVERDEAD and END TIMES
Sideshow P.I.: The Devil’s Garden

Published by Graveside Tales

A division of Kendall & Murphy, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or repro-

duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission ex-
cept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
and reviews. For information address:

Graveside Tales,
P.O. Box
487 Lakeside, AZ 85929, USA
www.gravesidetales.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are

used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 Nathaniel Lambert & Kevin Sweeney

Cover Art © 2009 Stephen Blundell
http://djdyme.deviantart.com

FIRST EDITION

ISBN: 978-0-9801338-5-1
ISBN: 0-9801338-5-8
 This book is dedicated to Levi James Madison.
Guitars, Godzilla and Doritos.

We would like to thank the following people: Gina Ranalli, for

a wonderful intro; Christa M. Miller, for her mad editing skills;
Rio Youers, Jordan Krall, Barry Nelson, De Grin, R. Scott
McCoy, Natalie L. Sin, Mark ‘Dezm’ Silva and J. P. Wilson,
for not blowing sunshine up our bungholes.
 INTRODUCTION FOR NATE
AND KEVIN
By Gina Ranalli

Asking me to write an introduction is like asking an

elephant to put on lipstick, grasp a rose in its trunk and dance
the tango along the Hudson River. Why? Because I am not the
introduction writing type. I write fiction. Weird, silly,
demented, overdosed on Red Bull and speed metal fiction.
I most definitely do not write introductions.
Except…
Except on this very rare occasion and for whatever reason,
the mad geniuses behind Graveside Tales have taken it into
their heads that I should write this one, for Sideshow P.I.: The
Devil’s Garden.
Again, we are left asking, why?
I’ve given the question a lot of thought actually and here is
the answer I came up with: because Sideshow P.I. is weird,
silly, demented, overdosed on Red Bull and speed metal. It is, in
fact, far more fitting of that description than anything I could
ever write. Not to mention all the other adjectives I could throw
at it, such as warped, grotesque, surreal, gag-inducing, eye-
watering, side-splitting and perhaps most of all, completely
fucking brilliant.
Never before have you met a P.I. like Eddie Gnash or his
roommates Dahlia and Woody, his friend Cletus and the rest of
a cast of characters that I couldn’t even begin to describe. Nor
would you want me to, because that would ruin the surprise and
the surprise is the best part of this novel. It’s the best part of any
great novel. Or why would we read them, right? No surprise
automatically cancels out the word “great”, at least for this
reader.
So, I’ve read Sideshow P.I. twice now and stylistically, I
cannot compare the Lambert and Sweeney team to anyone else.
I’ve tried. I’ve thought long and hard about it, but come up
blank every time. They are simply unlike any other writers
working today. They are fearless and perhaps a bit psychotic.
I’m pretty sure they don’t think like other writers when it comes
to characters and settings and plot. Determined to bring you
places you’ve never been, introduce you to characters you are
not likely to find anywhere else and show you disturbing things
that you’re unlikely to forget, these two guys desire one thing
and one thing only: to fuck with your head and make you enjoy
every damn bit of it. They want to offend you, gross you out
and make you rethink everything you thought you knew about
horror fiction. Especially noir-horror. And I must say, they have
a knack for doing exactly what they set out to do and they do it
better than anyone else.
I know the folks at Graveside are not opposed to publishing
bizarro now and then. I know this because they published a
story by me and with any luck, I’ll work with them again in the
future.
Why do I mention this? Because Sideshow P.I. is right up
there with the very best the bizarro genre has to offer. In fact,
there is a very good chance I would classify it as more bizarro
than horror and it would certainly rank among the top five of
my favorite bizarro tales ever. It’s that good.
Here’s what I’m hoping for: not just a sequel, but an entire
series with these characters, in these places. I know Sweeney
and Lambert will be recognized for this addictive mind-fuck
fest they’ve created. I see nominations in their future, long
bright careers and legions of fans who love their fiction dark,
depraved and wholly spectacular in every way imaginable.
But, then again, what do I know?
I don’t even write introductions.
SIDESHOW P.I.:
THE DEVIL’S
GARDEN
By Nathaniel Lambert & Kevin Sweeney
“Gooble gobble, gooble gobble,
we accept her, we accept her,
one of us, one of us!”
Tod Browning’s FREAKS
 THEN…

Calliope music, a cracked and lilting version of The

Entertainer. The smell of sawdust and peanuts, hands curled
around striped paper bags, snack food a greasy warm weight in
the palm. There’s an erotic tension in the air. The October wind
makes the tent walls bell, loose canvas snapping like flags; the
entrance is shut, the curtains do a sun skirt ruffle.
The crowd mills, talking low, an occasional laugh to show
the young bucks aren’t afraid of anything depicted on the
billboards that flank the entrance. Those boards are as tall and
as wide as doors, luridly painted with dead-eyed portraits of the
promised monsters within. Here, a beauty with breasts cupped
by seashells brushes her hair with lobster claws; there, a
shackled demon crouched, gnawing on a screaming face.
Tattooed men, bearded ladies, pickled horrors in Mason jars.
Brother and sister share a body like dolls melted in an oven.
Things that have human faces and should not: a snake, an owl,
a wolf.
The curtain lifts, and out rolls a black man in top hat and
tails. He wriggles out into the crowd, which parts in a semi-
circle, people staring. He sits up, uses his teeth to pluck a Zippo
from his top pocket, sets it on the floor in front of him. He uses
his tongue to spark it into life before retrieving a cigar from the
other pocket; his lips puckered, he cranes his head down to the
flame and puffs his smoke into life. He leaves it on the ground
as he retrieves his lighter, pockets it, and then picks up the
cigar with only his mouth once more.
The crowd murmurs, impressed and disgusted; he has no
arms or legs.
He methodically makes his way up the stairs of a
whitewashed platform, crawling like a caterpillar. At the top he
eases back up on his butt, still smoking, an Easter Island statue
made of flesh. He eyes each member of the crowd carefully, as
if gauging them, weighing up their balance of heart and mind.
 He thinks: fuckin’ slack jaws.
They think: fuckin’ freak.
Then he speaks.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

HA! Right.
You’re looking at a changed man! God’s honest truth …
enlightened, you could say. I was once ignorant to this great big
Earth, sat around with shutters in front of my eyes. I was just
like all of you, minding my own business, walking the straight
and narrow. A simple man with a simple plan; find me a wife,
have a couple kids and settle down somewhere in Quietsville.

He pauses, blows a smoke ring. A heartbeat later he blows

a smaller one up through the first. The cigar rolls from one
corner of his grin to the other.

Then I stumbled across this very same show you find

yourselves waiting for tonight. Come to find out things ain’t
just black and white, East and West coast … there’s a whole
continent between, where nothing quite seems to fit and
everything stands out on its own. What changed me? What gave
me insight into that other, forbidden world? Turned me from a
simple, close-minded man, to someone who now understands
and comprehends Mother Nature’s complexities? It all started
when I ventured through these plain white curtains behind me.

He tips his head back, gives a little jerk of his chin in the
direction of the entrance just in case these folks are as dumb as
they look and don’t follow the bally.

Once I bought a ticket and stepped inside, I never looked

back. There are sights within that would make a Christian man
fall to his knees! Scenarios that would make an experienced
woman faint! So! Leave the kids at home, buy you a ticket,

15
check your moral backbone at the door, and see that other world
for the very first time!

A cadence of words to reel them in. Now to pluck out a few

for special treatment … to cajole, threaten, mock. Anything it
takes to get those first few through the door. He thinks about
the community he grew up in. Iowa, meat country. Come killing
time the cows needed direction to get them up the steel ramps,
so the slaughterhouse trotted out the Judas goat. In he went, the
cows followed.
Same thing went for sheep. Sheep like these.
Guy right up front. Girlfriend on his arm. Tension builds
drama.

You Sir, dressed in your Sunday best. How would you like
to be seduced by the lovely Lucinda? Her powers of seduction
rival Venus herself. But she’s no normal beauty! No sir! You’ll
never find a specimen like her sprawled out on the papers of a
centerfold! She was caught in the Bering Sea by the men of a
Russian whaler … half lobster, half bikini model, reeled in with
the rest of her brethren. Like the Sirens of old, she cast her
sensual spell upon the crew of that damned vessel and not a one
of them ate or slept again. The sight of her body against the full
moonlight drove every last one of them insane. Are you brave
enough to take her on?

He sees a loose knot of dropouts whispering back and forth

as they pass a doobie. Fuckin’ meat heads.

If you survive Lucinda’s deadly sex drive, will you be able

to escape the clutches of the blood-crazy Jersey Devil? That’s
right folks! Come face-to-face with a true abomination! Lured
from his hiding place deep in the Pine Barrens by the scent of
freshly slaughtered infant flesh, this creature is none other than
a malignant child straight from the loins of Satan himself! Try

16
to hold down your lunch as he feasts on raw meat! Find yourself
inches away from evil incarnate!

They hoot, high-five, giggle. One more, he thinks. His eye

roves back and forth, as much looking for the next pigeon as
pacing out his pitch, letting each set of images sink in, building
the suspense that parts them from their cash.
Ah.

I suppose the lone lady in the crowd is asking what’s in

there for me? What could there possibly be behind those
curtains for someone of the female persuasion? Don’t want
carnage, gore or fish-head-eating misfits? No, Ma’am. I bet
you’re looking for something to keep you warm on those cold
winter nights. Some-thing to do the unthinkable to you? Does a
creature with an insatiable lupine libido stir your interest? Then
feast your eyes upon the colossally endowed Wolf Man!
Regular Joe by day, but come night and the full moon … a lust
to castrate Casanova and make de Sade despair, an ornery cuss
horny enough to attempt the two-backed beast with Lady
Liberty herself! But don’t worry, Ma’am. We’ve been able to
confine him behind bars with only one contingency; he must
have a new mate every night .... Take pride in walking inside on
your own two feet, because I promise—-when he gets done
ravaging you—-there’ll be no walking for weeks!

He senses that the time is right. A man doing this gig long
enough can almost smell when these people are ready, willing,
wanting to pay whatever you asked to get inside.
Just a shame there wasn’t enough of them.
God, if only he could get a hundred yokels.

Freaks! Geeks! Mutants, monsters, throwbacks, dwarves

and giants! All of these wonders await you tonight! Ladies and
gentlemen, boys and girls, thrill seekers, connoisseurs of the

17
transmundane and just plain insane, buy a ticket and change
your cookie cutter lives … FOREVER.

18
 ONE Hunger

The world was full of pain and confusion and hate and
hunger.
Pain. In her head. A fist of steel pounding inside her skull,
screaming to get out, to burst bone plates apart and spray the
sky with hot, wet agony.
Confusion. Animal confusion, a scurrying, maddened thing
knowing nothing and unable to make sense of her senses; the
dark before her eyes, the taste of rot beneath her tongue, the
buzzing of flies and the sweet gassy smell of life decomposing.
Hate and hunger chased each other’s heels, biting one
another in their infinite madness.
She began to stand, hands gripping into shoulders and
thighs and faces. Her fingers plunged into open holes, some
rimmed with teeth, others filled with jelly. Eyes. The miracle of
sight turned to filth when she secured her hold and began to
stand.
Hunger. Hate. Hunger. Hate.
Half crouching; the hate would not be denied. Massive,
thundering HATE. Her face cranked towards the darkness
overhead and the hate exploded from her guts as she
ROARED ...

“Mom! I gotta go,” Marty Lurmann shouted to his mother

as loud as someone like Marty could shout. “I’ll be right back
for the start of your stories, promise.”
A voice said, Gotta Go Gotta Go See My Lovely.
“Yes, and don’t I just know where you’re going to as well,
going to see your whooo-ker,” Mrs. Lurmann was in the middle
of filling her britches with something that resembled creamed
corn. Her last words came out in one long autonomous grunt.
“Look at you, all dressed up. You think that hired vrrr-gina…”
Purchasable at GravesideBooks.com
another round of bowel evacuation, “wants anything but our
hard earned money!?”
“Passion’s different, Mommy, she understands me. I … I
think I love her.”
A voice said, Think? Think? What Do You Mean THINK?
His mom was sprawled luxuriously across the queen size
mattress, spilling over its sides in folds. She snorted at the use
of the four-letter word, sending ripples through the vast terrain
of her body.
“Love? Marty, I’m afraid you got your smarts from your
father’s half of the genes. You think anyone, besides your poor
mother, could love someone as huhhh-gly…” Her face was
knotted up tight, cheeks puffed out like a trumpeter, and as red
as a baboon’s ass. “Your father thought all those vrr-ginas loved
him, too. They used their slits like fish bait, set the hook in your
father and took him away from us. Those dirty tramps. The
bastard left me with a frail baby and half an act. And now
you’re going to leave me too.”
“No, no, Mommy, I’ll never leave you. I promise.” Marty
sucked in a giant lungful of air and braved the shit smell, always
the shit smell, to give his mother a hug. Or at least he put his
arms around a part of her, thin arms straining to encircle the
western heap of the estate that was his mother.
A voice said, Promises And Pie Crusts You Hear Me?
There’s A Coffee Can With My Future In It Hidden Where You
Can’t See BITCH.
“Oh, you’ll leave. Can’t be helped, son. It’s that goddamn
trouser snake between your legs. I’ve got a mind to cut it off,
Marty. I swear I do,” she said, and used her fingers like scissors
to snip at Marty’s crotch. “Your whore of a father was always
trying to stick his thing in me, but I wouldn’t give in. I’m too
strong, Marty, but you’ll give in to your pecker. Men always do.
Then who’ll take care of me, Marty? Who? Oh, I can’t believe
my own son would abandon me!” Mrs. Lurmann palmed her
forehead and wept like a child.
Marty grabbed the enormous heap of his mother’s shoulder
and meant to shake her to death ...
 A voice was yelling MOM, I’M FORTY YEARS OLD AND
HAVEN’T LEFT YET. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, DO YOU
HONESTLY THINK I’M GOING ANYWHERE!?
Another voice piped in with In The Coffee Can Where The
Mirrors Can’t See ...
... he shook his mom one time, no harder than a child would
his stuffed teddy, and told her he wasn’t going anywhere. Then
he let go and marched to the other side of the room. His
mother’s look of accusation and discontent was replaced by one
of endearment and unconditional love.
“I know you’d never leave, Marty. Please, give us a hug,
then you can go see your vrr … friend.” Marty held his breath
again and gave his mother another hug, his arms just managing
to reach around her neck and half of one shapeless mound of
breast.
A voice whispered in his ear. Not one of his though; his
mother’s voice.
“It’s just you look so much like that cocksucker.”

She blundered across the bodies, felt the ooze between her
toes; cheeks smeared and ribs snapped beneath her heels. Her
hands kept clutching between her thighs, where the hunger was.
She came to a wall. Steel, though she did not know that
word. All she knew was that it stopped her from moving
FORWARD and OUT.
The hate was out, shouted and howled without any words.
She knew no words. Now there was just the hunger ... the
hunger that had not been sated by cramming fistfuls of soft
muscle down her throat, teeth ripping apart skin and fat to
reach the hidden meats, tonguing out kidneys and biting hearts
in half to lick blood congealed in the chambers ...
It wasn’t long before her fingers found the door.
The doors had been designed without consideration that the
captives of the Vats might wake up, not dead, brains intact by
some freak of ballistics. They were, however, designed to be
easy to open from within in case a plant worker were to be
accidentally locked in.
She knew nothing—even her own existence—but her lower
brain worked. It screamed and thumped and threatened to
detonate—pain pain pain—but it was designed to work through
simple tasks.
The Vat opened. She stepped out into the compound.
Night.

Marty managed not to speak, an endlessly repeated trick,

keeping his lips buttoned against the hundred and one voices
that incessantly howled in his head every day. Some spoke
softly and counseled sweet compromise with his poor mother;
others whispered rebellion, flight from this place, pipe dreams
of life after his mom and the show.
And then there were those other voices still ... the ones that
did not talk about the money he had squirreled away in a coffee
can, but of all the bright and sharp things in the kitchen
drawer ... deadly things.
Marty was terrified of the eventual slip, and one voice
would get out. Just one, a breach in the dam, but enough to send
cracks running up and down the careful barriers he had spent a
lifetime constructing.
The life outside of his brain had no barriers, or doors. His
mom had them all removed, to know where he was at all times.
Took down every fixture in the apartment and put up a mirror in
its place. Every square inch from floor to ceiling reflected
Marty over and over again, no matter where he went, directing
his image and his actions back to his behemoth mother in her
bed.
The only other decoration was a poster from their days with
the show. This hung on the wall in Marty’s room, a reminder
that there was a world outside these walls and this routine of
managing the vast, consuming machine that was his mother.
MADAME LURMANN, THE ONE TON WOMAN AND
HER SON, MARTIN OEDIPUS MASTER OF THE BLADES!
HOW CAN HE MISS?
 Beneath this legend was a painting of their act: Madame
Lurmann, the fattest human being alive, spread eagled on a
spinning disc as her blindfolded son threw sharpened dildos at
her.
A voice said, That’s The Past Get With The Present Marty,
The Present Contains Poontang.
“Yeah,” he whispered, “Right.”

Her senses, unplugged of death and its finery, sparked alive

and drank in the city.
She stood in the compound and inhaled.
Outside the Vat, darkness, workers gone home for the
night ... she listened.
Buildings loomed against the darkness. Lights. Lives within
easy reach.
She scented the air, and something caught her interest. The
hunger pitched. Chemicals on the foul air of a city, old
chemicals, human chemicals. Something she WANTED.
Nearby. Just beyond the fence, the little security the
compound needed.
Her nostrils flared. If she had had pupils they would have
dilated.
The fence meant nothing to her. Why would it? It was made
to keep out vagrants or mischief makers. Humans.
She stood a yard taller then any human.
That scent in her nose, hands fisting between her thighs, she
loped through the darkness.

Marty changed his mother, scrubbing down the edges of the

tarp she overflowed. He spoon fed her beef puree and gave her a
sponge bath, disinfecting the worst of her weeping sores, some
as big as fists punched into the tractor tires of blubber.
Chores completed, his mother snoring gently—sleep came
often and briefly when you had trouble getting enough oxygen
with each breath—he grabbed a silk scarf from his mother’s
bureau and slipped out the back down the fire escape.
 The voices in his head made a chorus of a name: Passion,
they said, O Passion Passion Passion.
Passion would knead and milk all the worries right out of
him. He knew she didn’t love him. How could somebody love a
guy, whom his mother said, had a face like the late stages of
walking syphilis? It didn’t matter though. He’d wrap a blindfold
around his eyes and act out all those pent-up fantasies.
Already stiff as a varnished eel, Marty leaned up against the
side of a grime-ridden dumpster and gave himself a tug. They
always met in this alley, which was bookended by the street to
the east and the back of the rendering plant to the west.
He heard unsteady, slow footsteps. He grinned and pulled
on his blindfold.
“Is that you, Passion?” Marty whispered.
Breathing. She stayed silent. A voice in Marty’s head
suggested something, but was shouted down.
He really should have listened.
“You’re a few minutes early. Well, OK, I’m going to put
my blindfold on and you just back that sweet ‘n’ juicy up like a
garbage truck.” Marty peeled his trousers and tighty-whiteys
down to his ankles. He stripped them off, balancing on one foot
at a time, and then tossed his clothes into a pile.
The footsteps came closer. The breathing began to sound
deeper, more ... animal. Not human, like listening to a furnace.
Marty grinned, and decided he liked this a lot.
A voice said, Ask Her To Marry You Right Now.
No, not yet. Now was time for Marty.
He double-fisted his junk and planted his feet at shoulder
width. Something big and very much alive squished under the
sole of his loafer.
“Beep, Beep!” Marty sounded off, literally bee-bopping up
and down in hungry anticipation. “Back it up, Passion! Back
that fuckin’ fish bait up! Beep, Bee ...”
Before he could finish, Passion buried all his real estate
inside her. He hadn’t even heard her walk up. He felt blindly in
front of him, but suddenly had to brace the slick wall. Marty
stood up on his tippy-toes and gasped for air.
 A voice, his voice, said Christ Crap Almighty, What The
Fuck?
She must have learned some kind of new technique that was
driving him insane. Her vagina felt like a million shiatsu
fingers. In milliseconds, he was erupting in a butt-flexing
orgasm the likes of none other he’d ever experienced.
Voices:
Sheeeeeiiitttt ....
O God O God O God YEEEESS ...
FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck ...
And, quietly, so quiet he didn’t hear it; This Isn’t Passion.
Gasping. That was it. He’d made his decision. As soon as he
recovered, could catch a fucking breath, he’d ask Passion to be
his wife.
Bye Mom, he thought.
When he reached up to untie the blindfold, powerful, cold
hands threw his own hands up against the brick behind him. He
yelped out in pain and something cracked him in the lips. He
turned his head to avoid spraying Passion with any of his own
blood, but suddenly doubled over in pain or ecstasy as the
shiatsu fingers started up again. This time more feverishly, and
with a vise-like grip. He came again instantly, but his dark alley
lover didn’t let up.
Instead she kicked it into overdrive.
Marty screamed in helpless agony as the pressure on his
penis grew tighter and tighter. He lost track of the continuous
orgasms, one after another.
WhatTheFuckIsHappeningToMEEEEE ...
StopPleasePleaseSTOPYou’reRipping ...
MomHelpMeRIPPINGMeHelpMeHELPME ...
MommmmmmyyyyMOMMMMYYYY ...
Finally his heart couldn’t handle the stress. It popped like a
dried out radiator hose. That fraction of a second before his life
winked out, he felt a hot and burning liquid shoot back up
inside. The hands holding Marty let go and he plopped down
face first into a river of squalor.
 Hate. The pain and the hunger subsided ... but not enough.
The hate was MASSIVE and it was BLACK and it was
ROARING.
She stood over her victim, looking down at its strange little
face. A comical thing.
Hate hate hate hate HATE.
And hunger.
Some animal part of her held the hate in check, stopped her
from taking the thing at her feet and dashing it against the
walls of the alley until it was nonsense smeared across the
bricks. The instinct did not use words, but its reasoning was
plain. That at her feet still had purpose.
Her nostrils flared.
In this alley there had been one. She looked towards the
light of the street ... and knew that beyond that light there was a
world of billions.
 TWO The Tourist

You’re one of us ... The shrunken head of some overzealous

humanitarian sways back and forth in the rearview mirror. His
cousin sent it to him last Easter, he tells you. Before moving to
America, your cabbie was a bona fide chief of his very own
tribe.
They ate their enemies. Not anymore, mind you, but Chief
tells you when he was younger, it was a staple.
“You can’t get meat dat tender stateside.” He chortles in a
way that makes you want to crawl up into your own anus.
Chief’s massive. The steering wheel is buried in his
breadbasket and you think his nipples may be doing the driving.
Chief’s got stainless steel implants jutting from his brow line.
They look nasty and razor-sharp. The pharmaceutical
smorgasbord you gobbled down earlier is playing tricks with
the cab’s dome light. Small prisms of orgasmic light tiptoe at
the ends of his implants. You reach forward to caress one and
Chief snaps back with teeth filed to points. You draw back your
hand and take inventory; all present and accounted for. Time to
stuff your hands in pockets and sit tight.
That’s if you plan on leaving this godforsaken city in one
piece.
Where the fuck is everyone, anyways? You came here with a
dozen others. Always came here with at least that many. This
town offered a mind-blowingly good time, but it also offered a
gazillion ways to end up dead. Sex and Death and Drugs and
Pain.
The last thing you remember is a dozen shots of snake
venom lined up on the taut belly of a tattooed girl chewing on
the shattered remains of a champagne glass. She teased out a
jagged sliver with her tongue and commanded you to carve
perfect circles around her espresso-dark areolas.
Purchasable at GravesideBooks.com
 “Yes, Ma’am,” you yawped back with the enthusiasm of
Christmas morning.
“Shut the fuck up, Norman, and do as you’re told.”
Your name’s not Norman, but who’s about to slow down
this wrecking ball?
After that, everything turned to taffy. Gooey mnemonics of
the absurd and terrific. You were wearing a lovely sea-foam-
green dinner gown, then no clothes at all. A crowd of the
inhumanly bizarre laughed and pointed at your genitalia. Your
friends were getting their asses kicked by midgets in head-to-
toe latex and you’re almost positive you bedded down with a
zoo animal. Rearview mirror hallucinations, ones that don’t
come at you head-on. You glanced over your shoulder and bore
witness to the divine not staying in between the lines. They’d
taken liberties here to set your perspective askew. Just before
the comatose curtain settled over your dilated eyes, you caught
a glimpse of yourself doing battle with a giant Earthworm God.
Maybe that last gelatin-jacketed piece of mind candy was a
mistake ...
You wake up in the back of Chief’s cab just as he’s drizzling
Worcestershire on your bare foot. When he notices you’re
conscious, he quickly caps the bottle and returns his attention
to the road.
You glance out the window to try to get a bearing. Trolley
trains from hell fly past the cab on both sides and above at
unheard-of speeds, giving just nanosecond glimpses of
passengers in the same state of mind as you; sparks erupt from
the metal tracks. They look like the tails of a hundred Chinese
dragons that pinwheel to a point somewhere in front of the cab.
Trails of illuminated, existential tadpoles or maybe streamers of
idealistic semen.
Is this even a road? Has Chief found a wormhole, some tear
in the fabric? Will you come out the other side in one piece, or
inside out? Much more of this, and you’re liable to pull a
Salvador Dali and puddle onto the floor mat.
But it’s Chief’s feathered headdress that finally sends you
over the edge. He’s bopping it back and forth to “Fernando,”
and the plumage from a Bird of Paradise is leaving water bug
trails of brilliant light buzzing around his head. It’s too much
for 1400 grams of gray matter to process. The only way to deal
is a complete system reboot. A purge. All at once everything
inside needs to get out in a hell of a hurry. Chief’s right in the
middle of explaining the best way to tenderize a thigh, when
you express your stomach juices all over the back of his pygmy-
bone lumbar support.
Chief’s nice enough to help you out of the back of his vomit-
soused taxi. You stumble face first into the pavement, coaxed
along by a cannibalistic foot in your ass. He hovers over you
long enough to empty out your wallet/purse, then stomps back
to the cab.
“FUCKING NORMAN!” he shouts, and machine-guns off a
continuous assault of what can only be obscenities in some
ancient language. You think his dialect sounds like popcorn
popping.
This makes you laugh, even as he lays down a thick lawn of
stinking rubber.
You’re quite content to spend eternity sprawled out on the
cool cement, already forgetful of why you’re laughing, when a
man with no legs tugs at your shoulder with giant, callused
hands.
“Hey, Norman, gotta get up before you’re killed.”
“My name’s not Norman. It’s ...” You can’t recall, so you
let him help you up.
“It is when you walk these streets, Norman.”
He’s got your elbow in a hell of a grip. You get a feeling he
could snap it in two if he wished.
He hand-walks with you for a bit, bumping into your side
when it seems as though you’ll tumble over. You jungle-march
through a sea of yellowed newspapers and empty cans.
Thankfully, you have your chaperone to keep you afloat. He
looks so cute in his tweed jacket and porkpie hat.
 You pat him on the head and tell him he’s such a friendly,
silly little man. With this remark he leans you up against a
lamppost and waddles away, shaking his head.
You spin around the lamppost, doing your best Fred
Astaire, but abruptly stop when vomit bubbles in your throat.
After your head clears, you stand up straight and shuffle
towards the one-story building directly in front of you.
No-Legs parked you right outside an old diner, twice
scabbed over with rot, on the corner of Pestilence and Apathy.
The outside looks like someone painted two coats of nicotine
and finished with a high gloss dog shit. The windows are all
blacked out and a crooked neon sign flashes on and off
erratically.
The words BLACK DAHLIA hiccup in and out of your
blurred vision.
A person can always find a good cup of coffee in dumps like
these, and coffee’s just the thing you need. You take a deep
breath, wipe the spittle from your lip, and barrel through the
front door.
A cacophonous bell rings when the door opens, but nobody
looks up.
Places like this spread sawdust all over the floors to sweep
up all the patron muck-muck. At least you thought the
crunching under foot was sawdust, until a closer examination—
you tripped over your own feet and plummeted down to the
floor—reveals thousands of delicate bones stripped clean of
flesh. Needle thin femurs and tibias leave bloodied freckles all
over your cheek and forehead.
You turn over onto your back to relieve the pain and stare
up at a million pairs of yellow eyes. The wooden rafters are
packed full of barn owls. They all turn their heads two hundred
and eighty degrees to look at you accusingly. You might not
remember the night’s events, but these birds of prey have wised
up to your dirty deeds.
You arduously stand back up and brush off the fragments of
a titmouse from the front of your sequined dress. There’s not
much chance of getting back up if you fall, so you quickly take
the nearest seat. Rest your head for a moment on the filthy,
cracked laminated table. The table smells off, like canned black
olives or wet basement.
There’s no one else there, save for the waitress and a wiry
man in dire need of a haircut. Although the place resembles a
café, seems to have all the right fixings, you get the feeling that
food hasn’t been served here in a long time. There’s a thick
coat of dust on every surface. It’s dark and you have a hard
time making out details; only a few scattered, naked light bulbs
throw an eerie yellow glow. The artificial light gives off a glass
beer bottle glow. Beer goggles. As if you needed anything else
to muddle your vision.
Instead of grease and strong coffee, that black olive smell is
everywhere. You make a dash for the counter and ask for a
strong cup of java.
It’s a good twenty feet to the front. Momentum alone carries
you crashing into an empty seat next to the hairy stranger. You
bump into him. He doesn’t even shift in his seat. He strikes a
match across the countertop and takes a long drag off an
unfiltered cigarette. The ember’s red glow reveals a face
covered entirely in fur. This guy doesn’t need a trimming, but to
be shorn from head to toe. There’s something vaguely familiar
about him. Maybe you’ve run into each other on a different
excursion to the city.
“Think a fella could get a cup of coffee?” you ask the
waitress, marshalling vowels and consonants like you’ve been
doing it all your life.
Ha ha ha.
The waitress stands on the other side of the counter,
halfway through the doorway to the kitchen. She seems to be
arguing with the part of herself you can’t see. She pauses and
fires a death wish glance at you when your drunk-heavy arm
knocks an empty napkin dispenser to the floor. You give her a
sloppy grin and a wave. She returns a welcoming snarl and
blows air through her nose.
 “Buddy, we ain’t ever served coffee here,” she says, and
goes back to her heated dispute with something or someone just
outside of view.
You crane your neck and try to get a good look at whose ass
she’s chewing, but almost topple over the counter.
“Boy, I really need a cup of coffee,” you say and flop back
down onto the stool.
Something you said gets her attention. She looks back
towards you and grins from ear to ear. When she steps out of
the kitchen, you get a good luck at who she was arguing with.
It’s her twin. They look like two people chainsawed from
shoulder to crotch and then smeared together, leftovers thrown
in the trash for the bums to eat.
You take stock slowly, dimly wondering if this funhouse
mirror person is the mind candy’s last huzzah before
permanently burning out your motor cortex.
Yin and Yang, squeaks a cluster of brain cells in the
moment before their death.
Yin is a real looker. She’s got milky white skin that you’d
like to rub your cheek up against. Her half is wearing a little
black number. Her arm and leg are toned and athletic. She’s
got a large, firm breast and high cheek bones; half of what you
would consider the perfect woman. You’d give her a five.
As for Yang ...
His hair is long and greasy, probably hasn’t been washed in
weeks. He’s got gobs of dark eyeliner and a silver hoop through
his lower lip. There’s a studded collar around his scrawny
neck. Where her skin was a sexy white, his is cadaver pale. His
skinny little leg and arm are transparent, save for the spider
web of blueberry veins racing across his flesh. A black T-shirt
with the words SPERM DUMPSTER sketched across meshes
seamlessly with her black dress.
“I can’t help with the coffee, but I can help you with the
need.”
She’s moved closer now. She tickles the top of your hand
with her delicate fingers.
 “The name’s Dahlia Lamore.” Now she’s resting her
perfect chin in the palm of her hand. She nods one time towards
her other half. “This here is my brother Woody.” Woody lets
out an exaggerated sigh and continues to stare at nothing.
“This café here is just a front for my business. I specialize
in finding people, all sorts of people, just what they need. Is
there anything you need?”
“I can’t think of anything I want, except maybe a cup of…”
“Not want, my friend, but need. There’s a big difference.”
Now she’s just inches from you. Her scent is a sweet
concoction of pomegranate and fine Cuban cigar. Her striking
beauty almost overwhelms the painfully depressed expression
on Woody’s face.
“Sometimes a person doesn’t even know what they need
until I get it for them.”
Her lips are almost touching yours. She’s starting to weird
you out, but you’ve already begun fantasizing about yet another
first for you: sex with a Siamese twin.
“Now, is there anything you need?”
“Jesus, Dahlia. What the kid needs is something to get his
head back on right.”
The guy next to you finally decides to speak.
“Look at him, he’s about to melt off his stool. Hey little
brother, let me mix you a little something.”
The fur-covered stranger pulls a slotted silver spoon from
his shirt pocket and pats you on the shoulder. Dahlia shrugs
and waves her hand at the guy. “Whatever,” she says, and
grabs two stubby glasses from underneath the counter.
A tall, skinny bottle directly behind her gives off an eerie
green glow. She takes the bottle down, adds a shot from it to
both glasses, and then strains another liquid through the spoon.
A little of this, a dash of that, and soon you’re staring at a lava
lamp of greens and milky whites colliding off each other in the
small tumblers.
“Kinda drink is this?”
“Just my take on Death In The Afternoon.”
 You shrug and take a weary sip. Almost instantly, the
numbing drink returns something resembling clarity to your
faculties. The blur that was your surroundings comes into
focus. Now you can get a good look at your new drinking
buddy. You recognize him immediately and feel like an idiot for
not remembering earlier.
“Hey, you’re Eddie Gnash, the sideshow guy.” You’re so
excited. This is better than meeting the pope. “I’ve been to the
show. You’re like the frickin’ man … man!”
Eddie holds both his hands up. “You got me, officer.”
“Wait till the boys back home hear who I met,” you say,
and finish off your cocktail.
“What happened to the show, anyways? It was fantastic.”
As soon as you ask Mr. Gnash about the show, Yang, the
other twin—Woody—moans softly and mutters something. It
sounds like, Here We Go Again.
Gnash ignores this.
“I’ll tell you exactly what happened, my brother. America
burnt out their freak receptors, said to hell with moral
conservation and cashed in their chips on the extreme.”
You shake your head, not even aware he’s talking about
you, like it all makes perfect sense.
“Let me tell you how my Babylonian tower of the weird and
absurd came crumbling down,” Eddie says.
You lean in and let Dahlia fill your glass again. Eddie
Gnash is about to tell a story, and you’re all ears.

For the longest time, normal folk needed us.

It was a necessity to applaud the differences that had
alienated us our entire lives. They didn’t cheer out of awe or
reverence, though. No sir. They whooped and hollered out of
affirmation. Our fucked exteriors just gave them a way to
convince themselves of their own normalcy. After the show,
they knew their own lives weren’t so fucked up after all. Maybe
they still beat/molested their kids, drank/gambled up all the
savings, whored/fucked around with every swinging cock/cunt
in town, but at least they didn’t have a stunted twin growing out
of the side of their head.
God granted them symmetry, so everything else must just be
circumstance.
We’ll buy a ticket to your twisted show, just as long as you
keep the freaks out of our backyard. Keep them off the streets,
out of the schools, and most importantly, out of our gene pool.
Put them all up on stage, make an example of them. See kids,
this is what happens when you don’t eat your vegetables/go to
church/vote Republican/wipe from north to south.
No legs or arms, that’s fine as long as they’re paying to see
it.
Have sex with an animal, no problem, folks. Just don’t show
up to any community functions.
Born with hypertrichosis, that’s fine too, but you gotta tell
them you’re part wolf and you fuck like a savage. Leave the
scientific explanation at home.
Normal people like their vices in a screw cap bottle with no
label. They don’t want to know what’s in it. Just that it’s there
when the itch needs scratching. When they’re done with you,
they’ll hide your ass under the sink with all the other bottles.
There was a time when my gig would sell out. Standing
room only with the too-young kids trying to sneak peeks under
the canvas. Husbands and wives would come for some real
hands-on relationship counseling. Teenagers taking mental
photographs of scenes that would fuel their fantasies for months
to come. Others wanting validation that mankind really is
fucked up and it’s not just something they’re shown on an ADD
ticker on the evening news. Politicians. Crooks. Alcoholics.
Atheists. Housewives. Unemployed. Shit, even the Reverend
made an appearance from time to time. Probably more for
ammo than anything else, but I caught him looking more than
once. They all came to catch a brief glimpse of that other world.
Where sometimes puzzle pieces just don’t quite fit, or are
missing altogether.
 Us freaks, we wear everything on our sleeves. No inhibition.
No need to keep up any appearances. So when we do the things
we do on stage, you clap and hoot for an encore, because that’s
what we’re supposed to do. It’s what you expect. You go home,
wash our filth off in a rose-scented bubble bath, and bake a
batch of monster cookies for the PTA meeting. Take off your
party clothes and put on a nice pair of cashmere pajamas. Rub
off all that fire engine red lipstick and go back to fucking your
husband missionary style.
There’s no mascara in the world that could cover up our
blemishes. No wonder drug or plastic procedure. Me, I don’t
want to change. I don’t mind being on display. Feel better about
yourself by staring in disgust at us. When deep down inside,
you’re the disfigured one. You know it. I know it. But it pays
the bills. Right?
Things are always bound to change, diabetic evolution, but I
never thought the show, my show, would become obsolete.
Who needs a freak show when, thanks to the information hyper
highway, you can watch Japanese schoolgirls make it with a
lobster while vomiting into each other’s orifices?
Folks just wore out their freak receptors.
Well, that and the IRS finally caught up with us.
 THREE
Welcome to New Ramoth

Where does a convoy of freaks without a home decide to

take root?
Is there even a slight chance of assimilation? Perhaps some
kind of freak adoption program, where you go live in the damp
basement of some host family’s bungalow. Get minimum wage
gigs bagging groceries. Have concerned/condescending church-
going housewives bark in your ear, as if you were deaf along
with being an anomaly, “It’s nice to see you people finding
dutiful employment.”
Uh-uh. We knew there’d be no red carpet awaiting our
arrival at any town of any size across this big continent. Our
destination was known without even a collective decision.
There’s only one city that will embrace the freak in all of us and
into which even the ever-grasping fist of Uncle Sam will not
venture to claim a decade’s worth of back taxes.
New Ramoth.
You walk the streets and can feel the feverish heat
simmering off the pavement.
New Ramoth, sickly and terminal, a chronic infection
perpetually on the verge of an outbreak.
New Ramoth. Where the world sends its unwanted and the
unwanted perform the unspeakable. There is no law. Rage,
power and sex rule the masses. A flip of a coin decides fate.
New Ramoth. An erotic nightmare, one where you’re
getting a blowjob from the prom queen while plummeting to
earth without a chute, except in this dream there’s no waking up
before hitting the ground. Find anything and everything your
twisted psyche has ever desired.
A red-light district with a bulb as bright as the sun.
Painful pleasure. My home.

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 It’s a sideshow with metropocalyptic proportions. The show
never ends, though. That is, unless you find yourself at the
receiving end of Death’s crusade. Then it’s curtains. End up
bleeding from all sorts of holes in a dark and grime splattered
alleyway. That blood pooling on the cement, it’ll just blend and
congeal with the innumerable other arterial deposits that spilled
before you.
All its occupants, my neighbors and coinhabitants, could
have been stars of their own carnivals. Usually it’s the grotesque
on the outside that makes you cross to the other side of the
street, but here it’s the ones that you don’t consider dangerous
that you need to worry about. Creatures with teeth and claws
prowl these streets wearing suits and ties. Beauty harbors the
Devil’s deceit, and his minions feed on the innocent and weak:
purgatory’s survival of the cruelest.
There’s nothing this town hasn’t seen. All the menstruation
laundry is left out in the wind. So when Dogboy walks these
streets, he does it with his head up high. We all do. No one’s
judging. They might run you through for the few buck of
change in your pocket, but they’ll never curl a lip in disgust. As
long as a freak keeps to himself, he can find a niche in this big
septic tank.
The only problem is, I’ve never been good at keeping to
myself.
Hey, I’m a showman at heart, born and bred.
We arrived at New Ramoth together, crammed into a few
rusted-out hatchbacks and camper vans. We crossed Bloom
Bridge slowly, taking in the moat of afterbirth and placental
transgressions that churned and bubbled below. Mountains of
garbage and detritus gathered along the giant cement pillars
supporting the bridge. There were also patches of what looked
like waterlogged flesh and jagged bone that peeked out between
the layers of toxic froth and algae.
So much of the detail got picked up in the peripheral vision.
Do you see long bones supporting the towers? Shanty towns of
tents made from cured skin? Don’t ask, don’t tell, my brother.

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 Later we would learn–some more intimately than others—
that when a fellow went missing in these parts, there was a good
chance he’d become an ingredient of the festering cocktail that
snaked around the city’s exterior. Organic architecture.
Seepage.
The gate on that bridge was wide open for us, as if someone
had phoned in ahead of time: “Here comes another shipment of
freaks. Open her up, Sam, and make sure to shut the door
behind the whole lot of them.” Easy enough to get in, but you’d
better be a Norman to get back out.
As we passed through the rusting monolith, we studied the
hack-job of scrap metal that framed the giant archway. Bad
mojo graffiti was scribbled across every available space, written
in what looked like blood. My fortune teller babbled on about
curses and then forked the whole city the evil eye. You couldn’t
help but think that the city was a holding tank. Almost as if we
were being put back into the womb; some sort of reverse
abortion. Like hitting a cold spot while swimming in a depthless
lake, we felt an ambient change as soon as we passed through.
The air was palpable and dirty, but not from smog or pollution.
New Ramoth’s air was soiled with a wicked filth. It clung to my
every pore, like an aromatic tattoo, and all I wanted was a hot
water scrub down, or maybe even a priest.
Welcome home, breathed the city. Like it was inevitable.
I tried to remember that Dante line, that shit written above
the gate to the Inferno.
Hard living and living hard. We took our lumps initially,
figured out the pecking order, but it didn’t take long for the
majority of us to settle into some kind of routine. Even chaos
itself has a discernable pattern of sorts, if you’re perceptive to it.
Working a crowd, a different town every week, gives you the
insight into reading people as a collective. We blended in,
figured out what not to do to end up as a corporeal buoy
bobbing up and down in that primordial soup just outside the
gate.
 Incognito. It’s hard going from center stage to the
maenianum secundum in legneis, but survival has a way of
adjusting what you’ve grown accustomed to.
Pimping. Hustling. Dancing. Occupations we’d all done in
the show, but now on a grander scale. Me, I settled into Dahlia
and Woody’s sofa and spent the better part of two years
drowning in an abyss of daytime TV and late night
infomercials. Not exactly a time of stellar aspirations. I was in a
rut. I hadn’t been rich by any means, but I’d been the king of
my little universe. There was nothing in New Ramoth for me.
No crowd of adoring fans or townsfolk with pitchforks and
torches. All I had was the hair on my back.
Dahlia had always had a head–at least one of them—for
business. She anticipated the sideshow’s fall and had planned
accordingly, shuffled money hither and yon and even started a
lucrative catalog business offering patrons those all-too-hard-to-
find products, mostly taboo, fetish and black magic artifacts.
You’d think the bulk of her business would be local wackos, but
she made a killing off shipping sacrificial daggers to picket-
fence neighborhoods scattered throughout the Bible Belt.
I wouldn’t be surprised, my brother, if it weren’t your own
neighbors having blood-soused orgies while feasting on the
entrails of a sacrificial goat on the same family room floor
where they play board games.
With the profits she bought this café as a front, to keep the
local warlords off the scent; it’s not just the IRS that believes a
man ought to pony up the hard capital he has sweat for.
So Dahlia was doing just fine, her and Woody with his
various talents like a Swiss army knife. The others found their
niches, too. Made something for themselves outside of the
show. Even in this cursed place, everybody moved on and
thrived.
Everybody but me. I gained twenty pounds and could recite
a play-by-play of all the popular soaps. I lived off a staple of
Death in the Afternoon and mechanically recovered meat
artfully designed to look like real food. Every night I had the
same dream about the woman in the hangar, and told each new
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shot of booze its mission was to find the creative center of my
brain and kill that bit off.
Figured, as long as Dahlia would permit, I’d go on living
life as a permanent fixture on her couch, like an afghan or throw
pillow.
Although Dahlia, bless her twin-sharing heart, had other
plans.
“Eds, I’m going to start checking you for bed sores,” she
had said one early evening, in a don’t-fuck-with-me tone.
“Right, little sister, right. Be a doll and watch out for my
tubing?” I said, and waved her out of the way of the TV. I’d
waited all week to see if Bo and Roman could come up with
enough dirt to bust Stefano.
As she cleaned up the mountains of takeout refuse piled
around me, her six-inch stiletto bumped up against my urine
collection bag, and some spilled over onto her imported Turkish
rug. By this time I’d resorted to a catheter; too lazy even to
shuffle my bunny-slipper-wearing-ass the short distance to the
seashell-themed bathroom.
The splish-splash sound of my liquor-infused waste
splattering on her fine silk must have hit a sore spot with my
den mother. Her fangs were out, and I swore the acrylic nails on
her only hand grew a good inch or two. Dahlia was about to
sink her teeth into my throat, bury her hand all the way to the
wrist in that ever-increasing tire around my midsection and turn
my insides into shredded lunch meat. And you know what? I
wouldn’t have stopped her. Probably would’ve helped. It would
have at least been a break in the maddening monotony my life
had become.
She reached down, grabbed a hold of my paisley smoking
jacket, and I braced myself for the end to it all.
Wouldn’t you know it was Woody who saved me from the
wrath of a hell-bent female who felt underappreciated?
The Lamore twins were born with exactly half of
themselves fused right down the middle, Dahlia on the right,
Woody on the left. One arm, one leg each and a world of
difference between the two. They shared vital organs, so
surgery was never an option. Interestingly enough, the two had
their own functioning plumbing, both backdoor and front; I
could attest to that.
“Jeez, Dahlia, lay off the man. He’s just in ... like a slump or
something.” Woody slurred the words out in that half-asleep
manner of his. He patted his sister on the shoulder softly to try
to snap her out of her frenzy. “This is Eddie here, sis. He ... like
used to be our boss, you know.” A man of few words.
Woody’s brotherly caress seemed to carry Dahlia out of her
bloodthirsty trance. She turned to her twin and smiled. “You’re
right, Woody. Always right. But this furball in front of us ain’t
the Eddie Gnash we’ve grown to love. The Eddie Gnash I know
wouldn’t have given in so fucking early in the game. He’d be
out there working the beat, trying to find his rung in the ladder.”
Everything she said was true, I’d leeched off her and Woody
long enough, but that ugly monster who goes by the name of
male pride wouldn’t acquiesce. I searched the room for
everything but Dahlia’s gorgeous brown eyes and picked away
at a crater full of belly lint.
The two plopped down beside me on the couch. Dahlia
threw her arm around my slouched shoulders.
“Eddie, I love every overactive hair follicle on your fat ass,
but things gotta change. It’s a full-time job just looking after
Woody. I can’t take care of the two of you any longer. Either
you find some kind of employment, or look for another couch to
crash on.”
She stood up, dragging Woody with her, and quickly exited
the room.
Leaving me feeling lousy.
What does any male with a hemi-charged superego do when
someone fluffs his feathers and gives him an ultimatum? He
gets bowel-releasing drunk. What better place to look for some
sort of redemption or motivation than at the bottom of a liquor
bottle, or in my case, at the bottom of many bottles?
The dream came the way it did every night.

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 I was being sucked through some sort of fleshy cavern
covered in slimy mucus and then spit inside onto the cold,
cracked cement of a hangar bay. Screams as loud as an atom
bomb’s explosion echoed from all around.
I opened my eyes, newborn weak. What I saw made me wish
I had been born dead.
The entire building overflowed with giant rotten eggs. They
were the size of a full-grown chicken and the same color as a
wad of spent chewing tobacco. From floor to ceiling these eggs
tumbled and crashed into one another. Sometimes the impact
caused hairline cracks. The contents were under festering
pressure; geysers of offal stew sprayed out.
Things clawed their way out, peeling away at the shells with
spine-tipped boneless fingers, but it was the faces of these
nightmare creatures that crippled me. Although their bodies
were covered in thick armor, spiked nodules of chitin with
tendrils of coarse hair, they wore the faces of angelic infants:
beautiful locks of golden hair and plump, rosy cheeks. These
living nightmares were not meant to thrive outside the egg.
Almost immediately, they curled up on their backs and gasped
for air.
I beat frantically at any creature that ventured too close,
crushing through their thick hides with my feet and hands, but
there was no end. The eggs continued to tumble and burst,
being pitched forth from somewhere high above. I looked up as
if to ask God why he had subjected me to this, only to see the
cause rather then the reason.
On the very top of the mountain of eggs was the mother of
them all, the ultimate source of the brain-shattering screams.
Her arms were snaked around a thick steel support beam
above. She thrashed her head back and forth and pumped her
pelvis forward. The whiplash sent a monsoon of beaded sweat
off the ends of her drenched hair. Her naked breasts, engorged
with milk, heaved in and out with her sporadic panting.
Giving birth. There was no way that such a small frame
could give birth to these monstrosities, but then her abdomen
suddenly began to swell and prove sanity a lie; our skulls grin
because they get the joke.
I wept and pawed at my eyes as her womanhood stretched
like taffy to accommodate the enormous girth. When the
abhorrent fetus crowned, bleached white against black pubic
hair, her beautiful face screwed up in agony and she belted out
a crescendo of howling agony. Once gravity took over the egg
shot out with bullet force, wobbled down the embryonic
mountain and spun lazily at my feet. It was followed by an
ocean of afterbirth that flooded down like a champagne
pyramid of hot, spent meat.
Then the whole cycle started again, the swollen uterus,
agonizing scream, cannonball birth. Over and over again until
I reached critical mass of sensory consumption. Any more, and
I’d crumble apart just as easily as the hundreds of shattered
eggshell underneath my feet. I had to put a stop to it all, more
for me than her…

The hangar. The eggs. The screaming woman. A sequence

of events that I knew so well that by now, it shouldn’t have
been a horror anymore. Yet every night I still woke up howling.
Why try to reason with the illogical logic of dreams? My
subconscious found a sudden urge to smash and dig through the
contents of every one of her children. Perhaps to look for
something hidden within that could have helped us both out. I
remember yelling to her to hold on as I fished, elbow deep,
through a sea of postnatal ooze, but as it always seems to go in
dreamland, I woke up before I could unearth the buried treasure.
That night I must have thrashed something fierce in my
sleep, because my elbow switched on the TV and I woke up
with a scream in my mouth to an overweight, out-of-work
celebrity preaching to me about how the career opportunity of a
lifetime was just a phone call away.
ARE YOU GOOD AT READING PEOPLE? the faintly
familiar actress with three chins bleated. KNOW WHETHER
THEY’RE TELLING THE TRUTH JUST BY A
SUGGESTIVE BROWLINE. ABLE TO BLEND INTO A
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CROWD (only in this town, baby) AND NOT DRAW
ATTENTION TO YOURSELF. HAVE YOU ALWAYS
WANTED TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS WHILE HELPING
MANKIND? THEN I’VE GOT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR
YOU. JUST DIAL THE TOLL-FREE NUMBER AND ONE
OF OUR OPERATORS WILL BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO
HELP JUMPSTART THE CAREER OF YOUR DREAMS.
Without even being aware of it, I’d picked up the phone and
pecked in the toll free number that flashed across the screen. An
overly, out of the ordinary, amiable gentleman took my
(Dahlia’s) credit card number.
His breath hitched when he got the address–and I
remembered that fucking line from Dante, must have plucked it
psychic from the guy’s front lobe, “Abandon all hope ye who
enter here”—but then he recovered enough to tell me to have a
wonderful day.
I blew a raspberry and passed out.
Five to seven business days later, my destiny arrived in a
buff-colored jiffy bag delivered by the tank division of the
postal service, the only government agency who would dare
brave the city.
Trust me, little brother, those post guys are serious hombres.
The package contained one tin-plated Private Investigator’s
badge to be slid inside a wallet and flipped out whenever
anyone asked who I was, and a copy of The Ig’nant Ass
Bitches’ Guide To Sleuthing.
When Dahlia found out where I got the money from, I fully
expected an ass kicking. Instead she listened to my carefully
rehearsed spiel and said she was glad I had some initiative. But
was I serious about this?
I told her what the TV said. Made big puppy eyes at her.
She broke.
I’m still not certain where she got the rain coat from; she
made me put it on and check myself in the mirror.
I flipped open my wallet and presented my reflection with
the stern new look I had in my head.
 I felt ... I felt like I had when the show was running. The
center of the world.
It felt good, little brother. Very, very good.
“They call me Eddie Gnash,” I growled, “Private
Investigator, absinthe connoisseur, sex machine. Remember the
name, you’ll be screaming it later.”
Woody rolled his eyes and Dahlia giggled.
“Baby, you look like the real deal,” she had said, and placed
a silk fedora on my head. “I want you to go out there and save
this city from itself.”
I grabbed the delicate hand on my ear and jerked it to my
mouth. I bit down with a canine on the tip of her manicured
finger. She let out a hot, lustful hiss. I spun around on my heels
and planted a big one on her pouty lips. After a long and proper
kiss, I let go and walked over to the living room window. The
city was rotting before me. I could feel it through the glass
pane.
“There’s no saving this city. It’s terminal and somebody
needs to pull the plug.” I knew it was corny, and Woody shook
his head in disgust, but something about holding that mail-order
badge had changed me. “But maybe I can win one for us
freaks.”
I marched back over to Dahlia and we kissed again, patting
each other down real rough-like. Finally, Woody let out a growl
when my wandering hands came too close to his side of the
playing field.
I stepped back and fired a I’m not done with you yet look her
way. But there’d be time for fornication later.
The future was bright. I was ready to take on the uglies, one
case at a time. The only problem was finding someone
crazy/desperate enough to hire me.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHORS

NATHANIEL LAMBERT
lives in tropical North Dakota with his wife, two kids,
two dogs and two fish. Yes, he is building an ark in his
backyard.

Contact him at: nathaniel@devilsfootlocker.com

KEVIN SWEENEY
Kevin Sweeney, noun. Lives in C/Ford, prefers
Bangkok. Has written books like The Pornographer-
General. He will write more ... unless you stop him
now.

Purchasable at GravesideBooks.com
 THE BEAST WITHIN, edited by Matt Hults: $16.95

Grab a silver bullet and prepare yourself for 20 tales of

animalistic terror crafted by authors from around the world.
Travel across the ages and go beyond the myth to discover the
horrific secrets of the werebeasts. From ancient cultures to the
high-tech future, nowhere is safe from the shape-shifting
bloodlust of The Beast Within.
Featuring stories by: Lee Battersby, Michael Stone, Rick Farnsworth,
John C. Caruso, Norma Lehr, William D. Carl, Raoul Wainscoting,
Joel A. Sutherland, Mark W. Coulter, Gary A. Braunbeck, Rick
Moore, Steven E. Wedel, John Palisano, Belea T. Keeney, David W.
Hill, Gina Ranalli, Trent Hergenrader, Vince Churchill, Michael J.
Hultquist, and Matt Hults.

Purchasable at GravesideBooks.com
 ALSO FROM
GRAVESIDE TALES

HAWG by Steven Shrewsbury: $14.95

Blue collar tough Andrew White knows that in the rural com-
munity of Miller’s Fork bad things are best left in the dark. He
soon learns that monsters wear many shapes. In a populace rife
with of vice and deception, something has broken loose …
something hidden and feral.

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 ALSO FROM
GRAVESIDE TALES

EVERDEAD by Rio Youers: $14.95

Toby Matthews has come to San Antonio to recover from a

broken heart, and it seems that beautiful Cass Tait may be the
cure. But as their relationship begins to bloom, they stumble
upon an unspeakable darkness. They stare evil in the eye, they
see its true heart, and know that only they can stop it. Before the
sun goes down, they must decide whether to run …or whether
to stand like heroes and fight.

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 ALSO FROM
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FRIED! FAST FOOD, SLOW DEATHS:

Edited by Colleen Morris and Joel A. Sutherland $14.95

23 stories of monsters, maniacs, murderers and milkshakes. De-

vour the tale of a band of hobos who crave human flesh. Chow
down on the myth of an abandoned restaurant that serves as a
gateway for lost and demented souls. Gorge yourself on the
story of the veggie burger that turns human beings into human
beans. Pig out on the account of the fast food joint that stands as
humanity’s last hope for survival in a zombie-infested world.

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 ALSO FROM
GRAVESIDE TALES

DOPPELGÄNGER by Byron Starr: $14.95

James Taylor has always had strange dreams.

Sometimes they are just that, dreams. But sometimes, the
dreams come true. Now a new terror has entered James’s sleep,
bringing with it visions of death and carnage. Visions of a beast
that stalks human prey and slaughters without remorse. Visions
that soon become a reality for the residents of Newton, Texas as
the creature’s victims are discovered. Like it or not, James
knows it is up to him to act. Alone or with the help of local law
enforcement, he plans to use his special talent to stop this
monstrous Doppelgänger before it strikes again.

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 ALSO FROM
GRAVESIDE TALES

AND COMING IN OCTOBER 2009:

HARVEST HILL

31 Tales of Halloween Horror edited by Michael

Hultquist and Douglas Hutcheson.

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