Infernal Ink

Magazine
Volume 6 Issue 1

This magazine contains adult content and themes

and is not meant for readers under the age of
eighteen.

For more information visit us at:

www.hydramstar.com/Infernal_Ink.html

or on Facebook at:
www.facebook.com/InfernalInkMagazine
Copyright © 2016 by Infernal Magazine

Edited by Hydra M. Star

Cover image courtesy of Pixabay user InvisibleGirl:

www.pixabay.com/en/model-female-girl-woman-young-
1875757

The views expressed by the columnists and contributors of

Infernal Ink Magazine do not necessary reflect the views of
the magazine’s owner or other contributors.

All rights reserved. This magazine, neither in whole nor in

part, may be reproduced in any manner or form without the
expressed written permission of the publisher.
 Table of Contents
“Notes from the Editor”
with Hydra M. Star....................................................................................6

“The Wretched”
a poem by Andy Van Scoyoc.....................................................................8

“Nympholepsy”
a story by Tarquin Ford............................................................................10

“Hellfire and Brimstone Reverend”

an interview with Rev. Thomas Thorn....................................................18

“Resurrected in Libertinous Lust”

a poem by Robert J. Leuthold..................................................................28

“Upskirts Downfall”
a story by Stephen Mcquiggan.................................................................31

“Able Lust”
a story by J.L. Cowan..............................................................................41

“Sleeping with the Dead”

a poem by Paul Jones...............................................................................50

“Mother”
a story by Joshua Laing............................................................................52

“My Lovely Dead”

a poem by Michael Collins......................................................................68

“The Black Halo”

a story by F. D. White..............................................................................70

“Safe Word”
a story by Rick Powell.............................................................................76
“The Dance Of Asmodeus”
a poem by Robert J. Leuthold..................................................................84

“Jenny”
a story by M. B. Vujačić..........................................................................86

“The Watcher”
a story by Douglas Ford.........................................................................102

“Angels Aliens and Archetypes”

a poem by Paul Jones.............................................................................117
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Notes from the Editor

with Hydra M. Star

2016 was quite a year.

We’ll never speak of it again.
Now, let’s get to the gore, smut, and horror you
came here for…

Hydra M. Star

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The Wretched
by Andy Van Scoyoc

Ram my cunt and make it bleed,

Fill me with your blackened seed,
You will be mine and I will be yours,
To live as one of your wretched whores,

Through the night you beat us all,

During the day, you fuck us raw,
While we wait, our hunger grows
We savage each other in bloody rows,

Carnage and sex, blood and feast,

Filling the belly of the hungry beast,
Whippings and flayings, skin stripped bare,
Tearing and ripping at each other’s hair,

Brutality, bruises, we’re scratched and we’re sore,

Carnage until we can take no more,
Pools of blood, rotted and starved,
Hearts and souls thick with scars…

About Andy:

Andy Van Scoyoc…Voice Over actor, film maker,

film fest director, Hostess of the hit YouTube show, From
Zen to Zombies and Dark Mistress behind Border Patrol, the
sensational short Horror film so realistic, the Canadian
authorities were sent to the film maker’s home.
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Visit her at: www.thebohemiancelt.blogspot.com

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Nympholepsy
by Tarquin Ford

I pounded my fist on the armrest of the bench where

I sat in the park across from the public library. Someone had
defaced the only copy of my favorite romance novel with an
obscene quotation from some poet named Alhazred. I
complained to the squinting librarian when I noticed it, but
she tut-tutted me and said, “We expect a certain amount of
vandalism, Mr. Dilworth. I’m sure you did some crazy things
in your time.” “In my time, indeed,” I said. “First I’m a
victim of vandalism and now of ageism.” I left without even
saying a farewell.
The park where I sat wishing ill fortune on the
despoilers of books held a few benches, some playground
equipment, and an ornamental maze, little more than a
pattern of gravel paths in the sod. When it was dark enough
for the lights to go on, parents and nannies had taken all the
children home, and the forlorn homeless slept on the
benches. I saw only one other person awake in the park, a
shabby fellow gesturing and muttering to himself. I rose to
go, glanced warily about the darkened park, and saw a
nymph dancing nude on the maze in the moonlight.
How could I tell the dancer was a nymph? I could
tell the dancer was a nymph because her alabaster skin
sparkled, because she was proportioned like the ancient
Greek courtesan Phryne, and because she had lovely small
breasts and a beautiful bottom.
I stared and enjoyed the way the nymph’s body
bounced and quivered as she leaped and spun through the
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maze, but then I caught myself. What would the hero of a
romance novel do? I took off my jacket, walked through the
maze, and offered it to her. She let me put it over her
shoulders. Then I did something ungentlemanly. I asked her
if she had a place to stay. With a very tuneful voice, she
replied that she did not. Thrilled, I took the sparkling woman
home with me.
What can an old man of seventy-six do with a
nymph? Plenty. A demigoddess can work miracles in the
bedroom.
After we sneaked past the sleeping security guard at
the senior living center, we entered my room. I offered her
pajamas, but she told me she first had to wash her feet after
her dance. She sat on my bathmat and meticulously cleaned
her feet with a washcloth. Then she lay on her back and
extended a leg toward me. “Is the bottom of my foot clean?”
she asked.
Her heel was beautifully rounded, and each toe was a
pink pearl. “Yes,” I said, “your foot is clean.” These were
perhaps the most foolish and dangerous words I have ever
said, for now her seduction of me began.
I had never been aroused by the sight of a woman’s
foot before. In fact, I had never been so aroused before. She
put her foot on my thigh and began to rub my leg up and
down. My member stiffened harder than it had when I was
twenty. I was not going to need Viagra that night.
She rose and embraced me, pressing her globe-like
breasts against me. She held my hand and led me to my own
bed. She undressed me with her teeth, giving me kisses and
teasing sharp nips.
She bent over the bed and invited me to mount her
like a stallion. I plunged into her nether lips, and she wiggled
her behind. I pulled her hair, I gasped, I came.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You climaxed a little
early, but I know some ways to make a man hard again.” She
began to pinch my body with her fingers and tease me with
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her teeth again. Then she began to rub me with her foot.
There was a method, a pattern to her teasing. She stimulated
erogenous zones I didn’t even know I had. As she rubbed my
manhood, she began to sing in a hoarse voice,
“Y’Ai’Ng’Ngah, Shub-Niggurath, the black goat of the
woods with a thousand young.” My member stiffened again,
and we continued coupling the rest of the night.
The next day, extremely tired, I called down to the
main desk of the senior living center and asked not to be
disturbed. I was very tired from my night’s exertions, but my
nymph, whatever her name was, hardly let me sleep. “It’s all
right,” she said, “I’ll pleasure myself while you rest.” I
nodded off briefly, but she began to scream and call out
incoherently as her fingers stroked her body’s intimate
spaces. “Nyarlathotep,” she cried. She screamed,
“Tsathoggua.” I heard banging on my doors and windows.
“Stop making all that racket,” said Mrs. Andrews, the harpy
in the room next door. I had to keep my nymph from calling
out so lustily, so I put my member in her mouth.
By that evening I feared my insatiable nymph would
destroy me. I was very hungry, so I begged to go downstairs
to the dining room. I didn’t want to be caught with a naked
young woman in my room. To the best of my knowledge, it
had never happened before in this senior center, and I was
sure that there were rules against it. I begged her to put on a
pair of my pajamas, but she refused. I offered to get her food,
but she said she’d already eaten. I dressed hastily and left.
Outside my door I found a very curious thing
hanging on my doorknob. It was a ragged old sock stuffed
with pieces of fur and feathers. Someone had tied it with
string in an intricate pattern of knots. I knew little of magic
at the time, so I disposed of this object in the dining room
trash.
After I ate, I discovered the purpose of the sock
charm. In the restroom I saw that my member had a pattern
of bruising on it that matched the pattern of knots on the
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sock.
When I walked by the security officer’s desk, he told
me that there had been reports that I had an animal in my
room. Residents had complained they heard strange barnyard
noises in the hall.
I walked to my room asking myself what the hero of
a romance novel would do in these circumstances. I noticed a
musky odor in the hall outside my apartment. When I
unlocked the door, I found my nymph was lying on my bed
masturbating and bleating.
“Why are you making that noise?” I demanded.
“Because I want you,” she said. She rose and walked
toward me with her arms out as if to embrace me, but she
grabbed my crotch instead. Her touch was shocking, electric,
and cruel. I lost my will and gained an erection. She began to
use me. Her breasts against my chest and her thighs against
my own stimulated me, but I was in pain. The darkest horror
of that moment was that I feared it would be my last and that
part of me, a secret self-destructive part of me, wished that I
would die at once in her embrace. I cried for mercy, and I
called out to my neighbors, and then I climaxed—but I came
dry.
My nymph lifted me with the strength of a giant and
threw me down on the floor. She put her foot, her dainty,
erogenous, alabaster foot, on my chest and shouted. “You
didn’t spurt into me, you wretch. I usually trample to death
men who have dry orgasms. I must be nourished, and you
must feed me.”
“My nymph,” I implored, “have mercy.”
“Nymph? You foolish, addle-pated, incompetent,
weak old man. I’m not a nymph, I’m a succubus.”
“How? Why me?” I asked. She pressed her foot
harder on my chest and said, “Someone conjured me out of
darkness, out of dalliance at the court of Shub-Niggurath.”
“But I didn’t conjure you,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. You had more lust than the
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sorcerer, and I choose my own partners.”
I finally understood. The shabby fellow in the park
was a sorcerer, and he had cursed me. The muttering and
gesticulating man had summoned this creature from some
distant realm of evil spirits. When he did not get her, he put
the sock, a fetish, outside my door to prevent me from
feeding her and to cause her to destroy me.
“The sorcerer hexed my penis,” I explained. I told
her about the knotted sock and the strange pattern of bruises
on my member.
“Then I have no reason to maintain this form,” she
said. I recoiled in horror at the beast that now pinned me to
the ground. It was a black she-goat with a woman’s face and
a mass of tentacles growing from her sides and back. Her
udder was distended as were her private parts. On my chest,
where I had thought a dainty alabaster foot had rested, I saw
a black-furred hock with a cloven hoof.
“Is my foot clean?” She mocked me. “Did you think
I could dance on gravel with a tender, erogenous foot?”
I quivered and cried.
“Lucky for you there’s only one thing I like more
than sex,” she whispered. “Revenge.”
My heart leaped up. Revenge was something with
which the hero of a romance novel might help a lady. “I’ll do
whatever you ask,” I said.
“Please escort me to the maze where we met.
Quickly, now, it’s summoning time.”
“Couldn’t you go back into human form?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That only fools the foolish.”
If anyone had been watching, they would have seen
me walking my strange pet goat past the astonished security
guard and out the door of the senior center into the night.
The goat or woman, whatever she was, bounded ahead like
an eager hound. The tentacles on her back waved as she ran,
and her woman’s face glinted in the moonlight.
When we neared the park by the library, the shabby
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little man was cavorting in the maze. He gesticulated and
sang, making occult signs with his hands and sounds that I
did not think a human throat could make. I thought I heard a
harsh answering music from the sky. My companion bleated
and picked up her pace.
At the edge of the park the goat-succubus started to
run. Her hooves were almost soundless. The man in the maze
began to shout, “Iä Shub-Niggurath, the black goat of the
woods with a thousand young.”
I heard my companion mutter, “I’ll teach you to take
that name in vain,” and she increased her speed. When she
neared the shabby man, she lowered her head and butted him
off his feet. He jumped up, and she hit him again. This time
she trampled him and whipped the flesh from his bones with
her tentacles. When she ate his ear, I turned and ran.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw her rearing and
stamping on him with bloody hooves, her tentacles
undulating, her laughter ringing in the air, and the distended
genitals on her goatish posterior shaking.

***

The next day I went to the library and inquired at the

reference desk about the maze in the park. The librarian, for
once, was civil to me. “Poor Mr. Whitley, the man who died
last night in our parking lot, designed the maze,” she said.
“He was a nice man, but we suspected he sometimes wrote
in the books. Let me show you a volume on mazes and
labyrinths he often consulted.”
In the book I found a chapter on Troy-towns or turf
mazes. Illustrating that chapter was a line drawing of an
ancient vase, Etruscan in origin, now in the British museum.
The vase depicts a turf maze identical to the maze in the
park. On the vase a goat and copulating couples surround the
maze, and a man on horseback flees the scene.

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About Tarquin:

Tarquin Ford is the pen name of an Atlanta-based

writer of strange tales. He learned while working in the
pennies-for-blogposts game that his real name is so common
that it makes him nearly anonymous. His work has appeared
or is forthcoming in thousandonestories.com, Yellow Mama,
and J.J. Outré Review. After a bout with colon cancer, he
decided to take writing uncanny stories more seriously. He is
proud to say that he plans to stick to writing stories and
avoid working on a novel or screenplay. His hobby, the
result and last remnant of earlier miseducation, is Latin
epigraphy. He has a wife, children, and cats. He tweets
frequently @marqjonz.

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Hellfire and Brimstone

Reverend
an interview with Rev. Thomas Thorn

We’re not fucking around this month. We are

bringing to you an interview with a real life rock star, but at
the same time one of the most down to earth people it is my
pleasure to know and call a friend. Rather you know him
from his time in My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult or The
Electric Hellfire Club there is no denying Rev. Thomas
Thorn has made a mark on industrial music.

Infernal Ink Magazine: First let us welcome you to the

magazine. We had been wanting to get you in for an
interview for sometime. With the Best of Electric Hellfire
Club album having recently been released and the one night
only 25th anniversary show having just happened this
seemed like the right time. So, welcome Rev. Thorn!

Rev. Thomas Thorn: Thank you! It’s certainly an honor

and a privilege to be included in this issue of Infernal Ink.

IIM: What inspired you after the Electric Hellfire Club

being inactive for so long to bring the band back together for
one night?

RTT: The idea has been kicked around and thrust in my

direction for years now. I think it’s important to place it in

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the context that when I walked away from everything in
2005, nobody–myself included–expected it to be for more
than a year, much less forever. After five or six years I was
firmly in the “Nope, Never” camp…but you know what Sean
Connery says: Never Say Never Again. I started entertaining
the possibility a couple years ago, but on two conditions: that
it wouldn’t cost me any money and it wouldn’t take any time
away from my family. Of course when it finally came to
fruition, it did both.

I was finally in a place where I felt I could wear Thomas

Thorn’s boots again without being absorbed, possessed or
eclipsed by that persona…and then the “Psychedelic
Blasphemy” theme for the second Devils Reign was
announced. The Electric Hellfire Club built our career on
transposing psychedelic elements onto the traditional “black
and red and scary and evil” template of Satanic rock bands
and I was kind of like “I happen to have a bit of experience
in this area!” When I spoke with the Maestro (CoS High
Priest Peter Gilmore) about it he said “Well, we were hoping
that you might want to do something with EHC for it.” I
didn’t need much more encouragement to make it happen
than a call to arms from the Black Pope himself.

IIM: So, does all of this mark the end of your musical
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career? Do you have any plans at all for any other musical
projects?

RTT: I am pretty adamant about this being the last of the

EHC shows, but I wouldn’t say it’s the “end of my musical
career”. That happened over a decade ago. Haha! But
seriously, I will not rule out the possibility of another EHC
record. I have a number of songs written for the album that
was supposed to be called “Tech Noir” and I may well
decide to record and release those at some point in the future.
I will say that it will be realized in a completely different
way than any of the previous records have been done in the
past–with the “Club” being an actual rotating collective of
contributors rather than a band with a fixed line-up.

I hadn’t touched a keyboard in over a decade as we moved

closer to this show, and I actually did my first programming
in ages re-creating the Joy Division song “Walked In Line”
for Blood Axis to use on their recent European tour. Michael
Moynihan is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I had
done the music for the Blood Axis version of that song back
in 1995. I used a synthesizer that Richard Frost gave me…
and I fell in love with electronic sound all over again. I’m
getting ready to move into the Everglades region of Florida
and I envision myself writing music inspired by that
landscape once the dust settles. I also really want to do a
collaboration with Richard…he does some amazing music
and I think that together we would create something truly
unique. I’ve half-jokingly given it the working title of “Frost
and Thorn: A Cold Day in Hell”.

IIM: Speaking of friends. You’ve had a pretty wild life, I

have gathered from other interviews and conversation with
you. You’ve seen a lot of good friends in the music industry
pass away far younger than they should have. What do you
think it is about you that’s made you a survivor? Is it just
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dumb luck or did you purposefully avoid some of the pitfalls
that ended short so many others’ careers and lives?

RTT: I think it’s a combination. By 2001 I was–pardon my

French–a fucking mess. I was a raging alcoholic, and while
that certainly made for great theater and some amusing
stories, my life was unraveling at breakneck speed. I started
getting arrested with growing frequency…crashing cars, etc.
I’ve never told this story, but in early 2003 I walked out of a
bar in Wisconsin for some air, sat down in a doorway and
woke up to a cop kicking my feet. “Thomas. Thomas! Wake
up. Can you walk? If you can walk, I won’t arrest you.” You
know, like the WHO song? “I woke up in a Soho doorway
where a policeman knew my name. He said ‘You can go
sleep at home tonight if you can get up and walk away’” It
was an ugly time. I developed a cocaine addiction (I’d been
an occasional/recreational user previously) while I was in
court ordered counseling for alcohol abuse. Like I said: a
mess.

I went into a treatment facility with the sole intention of

looking better to a judge for an upcoming court appearance.
The assistant district attorney hated me. He said “This guy is
a menace…and he’s going to kill somebody. He needs to be
locked up.” And he was right. I was about 30 days into
treatment when I started to realize that this wasn’t just about
cleaning up and going back to “drinking like a gentleman”
(which I would/will never be able to do)–but that I would
never be able to drink again. That I would die if I did. There
had to be a fundamental shift in my outlook…wherein
previously I had zero concern about dying and never
expected to live past 40. Not only my whole way of life, but
who I was and the way I saw myself had to change.

The weird thing, and I guess it goes to my egocentricity, is

that once I got sober: stopped drinking, stopped doing drugs,
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etc. I sort of assumed everybody else did too. Like when I
lose interest in a band or a TV show and people are talking
about it I’m like “You still listen to/watch that?!?” (insert
incredulous tone). Someone would die…Peter Steele, or
more recently Dave Brockie come to mind…and on top of
the grief and sense of loss was this feeling of being
completely baffled that they hadn’t pulled out of it too. I
mean, those guys never shambled around like the total
embarrassment I allowed myself to become…and I just
assumed they had stopped long before I did…or at least at
some point.

So no…I didn’t avoid the pitfalls. I became intimately

acquainted with the sharpened spikes at the bottom of those
pits. Pain is a great motivating force though. The toughest
part was to realize and accept that pain and fear had become
such constant companions that I had failed to notice they
were driving not only my music, but my life. I was
embarrassed about it and spent years dismantling the false
image of myself I’d created. I’d been selling it for so long I
believed it myself…and when I realized it was built on lies,
the whole thing came crashing down. It’s devastating to start
from scratch at 40 years old…but today I look back and am
incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to do it.

IIM: Music aside, you’re a very creative and busy guy. You
had some art in the art show/book your reunion show was
put on in connection with, correct? Tell us a little bit about
your art. How long have you been sculpting and painting and
what sort of mediums do you work in?

RTT: There’s an ornament that hangs on my family’s Xmas

tree–which is comprised completely of decorations
handmade by my each of us over the years–that is probably
one of my first paintings. I was two years old. It’s mostly
black as I used every color available and that was the end
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result. Not much has changed since then. Haha. My mom
still has a watercolor I did of a toucan at age four that
actually looks like a toucan. I’ve been drawing, painting,
building, making and creating things my whole life. That’s
fifty odd years at this point. I paint mainly with acrylics and
sculpt primarily with found objects…a lot of bones…but I’m
also pretty versatile. I went through a phase about a year ago
where I was sewing a lot.

IIM: Was this the first art show you’ve been part of?

RTT: No…but probably the first outside of an academic

situation and surrounded by so many heavy hitters in the
outré art world. I mean, I was also in the original Devils
Reign show last year…so I’m kind of lumping those two
together here.
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IIM: How can people find and see more of your artwork?

RTT: I post some of it on Facebook. In theory I have a page

dedicated to it–Stygian Floridian–but it’s not exactly a
comprehensive archive or “portfolio” by any means. I will
probably be stepping away from it for a bit while I settle in
to my new digs and start the next chapter of this peculiar
journey that is my life…but I think there’s enough on there
to get an idea of what I do.

IIM: In addition to art, you seem to have a real interest in

history, culture, a politics. Those who follow you on
Facebook through your Reverend Thomas Thorn page have
probably noticed this. Is there any one aspect of these topics
that really appeals to you?

RTT: I don’t really think of myself as having “an interest in

politics” though history is certainly a passion for me. It’s a
thread that’s woven throughout my music, art, writing, etc. I
LOVE history. The more you know about human history and
recognize the patterns, the more you understand the world
we currently live in and what motivates the people you
interact with. Not that it makes any of it less annoying,
terrifying or infuriating.

Politics and culture are both fueled and driven by history and
that is why I think I felt compelled to speak out so much
before and during the recent presidential election. Because
we’ve been down this road before.

While I recognize that Satanists can exist comfortably on

either end of the political spectrum as well as anywhere in
between, I take exception to those using it as a smokescreen
or excuse for their obviously fear-driven pseudo-
misanthropy. I don’t have a lot of use for armchair social
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Darwinists who pick fights from their computer console and
fight race wars at the local gun range. Using Satanism as a
beard for an alt-right agenda is not only pathetic, it does a
disservice to the organization.

So…I guess that’s the aspect that doesn’t necessarily

“appeal” to me so much as it speaks to me and compels me
to pontificate. One detractor recently accused me of being “a
poor debater”. Last I checked I was just speaking my mind…
I’ll leave the debates to the “masterdebaters”. I’m sure the
fact that I have a far greater audience for my opinions than
they could ever hope to–even after more than a decade MIA–
is infinitely frustrating for them.

At the end of the day, it’s all part of the larger package that is
the Rev. Thomas Thorn. The art, the music, the writing, the
ranting, etc. are all inspired by a personal ideology that is
neither easily explained nor understood and has a number of
inherent contradictions–but that rarely stops me from foisting
it on those around me.

IIM: How do you think becoming a father has changed your

outlook on the world? If it has. Are we dealing with a kinder
gentler Thomas Thorn now or has your focus just shifted?

RTT: I resigned from the “Nothing To Lose Club” well

before I became a father, but bringing a child into this world
and taking responsibility for protecting and educating him
has certainly changed me. I don’t want to see my son inherit
a world that is basically a poisoned prison camp. I see a lot
of people using the “Satanism is about self-interest so why
should I give a shit about stuff that doesn’t affect me
directly” argument–as I have been guilty of in the past–and
know that they are missing the big picture. At the peak of my
career in EHC, I was the walking epitome of “Some men just
want to watch the world burn”…but I know now that it was
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the result of a truly damaged psyche and a distorted outlook
on life. I feel sorry for people like that now…but it doesn’t
mean that I won’t crush them if they get in my way or
destroy them if they pose a threat to me or my family.

IIM: Speaking of your family and beautiful son, I’ve seen a

lot of photos of you all enjoying the great outdoors. Living in
Florida I know you have access to a lot of wetlands and
beaches and such. What is your favorite or ideal
surroundings? What sort of landscape is Thomas Thorn most
at home in?

RTT: We love the swamp. We also love the ocean. Both are
magical and inspiring and have restorative, healing
properties that keep me healthy and sane. I spent eleven
years living on an island and it suited me just fine. While
I’ve resigned myself to living on the mainland again, I’m
excited about this next adventure in the wilds of deepest,
darkest Florida.

IIM: Assuming our readers don’t want to take to the swamps

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of Florida, where can you be found? Share all your links.

RTT: I guess Facebook is as good a place as any. I have my

Reverend Thomas Thorn page, the Stygian Floridian page, a
dark folk art/photography page called Bone Island Mojo that
I haven’t done much with in a while…and a number of other
history pages (Victorian Florida, Pirate Hall of Fame, etc.)
that I dabble with. Anyone who feels compelled to contact
me can certainly do so by messaging any of those pages, or
send me an email at StygianFloridian@aol.com.

IIM: This has really been a pleasure and we wish you all the
best on the next chapter in your life.

RTT: The pleasure has been all mine. Thank you for your
interest in me and my work. These days I believe that any
day on this side of the grass is a good one and I look forward
to the future rather than always dreading what it might hold.
I’m very excited about this next chapter and am sure I will
have lots to report somewhere down the road.

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Resurrected in
Libertinous Lust
by Robert J. Leuthold

Again she comes to me, eyes burning with the shame of her
desire mixed with the want of supplication
Come then, you fallen, broken thing, and kneel before me
Know my pleasures, my treasures, my libertine virtues
All is real, nothing is forbidden
Glut yourself then, as vices become virtue, and every hole is
tried
While easily my craft of flesh is plied
And she sings her siren song as I ravage her from the
shadows, impaling her deeper with every lustful thrust.
Her nails leave scarlet trails down my back and she intones a
shuddering “please” as I go deeper within
This, broken, shamed thing now transformed into an
instrument of sin
When suddenly as one we explode in a rush and she greedily
accepts my seed
She rises, eyes aglow, reborn
Baptized in De Sade’s sacraments
Resurrected in Libertinous Lust

About Robert:

Robert J. Leuthold was born November 3, 1977 and

has been a Hell raiser (sans the chains and leather…at least

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for now) ever since.
After being dragged into “the writing thing”
practically kicking and screaming by Hydra M. Star, he
became a regular contributor to Infernal Ink Magazine, with
sporadic appearances elsewhere. He currently resides in
Thibodaux, Louisiana, and can be found on Facebook.

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Upskirts Downfall
by Stephen Mcquiggan

By the time Tom made it back to the safety of his car

he was out of breath and sweating. Sitting behind the wheel,
knowing he should really wait until he reached the privacy of
his flat, he took out his phone and connected it to the little
camera on his shoe. It was risky–he’d had one close call
already this month when that security guard had trailed him
out of the cinema–but he simply couldn’t wait. The girl he
had just followed up the Mall escalator had been such a
knockout, he simply had to see the goods; a quick preview,
nothing more, before he drove home.
Tom felt himself stiffen with anticipation as his
fingers slid over the touchscreen, opening news folders and
music files in his haste. He took a deep breath to steady
himself, then found the video upload he was after. Since
hitting on the idea of concealing a tiny camera on his loafers
(virtually invisible to the naked eye) his voyeuristic
tendencies had run free with an abandon that caused him to
view himself as the luckiest man alive.
Now, thanks to his Shoe-cam, he could go about his
shopping without suspicion–no more staring, ogling, or
loitering–he merely asked a random honey for directions as
he positioned a foot between her legs. Or he could follow
them up an escalator, arousing no concern, garnering no
second look.
It was foolproof in all environments but the Mall was
best, especially when the schools let out–all those nubile
young hotties in their tight little skirts–then straight home to
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view at leisure their pristine white panties nestled between
their perfect orbed buttocks; and on occasion (but what an
occasion!) a lip poking out the side of the cotton in a Yokel
grin.
But the girl on the escalator, the one that had caused
him to rush out to the car to check the footage straightaway,
hadn’t been wearing ass huggers–she had been decked out in
a loose flowing gypsy skirt instead–and girls like that usually
wore (he took a deep rattling breath) no panties at all. His
hand slid across the screen leaving a sweaty smear; any
moment now he’d find out if he had hit the motherlode.
He had placed one loafer underneath those breezy
folds as he ascended behind her, all the while gazing at the
Sports section of the local rag; how innocent, how mundane,
how cunning he was. Clicking his heel three times on the
metal stairway, he had activated the little penlight to
illuminate the fleshy treasure beneath that tasselled curtain.
She was so beautiful, so shapely. After a brief stroll
around the top tier–usually a happy hunting ground, for there
was an ice cream parlour on the second floor–he could wait
no longer and hurried pell-mell downstairs, too horny to care
if he was drawing attention to himself or to even bother with
the clutch of giggling girls pawing at the bangles on the stall
by the Chicken Bar.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly as the video
came on and his heart began a lusty pounding; at first, he
was at a complete loss as to what it was he was actually
looking at.
It must be a pair of comedy pants, thought Tom; a
pair with a dirty great eyeball printed on them. She hadn’t
looked the type, had looked far too classy to wear something
so tacky. At least she hadn’t been wearing big old granny
pants like that frigid bitch at the ATM the other day, or
cycling shorts like the little blonde in the supermarket. You
just could never tell when a girl was on the blob, if only they
were forced to wear a t-shirt that said they were on their
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period then–
The eye blinked.
Tom tapped the screen, pausing it instinctively. He
must have imagined it. His fingers made a scissor movement,
enlarging the image. He let out a small moan. She wasn’t
wearing comedy pants; she’d went commando after all. The
eye, bulbous and bloodshot, peered out from her unruly
bush, staring as if it had been expecting him. This time it did
not blink, this time he was certain it was more of a wink.
He stared at the screen in horrified fascination,
oblivious to the families trundling by with their overloaded
trolleys and the first spits of rain splatting on his windshield;
the video played on and the eye kept right on staring. Then
the girl’s thighs parted slowly and the eye bulged, and a thin
black tongue flicked out between them, shooting toward the
lens with a rapidity that caused Tom to jump back in his seat
and drop his phone into the foot well.
When he plucked up the nerve to retrieve it the
screen had returned to the menu. He toyed with the idea of
replaying the video–he must have been hallucinating–but his
heart was hammering so hard he thought it best to wait until
he got home and had a cup of tea; he needed to calm down,
to regain his equilibrium. Besides, he didn’t want to arouse
suspicion loitering around the carpark–there were a lot of
guys stranded in their vehicles waiting for their gossipy
partners, but with CCTV cameras everywhere you couldn’t
be too careful; invasion of privacy was what it was–there
ought to be a law!
By the time he pulled up in his driveway he couldn’t
resist taking another look. The video was gone; had it deleted
itself somehow when he dropped it or, more likely, had he
imagined the whole thing?
He hadn’t slept well the night before, sitting up late
watching his Swimming Pool files (pure gold) on his laptop;
it was obvious he needed some rest. Maybe I’ll wear boxing
gloves to bed, he laughed to himself, and give the little man
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a rest too.
It wasn’t that he viewed his masturbation as chronic;
he saw it more as a respite from stress and, if his stress levels
were soaring of late, well, that was modern life for you. But
every time he thought about quitting an advert would come
on the telly with a girl in a bikini or a snug pair of hotpants.
He decided to eat a protein heavy lunch then hit the
sack early. The forecast for tomorrow was sunshine. He
would go to the Zoo (always a happy hunting ground) where
there would be school trips and Yummy Mummies galore; he
would need all the stamina he could get, but it would be well
worth it. A trip to the Zoo might result in a file to rival those
of his precious swimming pool.
He climbed into bed and slept the sleep of the Just.
As predicted, the next day the sun shone like it was trying to
win a bet with Hell. He reached the Zoo early and mingled
amid the chatter and yell of the animals; animals of the
human variety, content to leer and point and litter in the
presence of their betters.
He went to the penguins first–always a safe option
for they were impossibly cute, and cute things drew cute
things to them like pus to a wound. On arrival his hopes were
dashed as all the girls were wearing jeans (in this weather!);
an awful habit, it should be illegal, he fumed, women
dressing as men! He hung around until the penguins had
been fed without spotting a single hemline.
He cut his losses and went to the Monkey House
and, before the stench of banana excrement assailed him, he
spotted a woman by the railings wearing a long plaited skirt;
Tom grinned so wide he might have been mistaken for a
chimp himself.
He clicked his heel as he sidled up behind her,
turning on his loafer penlight as he slid his shoe between her
shapely ankles, as the monkeys screeched in approbation.
He leaned in as close as he dared and breathed in
deeply–normally these little honey-pots smelt of strawberries
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or exotic fruits, coordinating their bodywash with their
shampoo to create a sensory explosion; there were times he
could hardly stroll past the greengrocers without taking an
erection.
The woman leaned further over the railings, pushing
her little bubble rump into the air, spreading her legs farther
apart as if to make the video shoot easier for him. He took a
quick gulp of her as he gazed over her shoulder at the
cavorting chimps and nearly choked on the stench of singed
and burning flesh that rose from her in waves.
Although his coughing caused others to stare, she
didn’t turn around; she merely wiggled her ass a little as he
clicked off the penlight with a quick tap of his heel and
hurried across to the toilet block to get a drink of water for
his seared and arid throat.
The toilets were empty as he stumbled in, cursing his
stupidity for drawing attention to himself. Rule Number One
of the Voyeur Handbook was to remain anonymous at all
times–what was the point in dressing so blandly, staying so
quiet, if he was going to blow his cover by going into
paroxysms over the smell of some dry monkey shit or
whatever it was they were burning? He might as well don a
sandwich board with the word ‘Pervert’ spelt out in
twinkling fairy lights.
He splashed a little water over his face and sighed;
best not to be too downhearted–that honey by the chimps
looked a total slut, so he was bound to have some cracking
footage.
He hurried into one of the stalls and locked the door.
He whipped out his phone and plugged it into his loafer,
sitting down on the pan to wait while it loaded. I might just
crack one off right now, he pondered, if the video turned out
to be halfway decent. Then he could go back out and follow
her around for a bit, and she would never know he had just
masturbated over her. Christ, he felt ten feet tall already.
But his power faded as the video unfolded. The
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woman’s thighs were creamy silk, her buttocks all that he
could have asked for; the first few seconds afforded him the
familiar excitement that had drawn him to this vocation in
the first place. She was instantly catapulted into his
‘Duchess’ folder, the one reserved for Upskirt royalty–until
she birthed a hideous face that caused him to drop his phone
on the piss puddled floor.
It was an old and grey and elongated face–the face of
a puritanical crone with blind black eyes and the jagged teeth
of a fairytale witch. A snake tongue lashed out between its
blanched lips, and in that moment he smelt once more the
sulphuric stench that had sent him retching to the toilet block
in the first place.
The phone’s screen was spider-webbed. He wouldn’t
be able to get it repaired; what if they were to go through its
contents? He picked it up with a trembling hand and put it
into his pocket. The files on it were no real loss as all the
gems were stored safely on his computer; in fact, he was
beginning to think it would be no real loss if he never saw up
another skirt again in his life.
Was he going mad?
His teachers had always warned him that excessive
masturbation would lead to this, and even his doctor had
hinted as much; had he finally managed to stroke and tug all
sanity from his fevered mind?
That face suggested it was more than just a
possibility, but it also suggested something much darker too;
Father Blackett had constantly railed at him through the
confession box grill, warning of the spiritual dangers that
went hand in hand with what he called ‘the dread deed of
Onanism’.
“It’s a mortal sin and God will find you out,” the
priest was fond of saying: had God finally decided to punish
his peeping ways, sending demons to plague him–demons
lurking in the one place the lord knew he could not help but
look?
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He made his unsteady way to the exit, wondering if
it was too late to seek forgiveness, and all the while that
pallid, puckered face hovered before his eyes mocking his
inadequacy. When he pulled open the door he was greeted by
another face: no haggard hellbeast this, but the glowing
perfection of an angel. Despite himself, his eyes were drawn
down to her legs and the flowing skirt that encased them; this
vision of sleek curves and golden skin banished the pale
nightmare from his thoughts completely.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong toilets,” Tom said,
trying to push by and cop a feel, “The Ladies are over–”
The front of her skirt billowed, as if something under
there were trying to get out. Tom stared, his eyes slowly
rising to her face.
“Oh, I think I’m in exactly the right place,” she
grinned, and Tom realised now there was nothing more
wicked than a pretty girl’s smile. “You like to watch, don’t
you? Well, we’re going to put on a show you’ll never forget
and you’re guaranteed the best seat in the house.”
Tom felt something grab at his foot. He looked down
to see a bony arm protruding between her legs, its claws
buried deep in the cheap leather of his shoes. He let out a
scream as the talon sank through the upper and into the bone
beneath. Pushing the woman aside he fled, jettisoning his
loafers in his haste, leaving bloody weaving footprints in his
wake.
Hurtling down the path from the toilet block, he
turned the corner and ran into a coterie of Lovelies; their hair
all airbrush shimmer, their skirts flapping with demonic
appendages. He slid to a halt, the gravel embedding itself in
the soft flesh of his heels, but he felt no pain, only fear. He
leapt over a hedge, tearing his trousers and ripping his shirt,
landing in an unceremonious heap at the back of the Lion
Enclosure.
Picking himself up under the bored gaze of a great
cat with a mangy mane, he ran on down the alley by the
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fence until he came to a dead end at a large shed filled with
chopped up carcasses and the stench of freshly butchered
meat.
He could hide out here, it would be the last place
they would look, then when the Keepers came to feed the
lions he could tell them he had been mugged (he certainly
looked the part) and they could escort him safely back to his
car.
But what if they phoned the police instead, and what
if the police wanted to go to the scene of the ‘crime’ and
found his shoe, the one with the built in camera now
mangled and exposed? What if someone had already found it
and handed it in? He had no choice but to wait where he was.
Perhaps when it got dark and the Zoo was closed he could
make a run for it and–
One of the lions let out a stomach roiling roar that
made Tom flinch, and when he turned back cursing he found
the doorway filled with a pack of sweetly smiling women;
each one pretty as a picture, each one as frightening as a
cancer diagnosis.
“Stay back!” he warned them, shuffling back against
the fence but the women carried on toward him, stopping
only to sniff and lick at the dripping carcasses.
“You like meat, too,” cooed a Redhead; “you like to
look.”
The others tittered, a sound like jangling glass, as
their skirts billowed and the lions roared and Tom felt his
bowels turn to butter.
“What do you want?”
“We want to watch, it’s our turn now,” said the
Redhead, shaking out her shimmering mane; when the lions
roared once more Tom could not be entirely sure the sound
did not emanate from this magnificent beast instead.
“I…I…I meant no harm,” he stammered.
“No harm done,” said the Redhead as her skirt tore
open and a scaly arm shot out, its long black nails clicking
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maniacally together; behind the tattered skirt, buried in the
folds of flesh beneath, the glint of a demonic eye.
Tom began climbing the chain link: trapped between
two packs of predators, the only way was up. He teetered on
the brink, letting out a yell in the hope that some keepers
might come and rescue him but the roaring malice of the
lions drowned him out.
Below him, the Redhead lay down and spread her
thighs and the large claw between them snaked out and
seized his foot, pulling him back down to earth with a thump.
As he sprawled dazed on the cold concrete she straddled him
as the other women paced to and fro in time with the great
cats on the other side of the wire.
She kissed him, licked him; “Now you can watch
forever,” she said, as the arm coiled from her loins once
more and scooped out his eyes with a delicate plop. Tom felt
no pain, only a sick numb wonder that he could still see his
prone body, its empty sockets puddling with thick viscous
blood, see the other women fling themselves on his corpse
and tear it asunder with razor sharp talons that protruded
now from every orifice.
The Redhead’s scaly hand closed into a fist, covering
him in darkness as her arm receded back into the gaping hole
from which it sprang. When the fist unclenched again Tom
found himself in an undulating passage whose fleshy walls
pulsed and throbbed a diseased infernal scarlet.
His journey ended in a gaseous cavern, his eyes
teetering on her fingertips like offerings on an altar, above a
lake of bubbling bile filled with every grotesque parody of
the human form a twisted mind could conjure, each one
copulating with the other in a writhing chain of obscenity,
each one fouler than the last.
As each new tableau was revealed, as each fresh
aberration was paraded before him in all its rotting, loose
skinned glory Tom thought he must surely have reached the
nadir; but each abomination was merely an appetiser for the
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next, and the banquet stretched on for eternity.
If he had still possessed a mouth he would have
screamed out a prayer, promising anything to whatever god
deigned to hear him if only he could close his eyes.

About Stephen:

Stephen McQuiggan was the original author of the

bible; he vowed never to write again after the publishers
removed the dinosaurs and the spectacular alien abduction
ending from the final edit. His first novel, A Pig’s View Of
Heaven, is available now from Grinning Skull Press.

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Able Lust
by J.L. Cowan

The off ramp spills cars into the city, like blood from
a gaping wound. Javen parks, pays the meter and walks to
work, wishing her car was closer. Up ahead the new barker
lured people inside the novelty show for a dollar. The
pavement sucks away the dim light that tries to reach around
buildings in the late afternoon. Javen arrives, nods at the
barker and enters the seedy firetrap with roaches. Not the
ideal job, but it pays the bills.
Inside, three girls smile concern, from behind
bulletproof glass. A week ago, Javen had a bad experience
with a customer that left them all unsettled. Now, she startles
at the slightest change in environment. The only thing setting
her apart from the tweaks is, she wasn’t about to peek out her
window at night.
Customers were tourists, who’d act like they were at
a freak show. Young sailors, who’d fall in love and want to
save them. Local perverts or occasional couples looking for a
thrill, and junkies needing privacy to get high. Javen’s bad
experience came in late wearing a trench coat, common for
the chilly city. He never said a word nor made any gesture,
just walked toward her booth as if he’d been there before.
When she entered the booth, his shadow, illuminated
by a red light, loomed from his side of the glass. He removed
his coat and was naked from the waist up, tattooed and
extremely muscular. Javen turned up the dimmer switch on
the wall. The light reflected off the one-way glass and
mirrored a life-sized copy of herself, which was nice, one
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can only look at so many cocks in a day. The light did little
to hide his tattoo, it was like on Independence Day when she
as a kid, she’d write her name in the air with sparklers.
Vivid, glowing, it remained.
Javen picked up her phone in spite of the strange
illusion, but said nothing. She’d exposed her breasts without
a word, mindless with images of the tattoo. It made her hot,
showed her things and told her secrets. His voice came from
inside her head not the phone, when he asked, “Do you travel
much?”
Javen closed her eyes to gain composure before she
could answer, “We should travel together, to the booth down
the hall.” Her persuasion lacked her usual enthusiasm. He
told her he liked the way she talked to him, then asked if she
knew right from wrong. This was when she should have
walked. Instead, she opened her eyes and answered, “Yes.”
Then he used her name. “That’s good, Javen. Yes,
you will do, Javen.” And, “You can do what I want, Javen.”
Wet with perspiration, she wondered if someone had spiked
her soda. It was time to get him into the other booth for more
money, or end it. She closed her eyes, called him sugar and
told him he was right, she’d do anything he wanted if they
met at the other booth.
He didn’t hear her. “I want to show you my traveling
beauties, Javen.” His voice was breathless. She figured he
was about to squirt it on the glass, and leave for a buck. But
something forbidden held her. Intrigued by the hypnotic
tattoo she couldn’t move, and behind it, his eyes glowed.
A rush of cold air brought Javen back, and he was
gone. Lola, the barker slash observant bulldog in disguise,
had worked that night. He’d swept past her in an
undercurrent of menace and left a rank smell in his wake.
The rest of that evening, Javen filled her sketchpad with
intricate designs, while something nagged in her head, and
ripped at her sanity.

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Socorro, a blunt instrument; relentless when it came
to an animal or another male human. Adept, he went straight
through them, slaughter and leave what was left for the
authorities to find. This would keep him forever safe; they
would fear the victim’s assailant. Of this, he was certain.
With the female sort, he demanded obedience with his
presence alone. Socorro’s fix was his punishment; shame, his
motivator.
Imperative his flower remain alive, to relish in his
achievement. But his liaisons afforded him no such reward.
To handle them was enough to take their sanity. They’d
rather die than experience his peculiar touch. A tiresome
dilemma for Socorro. Seething with unfulfilled need. Intent
within his vessel from which its dynasty would manifest. He
is to curb his appetite, challenge his addiction, or turn on his
self; an unacceptable option.
The roadside rests didn’t work; too much availability
for contact. With Javen in confinement behind the glass, he
was able to remain objective, engage, entice her and not
break her. Socorro wanders in his filthy basement, calm
amidst the familiar smell of blood and decay. He walks on
the graves of his beauties, to retrieve four Polaroid’s nailed
to the wall. He wants Javen to notice the attention he’d
mastered with each of them. They were visions of beauty,
but broken. He was volatile, destructive and impatient with
them. They never knew the honorable position they held,
when he made them his own. If Javen saw them, she would
scold him, shame him. His disposition would get him busted.
Perhaps then, he’d be free.

Shore leave brought a string of tight-assed punks to

the place. In her booth, for what seemed like hours, Javen
waits in the dingy light for the next customer.
“I brought them, Javen.” Socorro’s voice spikes the
hair on the back of her neck.
Recalling their previous conversation, perched on the
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edge of the recliner prepared for a quick exit, she asks, “The
traveling girls, right?” If he’s not ready to spend money, she
wants him out.
Socorro only hears the cries of his beauties. “They
want you to see them, Javen.”
Curiosity piqued, “Show me.”
Two photos flatten up against the glass. His voice,
like a little boy, “You see, I love them.” Then an altogether
different voice whispers, “Disgraced them.”
Javen tries to act calm, moves close to see young
girls in underclothes of the usual variety, nothing sexy or
slinky. One wore old sneakers and a ripped sports bra. Not
something you’d wear for a photo shoot. A hard slap on the
glass brought two others into view. Same provocative pose
in unappealing attire, but there is an awkward bend in the
girl’s wrist and a funny tilt to her head. She is stunned,
unable to look away, because the girls in the pictures are
dead.
Socorro smacks the glass. The barker knocks on the
wall, “Hey, no disruptive behavior in the booth.” Socorro
crashes the door, pushes past the barker and light fills the
closet sized hell.
Hollow eyes with no tears left to cry, watch Javen
from behind her own closed lids. Alarmed because she didn’t
tell anyone; didn’t want to jeopardize the tattoo. Disturbed
because she was turned-on by a cold-blooded killer. No way
to describe, no one to confide in that she felt out of her mind.

Socorro showed up again and Lola recognized him.

She found her earpiece and engaged the recorder. Javen was
withdrawn and Lola thought it was about this guy. Maybe he
had her strung out on dope. Listening, his voice sounded
inhuman. Unimaginable ticks clawed up Lola’s spine, she
didn’t know how to proceed.
“Do you feel me inside you, Javen?” Socorro held
her. Completely at his mercy and aroused despite herself,
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Javen presses her fist into her hot pussy, unable to stop. The
doe eyes Socorro saw, told him all he needed to know. He
placed twenty dollars into the lockbox and said, “I’m
everything to you, Javen, you’re mine. Come, don’t deny
yourself what is yours to behold.”
He left for the other booth. Javen, like a puppet,
body on automatic, moves toward the back of the building,
and the other booth. The only difference in the booths was
clear glass for a better view, and an intercom system instead
of a phone; only that was her secret. She didn’t expect it to
be enough for him, and feared what he would do next.
Lola watched from the mirror as he paid to go into
the VIP booth. Seconds later, he slams his fist through the
wall and storms toward Lola. She goes for her nine
millimeter taped under the table, but he is already gone.
Javen arrives at the other booth to find the guest’s door open,
and no tattooed dark angel inside.

That night, locked inside her bedroom, Javen dreams

he stands at the foot of her bed. Dim light seeps through her
closed eyelids. The blankets move to the floor and expose
what was left of her somewhat tainted modesty. He moves
over her, powerful muscles encircle her, and he consumes
her.
In the darkness, Javen’s eyes open. Pussy wet and
swollen, it was only a dream. Aroused, hot for vulgarity and
violence, Javen listens to the house make noises and falls for
him again. He rapes her, repeatedly. She enjoys it, meets his
thrusts with her own, a wanton whore who relishes in his lust
and total power over her. His fingers press too hard and
cause her to wince. He bites her, makes her bleed. She tastes
her blood on his lips as his tongue gags her with its barbaric
exploration.
In the morning, she looks in the mirror. No visible
wounds or bruises, but she aches all over and her juices are
sticky between her legs. This rapist will kill her in her
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dreams, where no one can save her.

At work, Javen waits on the brink of a panic attack.

She deceived him with the other booth. She should have left
town but couldn’t think straight and the rent was due. Her
break arrives and she asks to go home. Seeing she is pale and
shaky, the barker walks her to her car. Javen drives around
the city for hours. The smell of fear escapes her pores and
marks her path. The alleys watch her. The panhandlers leer,
and whisper her whereabouts. Corridors full of shadows with
curious eyes.
She arrives home exhausted. Run down and musty
old houses hold secrets, no familiar faces. Footsteps follow
her as she checks window locks, the closet and under her
bed. He would come for her. The only way to stop him, is to
kill him. The thought came and she suppressed it for fear he
would know and punish her. She keeps no secrets from him.
He occupies every part of her. He’s devoured her soul.

Socorro is insatiable, his demon ravenous. His

nostrils fill with the smell of his flower. His lust, raw and
swollen seeks to penetrate her flesh. He’s on her roof. He no
longer wants to be shamed for how he’d broken the others.
They were not worthy. He needs Javen to satisfy the
incessant hunger and quiet the noise. To end the
preoccupation, she must perceive its intent; be alive when he
delivers himself.
Socorro’s leather-clad fist breaks through her
window. He climbs inside and towers over Javen, who is
tight against the wall. When he moves toward her, she loses
her legs. He lifts her limp body onto the bed. Javen can’t
catch her breath and is unable to scream. She’s cold, not a
hot bitch in heat like in her dream. He removes his trench
coat, Javen chokes on the smell of the decayed flowers
before her. She whimpers, and rage crawls beneath his skin.
He removes his boots and pants to reveal a labyrinthine
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artwork, unlike anything Javen has ever seen. It’s alive, she
felt its communion with her.
Socorro is on top of her, pinning her to the bed as his
flesh tears into her. His eyes close, head tilts back to reveal a
dirty neck, he groans with exaltation. Javen is frozen,
terrified by the absolute disgust of him. His attention snaps
to her, pleased to see her looking at him, “Javen, my flower,”
saliva drips from his foul smelling mouth onto her face, “I’ve
no heart to give you; I’ll be taking yours.” Soccoro laughs,
wipes his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, gratified.
He will fulfill his legacy, the reason for his life. He
rapes her, and she worships him because she lives.
Disgusted, Javen throws up. This excites him. He licks the
vomit and fucks her until she loses consciousness. When she
opens her eyes, his tattooed form isn’t there to demand
attention. She hears him in the kitchen.
Heart racing, blood streaked and naked, hair
encrusted with vomit and rancid sweat, she moves toward
the coolness of the broken window. Socorro will know this,
but still she moves until his leather glove closes on her hair
and cracks her neck. He leers, licks his lips and bites into the
fleshy part of her upper arm. Ruthless, he pushes her down
and mounts her.
Javen’s back bleeds from cuts caused by the broken
window. He turns her dying body over and smears himself
with the fresh blood from her ass and back. The tattoo
glimmers with life.
Hard against the floor, Javen looks for a weapon.
She reaches out in front and to her sides while he busies his
self. Face deep in her ass, he bites her, feeds on her. Hand
inside her pussy, he strokes her heart from within. Javen
belches but there is nothing inside to come up. Socorro
chuckles and thrust harder. He degrades her, forces her face
to the carpet and drags his hard cock between her legs. Then
both gloved hands hold her ass cheeks, Javen closes her
eyes. She knows he is about to enter her from behind, with
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what can’t be a human cock.
In and out of consciousness, near death, she feels
glass with her fingertips. She hopes for mercy, tries to pray,
and wraps her fingers around the shard. It is big. Socorro
feels her move and is enthralled. He rides her like an animal,
unaware of her thoughts in his frenzy. He is about to blow
his seed in her ass, when he thinks it unworthy, too valuable
to waste. He is animalistic with his flower, lost in the blood
and the feel of her ass against his thighs. Socorro stops and
pulls from her.
Javen tells herself not to pass out. The hum creeps in
and tries to fog her sanity. Did he know she covets the glass?
Did it try to warn him? Socorro rolls his flower over so that
she might honor him once again. Javen plunges the glass
shard through the tattoo, and into his heart. Blood oozes
around the glass. Socorro’s face transforms to show sheer
ecstasy and peace. He shots his load onto her stomach and
neck, and then falls on top of her. The shard enters her chest
cavity and she is stuck to him, too weak to get him off.
His warmth fads, the blood cools and chills her. She
lays beneath him and the artwork speaks to her, gives her
strength to survive. Javen’s eyes close, to a world of painless
silence as the city opens its own, to her atrocity.

Javen survives at an Institution, forever haunted by

the tattoo. It appears in front of her and astounds her senses.
Her eyes wide, dazzled, she salivates at the sight of it,
unaware of the world around her.
In this less than hospitable place, Javen gives birth to
a boy she would never hold. Neither the nuns, nor the doctor
would acknowledge the yellow glow that escaped her eyes,
when she birthed the boy. Her strength overwhelmed the
staff. Strapped down, she screams in a vile, unknown
language. As if to evoke harm on that which only she can
see.
The boy is put up for adoption. Javen is kept safe
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with restraints and drugs. Her wicked nature is for someone
unseen, but many take advantage. She endures countless
rapes, until she is too old to matter anymore. All the while,
her son grows into a massive and powerful man.

About J.L.:

J.L. Cowan is an adrenaline junky who loves reading

absurd, seriously messed up, deranged fiction. Writing for
more than 25 years, J.L. uses the craft to clear the clutter and
stay sane. She has written several stories, and three novels
that are making their rounds in search of a home.
J.L. strives to convey a multitude of expressions
vying for a channel, onto the landscape of your imagination.
Living in the Pacific Northwest, she enjoys trees, working
with plants, trees, eating sweets, trees, and exploring the
multiverse with fringe thinking minds, while waiting for that
perfect elevator interview.

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Sleeping with the Dead

by Paul Jones

Pale breasts,
that no longer rise and fall with the breath of life.
Fingers so cold and rigid, frozen in death’s eternal grip.
You kiss the gray lips of the reaper’s still born child.
The rancid stench of rot fills your burning nostrils,
but you fondle onward without guilt or hesitation.
Inside the cadaver, rough and dry
you wiggle and squirm without shame.
In a moment of ecstasy,
a tongue like leather slides across your skin.
Glazed frightful eyes stare up at you with rage.
You will die screaming,
in the arms of the dead.

About Paul:

Paul has been writing poetry since 1992 and his

work has appeared in a number of publications and
anthologies over the years. His prose are often dark and
haunting as well as thought provoking. Paul first became
interested in the macabre as a boy, when his grandfather
would spin frightening yarns at sunset about haunted
landscapes, creatures of the night and things undead. Those
long ago days were the acorn that shaped his life in later
years. Paul is now a professional author and Tarot card
reader who makes his living immersed in the realms of the
spiritual and supernatural. Paul was born in upstate, NY and
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now resides in the beautiful Ulster County area with his
family.

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Mother
by Joshua Laing

The cloying, gangrenous fragrance of impending

death permeated everything from the puffs of grit we kicked
up to the stiff, parched air. I wondered if, oblivious as she
was, she could smell it too. The brittle crunch of our feet was
maddeningly repetitive, stretching the fifteen-minute walk
into an eternity in my mind. My chest constricted. My heart
strained to burst from within its ribbed confines. My breath
came quick and shallow as I watched her yellow dress whirl
hypnotically. The bunch of flowers in her hand sagged
dismally, their petals already browning, curled from the
aridity.
The circle of greenery shimmered into focus,
mirage-like. Affording a glance over my shoulder, I could
see nothing but the expansive stretches of dirt behind us,
stark, malnourished.
I looked forwards, enticed by the mesmerising sway
of her hips beneath her dress, the fall of the knotted,
windswept blonde hair across her back.
She was undeniably perfect.
I ran a hand through my own hair, feeling the thick
dirt clinging to the unwashed strands. It was caked in, like
the earth packed under each of my nicotine stained nails.
We reached the precipice of the grass, it’s unspoiled
circle inviting, homely. Mother marked the sign of the cross
on herself and stepped onto it. At the centre of the patch’s
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circumference a crucifix stood at about five feet tall, it’s
splintered wood weathered by four years of scorching
summers and blistering winters. Exactly four years.
Adrenaline thundered through my veins. A tingling
numbness flooded my extremities. I fumbled in my breast
pocket, extracting a packet of cigarettes. I slid one between
my dry lips, striking a match and touching it to the tobacco. I
blinked the harsh smoke out of my eyes. Nicotine stretched
its calming tendrils into my brain.
Mother turned to me, hair whipping aggressively
about her face. “Put that cursed thing out, Michael.” She
shook her head, brilliant emerald eyes clouding in dark
disappointment. “It’s been four fucking years since you
couldn’t save his life. The least you could do is show some
damn respect.” Anguish clogged her voice. A solitary tear
slid down her cheek. She turned angrily from me.
A smile flickered across my face. He’d always been
her favourite, even after I had killed him. After today I
would not only be the favourite, I would be the very person
she was.
Mother kneeled before the cross, plucking at the
choking weeds crowding its base. She lay the pathetic,
withering bunch of roses in the space she had cleared, her
head bowed in silence. I could hear the wet smacking of her
lips as she whispered to Andrew, trying to keep me from
hearing.
Drawing deep on the cigarette, I stepped off the
grassy patch, pacing its exterior slowly. Andrew’s death
replayed joyously in my mind, a façade of pain rippling
across my face. He had always been the favourite.
Mother lifted her head, her face obscured in the
depths of my shadow. My stomach quivered as I achingly
gazed at her, knowing we would soon exist harmoniously.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She hissed
through clenched teeth. “You’re blocking his light! He
deserves it more than you do.”
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Ignoring the way she spoke, I flicked my cigarette at
her. She shrieked and fell back. Her arse thumped down with
a solid whump. Anger flared across her petite features. She
launched to her feet.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Her hand slashed
across my face with a sharp crack. The second slap came,
then a third, a perfect bludgeoning barrage raining down
upon me. “This is your brother’s day, you stupid shit!” Her
voice thickened with a masculine, violent edge.
I stood numbly, taking the hits in silence, allowing
her to tire herself out. She took a backward step and
collapsed before the cross again. I stepped to it and gripped
the horizontal segments in my calloused hands. The timber
powdered my palms with brittle rot.
Mother’s face collapsed in absolute horror, unable to
comprehend what she was witnessing. I strained, feeling the
veins in my neck stand out, pulling my skin tight. Tendons
ran like wire beneath the skin of my forearms, disappearing
into the red flannelette of my shirt.
A growl rumbled deep in my throat. The earth
screamed. Wet ripping echoed in my ears as the ground gave
way and the cross loosened, becoming free. I looked at it,
almost dumbfounded at the ease with which it came out.
Choking weeds twisted around the rotten foot of wood that
had been buried. Bugs scuttled across it, running across my
hands, up my arms.
Mother screamed, her eyes streaming, disbelief
scrawled across her trembling features. “What the fuck do
you think you’re doing?”
I lumbered towards her, tensing every muscle I could
to cock the cross behind my shoulder like a six-foot cricket
bat. I swung it, holding my breath tight in my lungs while I
tensed my shoulders. It fell in a loose, wild arc.
Mother turned to run. The cross caught the small of
her back, brutally slamming her to the earth. She lay still,
unconscious.
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My face cracked in a simple grin. I sat in the dirt
beside her, wedging a fresh cigarette between my lips and
striking another match. I tucked my legs under myself,
observing the earthy stains embedded in the fibres of my
jeans. I picked at them absently, my hands curling to fists in
excitement.
I let my mind drift, memories of my twenty-first
birthday, Andrew’s day of death, filling my mind.
The fires threatening our crops had worked to my
advantage. Andrew, full of his stupid, macho courage,
volunteered to come out to our closest field and fight the fire
using dam water. The idiot hadn’t heard me come from
behind, the rusted star-picket clenched in my fists, my hands
smeared with dust red as the setting sun.
No-one thought to question the fact that only his
upper body had been burned when they found him here, on a
circle of earth untouched by flame. He had been killed
valiantly defending the house on my twenty-first birthday.
That was what the police believed, and that was what Mother
believed. The blind fools.
I figured by removing Andrew from the equation, I
would receive her affection in its entirety. It seemed only
logical. But with him died any affection she had at all.
Finishing the cigarette slowly, I watched as the paper
sparked and popped, turning yellow before blackening and
finally crumbling to dirty ash. I discarded the withered butt
onto the luscious grass. I retrieved a handful of cable ties
from my pocket. Working fast, I dragged Mother’s flawless
frame to the wooden structure and spreadeagled her across it.
It was only just large enough, but it worked.
I bound her arms to the horizontal beam first, then
her legs to the vertical beam. Standing at the foot of the
cross, my shadow fell across her unholy perfection. I
squatted, gripping the cable ties around her ankles like a
handle. Standing, I wiped the salty, stinging sweat from my
brow and began my laborious return home.
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II

The dilapidated house loomed before us. The

shutters hung forlornly from the windows, flaps of wood
creaking ominously in the dry wind. The once white paint
was peeling and faded, leaving the house a sickly grey in
colour. Dust caked the windows, the cracked glass stained
yellow with thick grime. My flannelette stuck to my skin,
dark stains spreading under my arms and across my chest.
By the time I had reached the rickety wooden fence
separating the dismal, dusty expanse of farm from the
dismal, dusty yard, it was a quarter to one and my vision had
been replaced by a sweaty blur.
The gate’s hinges hissed in metallic protest as it
swung open. Mother bounced forlornly on the crucifix
behind me. Excitement buzzed in my chest, its glow dulled
only slightly by exhaustion. I latched the gate behind us.
Mother babbled semi-consciously, her voice a cool,
comforting brook.
I dragged Mother to the door, opening it with a
sweat-greased hand. I rotated the cross on an awkward angle
to fit the beams through the doorway. The hallway stood
empty, devoid of homely touches. A worn rug ran the length
of it, to the doorway at the rear of the house. The door to the
right of me opened into the kitchen, the left to the living
room. I entered the living room.
Our lounge sat pressed against the wall, its cushions
too-worn and heavily stained. A tiny television faced it from
the opposite wall. A crack split the screen directly in half.
I dropped the cross to the ground. It thumped
heavily. Mother groaned, stirring restlessly. She was coming
around.
I pressed my chest against the arm of the lounge,
straining against it. The legs bayed dissonantly against the
worn timber. I slid it into the corner, below a photo of
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Mother and Andrew, a photo of Andrew with the horses, a
photo of Andrew sitting on the bonnet of the ute.
Mother screamed. “Michael! What the fuck have you
done to me?” Undercurrents of anger pulsed through her
fear-strung voice.
I turned. A gentle smile rose to my lips. “I’m making
us one, Mother.”
I shouldered the cross and muscled it across to the
wall where the lounge had been. Mother’s gorgeous green
eyes had disappeared, replaced by vast black craters blazing
with absolute abhorrence. It was as if she could not conceive
of our relation to each other, let alone the idea of becoming
one with me.
“What do you mean making us one? Are you going
to rape me?”
My knuckles cracked against her jaw, snapping her
head to the side. Disgust roiled in my stomach, churning,
boiling. “I’m not going to do anything like that. Don’t be so
vulgar.”
I stomped out of the room. A vicious swarm of
obscenities buzzed in the air behind me. I headed down the
hall, straight for the last door on the right–Mother’s
bedroom. An eclectic collection of candles cluttered her
bedside table. Pictures of Andrew plastered the walls and
cupboards, a twisted, incestuous shrine. A grotesque statuette
of Christ hung on the wall above her pristinely made bed,
nearly a foot in height.
Her sewing machine was tucked on a table in the
corner. An empty ice cream tub filled with rolls of multi-
coloured thread and loose needles sat beside it. Picking it up,
I returned quickly to the lounge room. Mother’s voice had
grown husky from shouting. She fell silent, observing me
cautiously. I upended the tub on the ground, rummaging
through its scattered contents for a needle. Finding an
intimidatingly thick one, I continued searching for
appropriate thread. My fist closed around a roll of black
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cotton.
I removed it and crammed the loose end into my
mouth, twisting it into a slobbery point that slid easily
through the eye of the needle. I stepped towards Mother. Her
eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“What…what are you doing?” She whispered.
My finger traced her tender lips, the flawless pink
skin soft against mine. I pressed the needle to her bottom lip.
She whipped her head away at its touch, nicking herself. A
singular drop of blood beaded below her vermillion border,
deep crimson gleaming on her stunning porcelain skin.
“Don’t do this Michael,” she pleaded. “Let me down
before you do something you can’t take back.” Her eyes
gleamed, brimming with tears.
I seized her chin, snapping her face back to me.
“Hold still,” I crooned. “If you don’t, this could hurt a lot
more.”
She shook her head, rocking violently from side to
side. My fist impacted her chin in a savage blow. Her skull
thumped against the crucifix. A visceral crunch resounded
through the air. Her head slumped forward. She was
unconscious again.
I fed the needle through her lip, relishing the juicy
pop every time the needle penetrated her skin. A fierce grin
descended on my face as I finished sewing her lips entirely
shut. Blood dribbled down her chin in sticky streaks. I ripped
the thread off and crammed the needle and remaining roll of
cotton into my pocket, admiring the way she could no longer
berate me.
I left her moaning, unconscious form in the living
room and went to the kitchen. Sliding open one of the rickety
drawers, I grabbed a filleting knife and returned again to
Mother. I could nearly see her consciousness dancing before
her in her daze.
Her eyes snapped open and fixed on the sleek,
curved blade in my hands. She began to scream, her stitched
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mouth muffling the sound. I stared into the sliver of
reflection that I could see in the vicious blade. Nicotine
stained teeth peeked out from behind my dry lips.
I moved towards Mother, my face darkening in a
concentrated frown. I pressed the blade to her temple, flush
against the hairline. Her muffled screams intensified, almost
amplified in the cavern of her mouth. I let the blade fall away
from her face and pressed a silencing finger to her lips again,
hushing her gently.
Her eyes burned with hatred.
Touching my forehead gently to Mother’s, I smiled a
tender smile. “Don’t move, darling. It’ll only make me more
likely to slip. And if I slip, I might poke one of these.” I
waved the tip of the blade millimetres from her left eye.
She fell silent, her face crumbling.
I moved my face from hers, placing the blade back
against her clammy temple. I grasped her hair in my free
hand and began slicing, pulling gently on her scalp with my
other hand. It began to peel back, the slice creeping from her
temple to her forehead. The coppery tang of fresh blood
filled the air.
Her muffled scream vibrated in her head, her eyes
huge, pupils dilated in terrorised agony. The wet tearing of
her scalp sounded delicious, a wet suckling as the skin lifted
from the gorgeous, glistening layer of gore beneath.
Mother’s breathing slowed, becoming laborious.
Misty phlegm sprayed my chest and arms while I worked.
The scalp tore from her skull, her agonised cries hitting a
muffled crescendo. I admired the sagging flap of skin in my
hand. Blood caked the blonde hair on its exterior, the
underside a mass of wet fleshy strips dangling from where it
had torn unevenly. My face cracked in a ravenous grin.
I hurried to the bathroom. The crumpled blue
bathmat had been thrown into the corner of the room, a
scattering of clothes hanging over the tubs edge. Mother’s
nightie, a pink, semi-transparent piece she often wore, hung
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from the corner of the door. I faced the mirror, ignoring the
faded Polaroids of Andrew taped to its frame.
I placed Mother’s scalp onto the cluttered bench.
Sliding open the top drawer, I furrowed through the tangled
mess within. My fingers closed around the handle of my
straight razor. I lifted it, unfolding it slowly, savouring the
moment. I started hacking. Patches of my hair fell into the
sink, thick clumps coming loose in my hand as I tugged at it.
I stopped, my head bald but for scattered, patchy
strands, as close to the skin as I could get without risking
losing my own scalp. I grasped Mother’s in my fist, placing
it upon myself like a macabre crown fashioned of flesh. I
removed the needle and cotton thread out of my pocket,
knotting them together with the precision of a seamstress.
I wrinkled my forehead in the mirror, maximising
the amount of epidermis I could work with.
I began sewing.

III

Tacky blood dribbled in arrow straight lines below

each stitch. It gathered stickily in my eyebrows. Exactly 16
stitches secured Mother’s scalp to mine, equally spaced
between my temples. Stinging warmth flushed my forehead.
An ecstatic elation flourished in my chest when I
examined my reflection.
I was beautiful, but it would take a little more work
to complete my image. I stripped my shirt, tearing hungrily
at each button. The dusty, ripped flannel dropped to the
floor. I unbuckled my belt and discarded my jeans alongside
it. Stripping off my underwear, I beheld my naked form.
Mother’s hair flowed over my shoulders in a beautiful,
knotty wave, kinking gorgeously below my shoulders.
I grabbed the nightie from the door and tied it around
myself. I admired my reflection further in the mirror. My
body curved deliciously beneath the subtle pink hues of the
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mostly transparent material. I could almost hear the blood
rushing to my penis, engorging it magnificently while I
examined myself.
I returned to the living room. Mother hung limp on
the cross, fear trickling down her legs in ammonia scented
streams. I slapped her cheek softly. She lifted her head,
moaning, her entire skull enshrouded in a shimmering sheet
of blood. I dabbed at it with my fingertips and raised them to
my eyes. A multitude of crimson hues glistened in the light,
each droplet a tantalising concoction of subtly differing
shades. My tongue slithered from behind my lips, almost
involuntarily.
I licked the blood tentatively at first, then
ravenously, clawing at Mother’s head. She screamed behind
her sewn lips, my nails scraping excruciatingly against her
raw wound.
I rubbed my hands across my face, sucking greedily
on my fingers, smearing Mother across me.
Mother sobbed silently. I headed into the kitchen
again. My penis throbbed hotly, the stale air surprisingly
cool through the nightgown. The carving knife glowed in the
benchtop block, beckoning to me. I clamped a bloodied fist
around the handle.
The screen door slammed.
I launched into the hall, the crucifix in full view
through the door. It stood bare, no longer adorned with my
idol. Panic erupted in my stomach, rolling it savagely.
Charging for the door, the knife fell from my fist, clattering
to the ground. Mother was about twenty metres beyond the
fence. The speed she moved with astounded me, as did the
fact she had escaped the cable ties. Her head shone damply
in the blistering sun. The steps flew below my feet, my fresh
hair whipping about my face.
Mother stumbled, half running, half crawling. Rocks
stabbed at my feet. Mother continued to lurch forwards,
outstretched arms clawing at the gravel driveway. I lunged
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after her. The pink nightie billowed behind me. Dry air tore
at my lungs as I sucked in screaming, panicked breaths. My
hands grasped her ankles. I locked my fingers tight, pulling
her feet from beneath her. Her face struck the dehydrated
earth, hands skidding wildly before her. A howl echoed
inside her mouth, tan clouds of dust mushrooming about her
head.
Mother clawed at the ground. Her fingernails peeled
back as she scrambled for purchase. I straightened. My grip
remained vice-like on her ankles. We began to return to the
house, her elbows scraping on the ground. Blood dripped
from the wounds. Crimson mud trailed in our wake.
Mother thumped noisily up the stairs. Muffled cries
jolted from her. Holding her feet in one hand, I muscled the
door open. It bounced cruelly on her damaged head.
Throwing Mother on the lounge, I pushed a knee
into her throat. The harsh grey material of the cushions
grated against her raw flesh. I could see the agony erupt
behind her emerald eyes. I raised a grubby fist above her
face, admiring the way fear amplified her beauty. The meaty,
sweaty tang of complete terror wafted off her in thick,
pungent waves.
My fist crunched her nose. A sticky geyser of blood
spurted down her chest and splattered across my thighs. Her
head lolled, her body limp. I scooped some of the viscid
liquid off my leg and licked it, embracing the coppery
sweetness rolling down my throat.
I left Mother’s unconscious figure on the lounge,
crossing the hall. A door stood ajar on the westernmost
kitchen wall. I passed through it into the garage. Navigating
around the defunct ute, my lungs filling with stale, dusty air,
I retrieved the large toolbox Mother had bought Andrew
before his demise. It’s cool steel handle clasped tightly in my
sweaty fist, I headed back to the lounge room.
Dragging the cross down from the wall, I lay it flat
on the floor. I dragged Mother across it, my head pounding
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with the effort, and stretched her arms across the horizontal
beams. I rummaged through the toolkit quickly. The hammer
was buried amongst the mess of tools. I took it and foraged
further, finding the packet of nine inch nails. Removing
three, I dropped two on the ground beside my leg.
I pressed the third into the tender flesh on the inside
of Mother’s wrist and lined the hammer up with it. Mother’s
body convulsed below me with the blows, the nails securing
both her arms firmly. Blood seeped from her wrists. She
began to regain consciousness, twisting, moaning through
her useless mouth.
I clamped a hand to the bottom of her jaw and leaned
down, the final nail clasped tightly in my clammy fist. My
lips brushed the edge of her ear. The faint, sweet aroma of
earwax tickled my nostrils.
“You’re flawless.” I bit her earlobe tenderly. “I’m
going to become you.”
Salty tracks split the bloodied mask encasing
Mother’s face. I traced the hollow of her throat with the tip
of the nail. Her eyes fluttered open. They were clouded,
milky. I tensed my arm, pushing the metal through her
throat. Blood gurgled out of the hole around the head of the
nail.
The nervous energy fell away from her body, her life
extinguished the moment the final nail penetrated her creamy
flesh. Small wheezing gurgles filled the air. Bubbles filled
the slow dribble of blood. I could nearly track its babbling
passage up her throat to where it began to fill her mouth.
I hoisted the cross and braced it against the wall.
Mother’s legs hung limp. Her crucified form filled the room
gorgeously. I fetched the carving knife from the floor in the
hall. Returning to Mother, I hacked the yellow sundress she
wore, shredding it, leaving her in her undergarments. I sliced
the shoulder-straps of her bra and the hips of her underwear.
The clothing fell to her ankles, leaving her stark naked.
A bed of dark pubic hair flourished between her
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thighs. Her skin was smooth, porcelain, her nipples deep red,
like rose petals.
I wanted them.
I pressed the knife to the inside of her right hip,
forcing the blade in to a quarter of its length. She gave a final
twitch, a violent, convulsive jerk, and lay still. I pushed on
her stomach with my free hand, pulling the tissue taunt. The
knife slid through, separating the layers of muscle, fat, and
epidermis. A pungent, vile aroma flooded the room.
I dropped the knife, gripping the upper flap of flesh
with both hands and heaving violently. Thick, slimy ropes of
intestine protruded from the bottom of the wound. I grabbed
a handful of them, pulling like a mime with an invisible rope.
Her stomach followed, alongside a collection of other organs
I lacked the knowledge to identify. I bit into her stomach, a
small, squishy sack. Stinging acid flooded my mouth and
burned my throat. A gag forced its way to my lips.
Discarding the stomach, I groped at a stretch of intestine.
The taste of raw sewerage assaulted my mouth. The
horrendous stench invaded my nostrils, but I took pleasure in
it. It was allowing me to become the being I was meant to
be; allowing me to become whole with her.
My penis bulged with pressure; with pleasure. I
stripped off the nightgown and grasped it, stroking it with
one hand, clawing at Mother’s innards with the other. I could
feel her meat squishing against my face while I tugged at
mine. The thick member pulsed in my fist while I smeared
parts of Mother across my chin, my chest, my neck. I quickly
worked myself to climax. My semen spilled over the bloody,
gory mess of Mother’s entrails that smeared the floor.
I turned to her, certain her gorgeous body was now
just a shell, devoid of soul.
Facing Mother’s enchanting corpse, I picked up the
carving knife from the slop-drenched floor. Working
carefully, furiously, I carved vertical sections from each
point on the initial incision up to the base of her collarbones.
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I worked the blade into the top right of her chest and cut
horizontally. I could feel bone grinding beneath the blade.
I discarded the knife for the final time. It splashed in
the puddle of gore below the cross. Gripping the two vertical
incisions in my blood-greased fists, I pulled fiercely. A
gristly, snapping sound resounded. Shocked, I held the entire
front of Mother’s body in my hands. Her corpse stood
empty, her heart trapped behind a bloody cage of bone, her
lungs papery and deflated. Ripped flaps of flesh clung to the
bone. Her abdomen region scowled, a haunted, grisly cave.
I admired her front momentarily, stunned at its
beauty. The breasts were still perky, the nipples still
magnificently dark. The creamy stomach, flecked with
droplets of blood, was smooth and flat.
I turned, ignoring the fleshy floor and heading to the
toolbox. I removed a staple gun from it, holding it in my
right hand, Mother’s front in my left. I entered the bathroom,
muscling the torso across my own in the reflection. My
stitches pulsed sorely.
Mother fit perfectly. I pressed the staple gun to the
centre of her chest and pulled the trigger. A pressurised burst
of air shot a staple into Mother’s chest first, then my own. I
ground my teeth, embracing the pain, peppering my chest
with searing satisfaction sheathed in absolute agony. The two
staples I fired into my stomach were the worst, their pain
lingering and filling my midsection with an intense, flaming
hell.
I lowered my arm, the gun falling to the floor. It
cracked noisily, discharging a staple directly into my ankle.
My foot came alive with unbelievable pain. I steeled myself,
ignored my ankle, and looked in the mirror.
I was beautiful. My skin was no longer a mash of
scars, no longer covered with a dirty, coarse smattering of
chest and stomach hair. The tiny, pallid nipples were gone.
Replacing it all was a gleaming sheet of impeccable flesh
crowned with rosy nipples begging to be tweaked. I reach up
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and did so, imagining the pleasure that would have flooded
me had I been born naturally adorned with their perfection.
I ran a hand confidently through my new hair,
flicking the blonde mane over my shoulders, sliding my
hands down my sides.
I was flawless. No longer was I the abomination of
me; I was the goddess. I was Her.

IV

Hot death descended on the room, a heavy, delicious

moisture that clung to the very air itself. I hobbled to Her
stunning hollowed carcass, reaching a hand out. My fingers
stroked her face, her skin soft as crushed velvet, just as mine
now was. My face lit with joy, ecstasy coursing through my
veins.
I sat, admiring Mother’s corpse and smiled a simple,
blissful smile.
Dressed in her death, I was beautiful.

About Joshua:

Joshua Laing is an emerging horror fiction writer

hailing from the South Coast of Australia. Drawing
inspiration from 80’s slasher films, his work is an exquisite
literary twist on a well-worn genre. He collects underground
death metal records, dark comics and has a mild infatuation
with English comedy. Joshua spends his spare time reading
and spending too much money on body art. To paraphrase a
pop-culture infant, his writing is ‘the only thing giving his
alcoholism any credibility’.

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My Lovely Dead
by Michael Collins

I fell in love with a dead girl

Who came to life one night
In my cemetery.
I watched her climb out of the ground
Naked, with clean grey skin
And black hair
That moved in the wind
Untangled from the prison of soil.

Her hands beckoned me

To a tombstone
That matched her skin color.
At first I was afraid
Not knowing what to do.
I almost ran
To my bed,
But her eyes focused on me
With a thought;
She still had the Poe beauty
Of Lenore.

In the moonlight it looked like she could fly

And maybe that was true
Because I could never feel the grass
On my back, only
Her wet kisses
And the heat between her legs.
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She smiled
As I caressed her
While we climaxed.
It felt as though my soul
Was being sucked away
And I feared
What would happen when it ended,
But then my body shook
And floated back to the ground,
To peace in the darkness.

I awoke the next morning

To find her lifeless again.
Lying on the grass
With hints of green
Reflecting on her back.
I kissed her
And let her sleep
With her smile
Always ingrained
In my dreams each night.

About Michael:

Michael Collins is a twenty-eight year old writer and

marine biologist from Ewing, New Jersey. He has traveled to
more than sixteen countries. Some for biological research
projects; his favorite being his work with Great White Sharks
in South Africa. Others to just live and enjoy new cultures.
Currently he is teaching English in Taiwan to save for his
next big adventure.

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The Black Halo

by F. D. White

As he stepped out of the shower, Christopher Barrow

noticed something strange about his reflection in the mirror:
a smudge of greenish light was shimmering behind his head.
Of course, the shower steam and bright morning sunlight
filtering through the mottled window could be contributing
to the illusion; but even after several minutes the halo—for
that was what it vaguely resembled—persisted. Christopher
wondered if there was something wrong with his eyes, like
macular degeneration, or retinitis, or glaucoma.
But the next day Christopher’s halo became more
pronounced. It was now a luminous green aureole behind his
shaggy head. Two days later, the halo turned black.
In class, before commencing his lecture on Egyptian
sarcophagi, Christopher asked his slouched, yawning
students, “Do any of you notice something, uhm, unusual
about me this morning?”
Bobby Kirchner, one of the students in the front row,
grinned. “You look a little frayed around the edges,
Professor Barrow.”
“Is that all? Just frayed?”
“Exhausted, maybe?” He turned to a classmate for
confirmation, who nodded with mock seriousness. Bobby
Kirchner smiled at Christopher and said, “I think you’ve
been studying Egyptian sarcophagi for too long, professor.”
Scattered snickers.
“Your hair, Professor—” another student offered
“What about my hair?”
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“Yeah, it’s definitely gotten grayer since the
semester began,” said Bobby Kirchner.
“Grayer than it was last week,” chimed the other
student.
“I’m not in the least surprised,” Christopher snapped
back, but the students missed, or pretended not to notice, the
sarcastic edge to his voice. “Is there anything else about my
head that, uhm, sticks out?”
“You mean, besides your ears?” one of the
smartasses in the back row said.
“Never mind.” He cleared his throat, adjusted his
notes, and launched into his lecture. The students resumed
their slouched positions.
After class, Christopher spent the next few hours in
the library scouring documents relating to haloes. Paintings
from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, he learned from
art historians, depicted a plethora of halo species. Christians,
influenced by the Pagan representation of the sun god Helios
(light rays emanating from the head), imbued Christ and the
Blessed Virgin with a body halo (aureole)—disk shaped
haloes for the saints, hexagonal and even triangular haloes
for allegorical figures. Then he came upon a curious
anomaly in halo lore: the haloes of the unsanctified,
oxymoronic as that sounded: they were black.
He wondered why no one else could see his halo.
Christopher recalled that at the beginning of the
semester, Greta, the Art Department’s senior administrative
assistant, had photographed him during a reception for
faculty and staff. He recalled his initial reaction to the image:
over-exposed. Returning to campus, he looked closely at the
photograph, mounted inside the glass showcase in the
hallway, and yes! a faint smudge of yellowish green light
was visible behind his head. Greta had captured his emergent
halo with her camera!
He rushed into her office and asked if she’d
happened to notice the discoloration behind his head in her
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snapshot.
She smiled. “It makes you look angelic.”
“Angelic…that’ll be the day.” Could Greta secretly
suspect that the reflection that had caught her eye was indeed
a halo? He had to find out. Knowing that she attended Mass
on holy days of obligation, observed Saints’ feast days, and
was convinced that no greater reality existed than Christ’s
divinity, Christopher could safely assume that her religious
views were beyond dispute. He wanted to tell her more about
his evolving halo, and so invited her to dinner at his
apartment.
“I have a feeling, Chris, that there’s something you
want to tell me,” she said as soon as she arrived.
He nodded
As they sat with glasses of wine side by side on the
sofa, Greta gazed at him for a long moment and said, “When
I was a Carmelite novitiate I discovered that I could tap
into…the supernatural.”
“I’m intrigued!”
“And then I discovered something so unbelievable, I
repressed it for years.”
Christopher leaned closer to her. “Tell me.”
“This isn’t my world, Chris. In my world, bread and
wine literally become the body and blood of Christ during
the sacrament of the Eucharist.”
“But according to Catholic—”
“No, I mean that the Eucharist is a verifiable
phenomenon where I come from.” She stared wide-eyed at
him. “I no longer wanted to be in that world. But it seems
that a demon angel has been stalking me in this universe. It’s
so frustrating!”
Christopher nodded slowly. “The brutal monk you
once told me about—the monk who was once your lover…”
“The monk who became brutal after that demon
angel possessed him.”
He shook his head. “I’m trying to be open-minded,
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Greta, but—”
“It’s okay. I’m not asking you to believe me, only to
listen.” She took a deep breath. “There is something else you
need to know…”
“Tell me.”
“I suspect that you’re not from this world, either.”
She reached in her purse for a compact and opened it to
expose the mirror. “Just as I feared…no reflection.”
Christopher froze. “I’m ready for the punch line.”
“That was the punch line. Something must have
caused you to slip over, erasing your memory in the process.
Maybe it has something to do with those sarcophagi you
study.”
He had never made that connection. All those hours
spent immersed in the Egyptian Book of the Dead…all those
incantations. Could he have contracted an evil spirit the way
one contracts a virus?
“Maybe it has to do with something more…
intimate,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Turn off the lights.”
“Sure…but why?”
“Just turn them off.”
Christopher reached for the light switch and the
room fell into pitch darkness.
Except for their haloes.
Greta’s halo was a golden shimmering disc behind
her head.
Christopher’s halo also shimmered—but only its
outer perimeter: a thin band of pale yellow light outlining an
utterly black square behind his head.
Greta stifled a cry.
“It defies all logic,” Christopher whispered.
“The haloes aren’t what frighten me.”
He peered at her through the darkness. Greta’s skin
glowed faintly from the golden light of her halo. She looked
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terrified.
“Your halo—I know whose it is.” She leaped to her
feet and backed away. “I know who you really are.”
“Meaning that I’m not Christopher?” He moved
closer to her; she continued to move away.
“Greta, this has gone too far.”
“Listen to me carefully, Christopher.” Greta pressed
herself against the wall. “Do not come any closer. Your halo
is that of the arch demon Adramelech. You—that is, the
demon inside of you—have followed me from the other
universe to…plunder me.”
Christopher tried to reply but it felt as if something
had seized control of his mouth. He finally managed to say,
“How do you know?”
She stood up and began taking off her clothes.
“Greta!”
“Shush. Look closely…”
As if Christopher could do otherwise.
There were several lacerations on her body—two
underneath her breasts, two on each thigh, one on the palm
of each hand—stigmata. They were identical in size. And as
he watched, they simultaneously began to trickle blood.
And as he watched, mesmerized, aroused, Greta’s
halo became brighter—as if its brightness were gauging his
growing understanding of the stupendous event unfolding
before his eyes. He reached for her bloody hands and the
brightness intensified even more. Suddenly, the need to
possess her, to fuck her, to suck the life out of her, was
overwhelming. As he advanced toward her, her halo became
so bright it hurt his eyes. Golden white light filled the room.
“What in God’s name is happening?” Christopher
whispered.
“If only this were in God’s name. I pray that these
stigmata will ward off the demon pursuing me, the demon
that is now in possession of your body—and your mind.”
Indeed, something bestial had begun to stir inside of
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him—the demon angel Adramelech, at long last face to face
with his prey, hunted across different universes. He watched
his hands enlarging, growing…claws.
As Christopher/Adramelech struggled to wrap his
talons around her neck, to shove his shockingly tumescent
penis inside of her, the blood from her wounds splattered
onto them, dissolving his flesh with a loud hiss. Adramelech
bellowed in pain. He pressed his claws into her neck, and the
harder he pressed, the more excruciating the pain became.
But he had traveled too far to let his valuable bounty go free.
Greta’s blood splattered into Adramelech’s eyes,
dissolving his eyeballs. He screamed in agony.
The dissolution continued until the entire monstrous
body was consumed, leaving a bleached skull, with brain
matter sizzling and bubbling out of the sockets.
Oh, Christopher, if only I could have saved you…

About F.D.:

F.D. White’s stories and satires have appeared in

numerous periodicals, including Planet Magazine, Mad Hat
Lit, Limestone, Atticus Review, Clockwise Cat, The
Brooklyner, and Rathalla Review. He lives near Sacramento,
CA.

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Safe Word
by Rick Powell

It gave him a thrill when he saw how her leg

twitched as he finally went balls deep inside her. The way
the toes of her feet were barely touching the stained carpeted
floor of the motel apartment, as if trying to push away from
him as he gripped her waist and held himself there against
her ass, feeling her tight wet folds clamp around his
throbbing erection. Her one foot lost purchase and absently
kicked upward, hitting his bare, sweating ass.
“Yes, you like that…don’t you, dear?” He said
through clenched teeth. Her head turned to the side, as if in a
nod as she attempted to look back at him. The perspiration
that poured out of her skin glistened in the light of the
candles on the chipped nightstand near the bed; as her eye
meet his through the matted, blond hair that stuck to her face.
Her teeth bit down harder on the panties that were crumpled
in her mouth as he made a gesture with his hand and her
head went back down onto the mattress; her eyes squeezed
shut and were starting to tear from the exertion of pulling on
the leather straps that had her arms tied taut to either side the
headboard.
He pulled out slowly, just leaving the head of his
cock inside her pussy as he watched her juices coat his shaft.
“Oh, yes…yes, you do. So tight…so tight,” he lets out a
breath and whispered. He grabbed onto her waist and looked
down at her perfectly, round smooth ass in the glow of the
room. I want to relish this, he thought.
He started moving in and out gently, giving her some
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time to relax a bit and get adjusted to him. He didn’t want to
cum too soon. It had been a while since it had felt this good.
He threw his head back in ecstasy with his eyes closed as he
started to fuck her, picking up the tempo with each thrust. He
felt her hitching and giving a slight cough with each jostle of
the frame, the headboard giving a slight pound into the paint
chipped wall. He took no notice of the sounds as he looked
down at her, the way her breasts bulge out a bit at her sides
from being bound down tight into the crumbled sheets of the
bed. He felt his cock throb harder as he pushed in deeper and
deeper; her hands gripping the straps in either pleasure, pain,
or both.
He pulled his cock out with a wet plop. Her lower
body relaxed for a moment and the arches of her feet flatten
on the carpet. He slapped his moistened erection onto her ass
a few times as he looked at the side of her face; the hands of
her stretched upper arms making feeble motions in their
weakened state.
“No sound yet? I guess it is time for me to bring it to
another level,” he chuckled, as he notices a bead of sweat or
tear travel over the bridge of her nose and onto the wet sheet.
He ran his hand over the clamminess of her back and brought
the fingers to his mouth. “Delicious,” he whispered.
He pries open the soft, white cheeks of her ass and
lets a steady stream of saliva cascade onto the delicate,
puckered channel in between them. The girl’s eyes opened
wide and her head snapped up; the tendons and veins in her
neck were prominent as she painfully turned his way. He
started rubbing his manhood up and down along the crevice,
breathing heavily in anticipation, as he cocks his head to
meet her pleading gaze. “Oh. My apologies, my sweet one. I
guess taking these out will help,” he said in a deep voice as
he reached out and pulled the makeshift gag from her mouth.
He inspected the small red spots that stained it in the candle
light. “My dear, it looks like you may have bitten your
cheek. All you have to do is say the ‘word’ and I will stop.”
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A semblance of a smile appeared on his face as the
tip of his tongue tasted the blood on the panties. The young
girl lets out a cough as she runs her tongue around inside her
cheeks in a vain attempt to moisten her dry mouth. She
grimaced as she attempted to swallow.
“Alrighty then,” the man said as he moved back a
little, his heel knocking into a large, aged suitcase. He
stroked his cock in anticipation. “Onto the next level.”
He grunted as he pushed in the bulbous head of his
shaft. His face was a frightening grimace and a few droplets
of spittle spray from his teeth and onto her clenching ass, as
he felt the virgin sphincter open and give way. The girl’s
head snapped back, eyes wide, as she lets out the smallest of
whimpers. Now, both of her legs were trembling as he
started rocking back and forth; each thrust bringing him
deeper and deeper inside the heat of her rectum.
The man lets out a growl as he shoved as deep as he
could; his scrotum slapping against the folds of her shaven
vagina as she whipped her head back and forth with the
merest of sound escaping her lips.
“Your…will…is strong, My…dear,” the man
muttered through hitching breaths. “So…tight…so sweet.”
The girl’s bound hands were moving at a frantic
pace; a few areas on one wrist started to bead up with blood
as the tight leather started to tear the tender flesh. The man
licked his lips and let out a barely discernible laugh. “Still no
word?” He asked, while still thrusting. “Well, guess we will
try this,” he remarked, as he reached down onto the floor;
tossing aside her rumpled schoolgirl skirt and picked up the
multi-purpose lighter that he used earlier to light the candles.
He clicked the trigger a few times; the sharp sound matched
only by the panting breathing of the bound girl. The flicker
of flame illuminated the malevolent glare in his bearded
face; the touch of gray at his temples. “You do love me,
don’t you?” The man asks the young girl.
Realization of something came to her when he
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stopped his thrusting; the man could feel the pumping of
either her heart or his blood around the flesh of his gorged
member. He clicked the lighter again to get her attention; the
flame a steady flicker as he waved it around for her to see.
The agonizing pain in her shoulders and violated rectum
forgotten as she became aware of the flame and she started to
struggle feverishly on the rumpled sheets of the bed. One
bone in her shoulders pops with an audible crack as it
dislocates.
The man takes the long neck of the lighter and
pushes it into one of her perfectly unblemished buttocks; the
sizzle and scent of burned flesh immediately filling his
nostrils. The girl started violently mewling and struggling
from the pain of the burn. He felt her ass clench tight on the
base of his cock as he laughed loud and started pounding into
her at a rapid pace.
“Such a…good…fucking…girl!” He whispered with
each thrust. He felt more than saw the blood that covered his
member as she started to bleed from his violation.
He tossed aside the lighter; a bit of flesh still sticking
to it from the brand.
“Say…the word…before…I…cummm!” he ordered.
“You…Bitch!”
The girl was sobbing silently; blood going down her
chin and staining the sheet from the lip she had bitten
through. The leather bond that held her uninjured shoulder
broke free from the post of the headboard and snapped back,
slapping the heaving, hairy stomach of the man whose eyes
were clenched shut; feeling the churning in his balls of his
impending orgasm. He gives one final thrust and screamed,
feeling his hot semen jettison out and fill the young woman’s
bowels.
He looked down at the young woman’s ass; the torn
leather strap weaving like a dying animals tail as the girl’s
arm attempted to make feeble motions to the man. He was
panting heavily, feeling his spent penis start to go soft in her
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bleeding channel as he started to wrap the long leather in one
hand. “You should have said the ‘word’,” he muttered
through hitching breaths. “You just had to say it so I could
hear.”
He fell down violently on the back of the girl; his
limp member slipping out with a squishing sound as he took
the strap in both hands and wrapped it around her throat. He
felt the air leave her body from the shock of his heaving
form pinning her down and the painful angle of her trapped,
free arm as it was sandwiched between her thin back and his
stomach.
He felt her struggle beneath him. He watched her
throat and face bulge and go purple as he said, “Just…one…
word,” and pulled the leather tighter.

***

He finished getting himself dressed in the late

afternoon light coming from the only window in the
apartment. The autumn light that shown through the thin,
yellowed curtains was enough so he could make himself
presentable in the chipped, dresser mirror; a hairline crack
making his reflection skewed as he adjusted his collar and
tapped the numbers on the cell phone in his hand and put it
to his ear.
“Charlie…yeah, all done here…if you can stop by
and meet me in the front in about 15 minutes, that would
help…what?…yeah, you can bring him, if you want. I only
have one suitcase you both could help me load. The poor girl
left before I could get here, the poor soul…thanks, see you
soon”
He tapped the phone off and looked around. He
found some Lysol under the cabinet sink in the bathroom and
sprayed that around to get rid of any odor. You could barely
discern the new stains from the many old ones on the tattered
bedspread. He’d made the bed look as neat and proper as he
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could.
He gave it a satisfied grin and started to lug the
suitcase to the door.

***

The thin and rumpled man pulled a used

handkerchief out of the front pocket of his janitor’s uniform
as he walked back to his battered, blue pickup truck and
wiped his runny nose in the crisp fall breeze. He let out a
hacking cough as he opened the driver’s side door with a
squeak and got behind the wheel. He turned to the young
man in the passenger seat, who looked as thin and rumpled
as he was, but with more of an innocent face and lacking the
beard the older man had.
“Thanks for coming along, Billy. This cold is kickin’
my ass somthin’ fierce,” he coughed again, opening the truck
window and spitting a hack of phlegm onto the parking lot of
the motel.
“No problem, Uncle Chuck,” the young man replied.
“Who is that man, anyway? He seems familiar to me, but I
just can’t place it.” He watched as the man they helped load
the heavy suitcase into the truck of his Cadillac was
adjusting it so it could fit better. The man successfully
positions it in place and slams the lid of the trunk. He wipes
his hands clean and looks around the mostly vacant lot with a
content grin.
“You should. That there is Father Wallace. One of
the nicest and most holy of men I have ever met. I would still
be on the street if it wa’nt for ’im,” the older man said
proudly. “I have been doing errands and side jobs for ’im
for…Jeez…7 years now. I don’t know where he finds the
time to do this.”
“Do what?” The young man inquired, as he noticed a
little girl come up to the man from behind the dumpster of
the motel. The little brown haired girl was covered with
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grime and her drabby clothes matched the makeshift bedding
she made for herself next to the dumpster. The young man
could barely make out the cardboard sign she held, the
wording on it faded. He had seen enough of those signs and
could figure out what was once written on it. He wished he
had the cash to help out all the ones he had seen.
The older man started the truck. “Well, he goes to
god forsaken hovels like this. Lookin’ for and helpin’ out
those young, lost poor souls. Sometimes, he gives me a call
to bring ’em on back to the shelter. Lately, he has been’a
workin’ on some personal projects. Bless that man.” The
younger man watched the man outside gesticulating his
hands in a way to the little girl that he found odd. He noticed
a grin come to the little girl’s face as the truck turned and
started to drive away down the interstate.
“What personal projects?” he asked the older man as
he adjusted his seat for the long ride home.
“Oh. Well, he keeps that to hisself. I guess it is ok to
let ya know. The mayor will be having a conference in the
next year or so. Father Wallace has been workin’ with those
special need cases of the homeless. Those deaf and mute kids
we see around here once in’a while. He is plannin’ on
opening his own shelter just for them. Looks to me like he
found one of those poor kids back there. God bless ’em. I am
sure she is safe with him now.”

About Rick:

Rick Powell lives in Oak Forest, Illinois. He is a

lover of horror and dark fiction and his poetry and stories
have appeared in numerous publications including Don’t
Look Back: 13 Terrifying Tales of Urban Folklore, The
Ladies & Gentlemen of Horror 2014, and Infernal Ink
Magazine.
His poetry books consist of the titles My Soul
Stained My Seed Sour and More Regrets Than Glories.
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He could be found on Goodreads at
www.goodreads.com/author/show/8442207.Rick_Powell or
Facebook at www.facebook.com/tenebraerick

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The Dance Of Asmodeus

by Robert J. Leuthold

I watch you sleeping from the foot of your bed

Your breathing is a steady orchestral cadence
My predatory ears sense the primal drumbeat of your heart
As my silken hands reach to caress your silken sleeping
thighs
The dance becomes a deliberate waltz as my hand feels your
moist pink juncture
Elongated fingers preemptively try the recesses
Whilst your breathing quickens as your mind still thinks this
a placental dream fantasy
Until the frenzied gentle stabbing of my fingers snaps you to
wanton wakefulness
You, my willing consort, accept me with open arms
Unzipping my pants and unsheathing my fleshy sword
Entreating it with strokes to do you pleasurable harm
Without protest you draw me into yourself
Sheathing me deep with nary a yelp
But rather a moan, as you drive me home
Your nails like daggers flay my back
As I am shoved back and ridden in a lusty attack
Nicely trapped in your fleshy abode
When with nary a warning we simultaneously explode
In waves of hot pleasure
This shared orgasm our pearl, a most precious treasure
As our breath and hearts mold into one
The movement is over, but the dance is not done

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About Robert:

Robert J. Leuthold was born November 3, 1977 and

has been a Hell raiser (sans the chains and leather…at least
for now) ever since.
After being dragged into “the writing thing”
practically kicking and screaming by Hydra M. Star, he
became a regular contributor to Infernal Ink Magazine, with
sporadic appearances elsewhere. He currently resides in
Thibodaux, Louisiana, and can be found on Facebook.

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Jenny
by M. B. Vujačić

Rudy sighed.
“You gotta grow some balls, man,” Chad said for the
third time since they’d left the club. “Chicks aren’t gonna
come to you just like that.”
It was four a.m., still dark. Saturday night or Sunday
morning, depending on how you look at it. They walked
down an empty street, smelling of smoke and cheap beer.
Chad was tall and lantern-jawed and he had that sleazy
smile, kind of like Elvis. He was the most jock-looking non-
jock Rudy had ever met. Rudy didn’t like him much, but
they both rode the same bus and hanging out with him was
better than being alone.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, man,” Rudy said.
“I’m talking honestly here. You’re a good guy.
You’re smart. We can find you a nice chick, you just gotta
lose that belly and fix those zits and go talk to them.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You ever fucked?”
“What?” Rudy said, although he’d heard him.
“You ever fucked? You ever had sex?”
“Umm…Sure, yeah, I–”
“’Cause if you didn’t, you go bang a whore first. I
mean, a real whore, the one you pay for. Get it outta the
way.”
He hesitated. “Did you…”
Chad shook his head. “No, man, no. But a buddy of
mine did. Said it made him feel all the way better. Stopped
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thinking he was the only virgin guy around and shit.”
He waited for Rudy to say something, realized no
comment was coming, then started talking about how it was
a shame Rudy didn’t use his huge apartment for something
wilder than video gaming. Rudy almost told him a one-room
apartment could hardly be called “huge”, then remembered
Chad was sharing a dorm with two other guys and kept his
mouth shut.
The bus stop was deserted but for a lone girl. She
looked kind of stocky at the distance, but as they came
closer, Rudy realized her clothes were a few sizes too big.
She was actually quite skinny, with sharp cheekbones and
the eyes of a doe. Her chestnut hair hung to her belly, and
there wasn’t a trace of makeup or jewelry or any decoration
whatsoever to be seen on her. She looked no older than
eighteen, and she was staring at them.
Or rather, she was staring at Rudy. Maybe she just
wanted to make sure they weren’t muggers or rapists or
something–it was the dead of night, after all–but then, she
didn’t appear worried. She seemed…Interested. It made him
uncomfortable, so he took out his smartphone and pretended
to text someone. He glanced up a couple times and saw her
looking at him, and it caused his guts to clench like a wet
knot.
“That chick’s totally checking you out, man,” Chad
whispered in his ear, spraying spittle on his cheek. “You
gotta go talk to her.”
Rudy swallowed. “Uh, sure,” he muttered, and
turned away from Chad and her. He could feel her eyes
boring into the back of his head.
“Excuse me,” the girl said, her voice soft. “What
time is it?”
Now he could feel both Chad and her staring at him.
“It’s, um, it’s four fifteen,” he said without turning to look at
her.
“Thank you.”
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“No problem.”
A silence descended on the three of them. After
awhile, Chad went to sit down on a nearby bench, shaking
his head. Rudy stood there, feeling like the world’s biggest
loser and hoping the girl would say something else to him.
She didn’t, of course. Their bus soon arrived. As they
embarked it, he stole another glance at the girl. She came
into the bus with them, her eyes never leaving him. He
pretended not to notice.
“Oh man, she was so coming on to you,” Chad said
as they took their seats. Rudy expected him to ramble on
about it, and was surprised when Chad just sank into his seat
and closed his eyes. Fifteen minutes later, Chad got up and
yawned without covering his mouth. “See ya, Rudy.”
“See ya.”
Chad stepped out of the bus and was gone. The bus
drove on. Rudy rubbed his eye with the ball of his hand,
letting out a yawn of his own, when the girl suddenly
appeared at his side. “Hello,” she said, her face impassive. “I
am Jenny. What is your name?” She sat next to him.
“R-Rudy. I mean, it’s Rudolph, but everyone calls
me Rudy.”
She gave him a big childish smile. “Pleased to meet
you, Rudy. You are very kind.”
“Um, thanks.”
“I like you. Can I kiss you?”
“Wh-What?”
“Can I kiss you? I want to kiss you.”
His heart rumbled in his chest like an out-of-tune
orchestra. He opened his mouth and almost told her he’d
never kissed a girl. He was too embarrassed to admit that
though, so he just sat there, staring at her, petrified. She
must’ve taken his silence as a yes, because she cupped his
face with her hands and pressed her lips against his. Her
breath smelled strange, like she’d recently eaten something
greasy. Then her tongue met his, and Rudy forgot all about
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everything.
They didn’t speak for the next ten minutes or so.
They just sat there, making out, oblivious to the other
passengers. His heartbeat slowed down and he felt great.
Better than ever, actually. Too soon, he noticed the bus was
nearing his stop. He made himself push Jenny away, and
muttered: “It’s…I…I gotta get out here.”
“I want to come with you,” she whispered. Her lips,
chin, cheek, even the tip of her nose–it was all damp with
spittle.
“Go? Go where?”
“To where you live. So we can keep kissing each
other.”
His mouth fell open. This time he almost told her
he’d never been in the same room with a naked woman, let
alone had sex. He nodded instead. “Umm…Okay, you can
come.”
She gave him another childish grin, and began
kissing him again.

***

As he unlocked the door, Rudy remembered his

apartment was a mess.
That made him feel embarrassed all over again, so he
told Jenny to give him a minute. Without waiting for a reply,
he gathered the returnable beer bottles and the remains of the
last night’s pizza, and dumped them into the trash. Then he
started picking up discarded clothes, and wiping coffee stains
from the bedside table. The only items he handled with any
care were the twin joypads lying on the bed. He placed them
on the shelf beneath the TV, next to his Playstation.
He was in the bathroom, washing his hands, when he
realized he’d forgotten his manners. “Hey, Jenny, uh, I got
coffee and diet Coke. And, um, I got some beer.”
“I want to kiss you,” she said, and Rudy jumped. He
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spun around and saw her there, standing in the bathroom
with him, stark naked. He had a moment to stare at her
nipples, and then her tongue wiggled into his mouth.
She slipped her hands under his shirt and lifted it
over his head. She let it fall to the floor, and began
unhooking his belt and pulling down his zipper. Briefly, he
wondered if he should look for that condom he’d bought a
few months ago, just in case he got lucky. Then she was on
her knees, sucking him, and all safety considerations were
forgotten. He gasped and leaned against the sink, his pants
sliding down to his ankles.
There was a popping sound, like when you crack
your knuckles, and then Jenny swallowed both his cock and
his balls. It felt like paradise. Rudy wasn’t well-endowed by
anyone’s standards, but a part of him still marveled at how a
girl so small could do that with her mouth. He looked at her,
but could only see the top of her head, moving back and
forth. He’d put on a lot of weight during the past few years
and he could hardly see his penis anyway.
She stood up as abruptly as she’d knelt. A string of
saliva dangled from the corner of her mouth. She took his
wrist and led him to the bed. That was when he noticed her
fingers. They were long, at least an inch longer than his own.
They seemed a little freaky.
Jenny pushed him on the bed and climbed on top of
him. “I want you in me,” she said. Then she rolled off him
and lay on her back, her legs spread, staring at him. Her
vagina looked swollen, its lips bigger and fatter than any
he’d seen, and he’d seen many on the internet. Yet the skin
appeared healthy, without a hair in sight. “I want you in me,”
she said again.
Rudy wanted with all his heart to comply, but he’d
read somewhere that going down on a girl was a must before
sex, so that’s what he did. He couldn’t see the clitoris–had
never been sure of its location to begin with–so he just
lapped his tongue all over the place. Jenny closed her eyes
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and started breathing deeply. He took that as a good sign, so
he tried to put a finger inside. It struck something slimy and
thick. He tried to push against it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You need to cut through,” she said.
“What?”
“The membrane. You need to cut through it.”
“The memb–,” he began, and stopped. “Oh…Oh
god, you…You’re a virgin?”
“You need to cut through,” she repeated. “Find a
knife.”
“E-Excuse me? A knife?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her, mouth open.
“Please, Rudy,” she said, her eyes serious. “It hurts
less that way.”
Rudy stood up and went to the kitchen. He took a
knife from a drawer and washed the blade in the sink,
wondering what the hell he was doing. Then he looked at the
knife’s wooden handle and understood what she had in mind,
and the realization made him feel both relieved and a bit
stupid for thinking anything else. He scrubbed the handle
clean, and returned to the bed.
Jenny still lay with her legs splayed. She’d spread
the lips of her vagina with her fingers. He still couldn’t see
the clitoris, but he could see the hymen. It was pink with
purple capillaries, the skin stretched as taut as a drumhead.
He sat next to her, sucked in his lips, and tried to push the
knife handle through the skin. She laid a hand on his wrist.
“No. Cut through it.”
“What? Like, with the blade? You serious?”
“Yes.”
“No way,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t do that,
man.”
She made a sad face and took the knife from him.
Rudy watched her, terrified even though he was pretty sure–
no, he knew–she was just messing with him. Jenny took a
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deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she turned the knife
over in her hand and fucking stuck its point into her hymen.
“Jesus Christ!” he screamed, his hands flying to his
face.
Jenny moaned. She’d only pushed about half an inch
of the blade into her skin, but there was already a lot of
blood. It pooled on the bed, filling the apartment with a ripe
oily smell. She turned the blade, widening the gash, before
letting the knife clatter to the floor.
Jenny exhaled loudly, and looked at him. She
touched his wrist and tried to pull him toward herself. When
he wouldn’t move, she sat up and said: “Rudy, all this is
normal.”
He licked his lips, feeling stupid. “Really?”
“Yes. This is how it always goes.”
“Are…Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Umm, okay…It’s just…” He swallowed. “Okay.”
She placed her hands on his chest, and gently
lowered him on the bed. Then she went down on him again.
Rudy just lay there, watching the blood dripping from her
pussy. A buddy once told him deflowering a virgin was a
pain in the ass, and boy oh boy, was that an understatement.
Gradually, he felt himself getting hard again.
Then Jenny straddled him, guiding him inside her
with her hand, and knives and hymens became the furthest
thing from Rudy’s mind. He felt a pleasant warmth at his
crotch, and then she was riding him, her palms pressed
against his belly. There was blood everywhere. It seeped
down her thighs, painting her legs and his abdomen and their
genitals red. Rudy didn’t care. He was having sex.
It lasted about thirty seconds. Halfway through the
orgasm, he realized he was shooting his load inside her, and
tried to pull out. “No,” she gasped, and squeezed him with
her legs so hard it actually made his hips hurt. She held him
like that until his dick stopped pulsing. Then she cuddled up
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next to him, her eyes shut, smiling. Within seconds, she fell
asleep.
Rudy hardly noticed. He just lay there, wondering
how on earth he’d gotten so lucky. He didn’t wonder for
long. The fatigue, the late hour, the beers he’d drank with
Chad and the guys, it all caught up with him soon.
He dreamed of breasts and his mother’s milk.

***

They did it again as soon as he woke up.

This time he lasted two minutes. They were doing
missionary when he felt himself start to cum, and tried to
pull out. Again she said “No,” and again she trapped him
with her legs. He tried to wriggle free, but it was like
pushing against iron bars. The muscles in his ass felt sore all
day. At least she’d stopped bleeding.
Dried blood was everywhere. The bedsheets were
ruined, the mattress sporting a huge brown stain. Rudy’s
crotch and the lower half of Jenny’s body were crimson. The
stall was too cramped for both of them, so they had to
shower separately. That was when he discovered strange red
spots on his legs and privates. He initially mistook them for
crusted blood, but after scrubbing for awhile, he realized it
was some kind of rash. It didn’t itch, so he smeared his acne
cream on it and forgot about it.
When he finished bathing, Rudy told her he was
going to order some food, and asked her what she wanted for
lunch.
“Two large hamburgers,” she said. “Plain. Just
meat.”
“Just meat? You mean, no ketchup, no salad,
nothing?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else? Juice? Cheese cake?”
“No.”
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“You sure you want two large burgers? One is, like,
half a pound.”
“Yes.”
The food arrived half an hour later. Jenny discarded
the buns and ate the meat with her hands, stuffing it in her
mouth like she thought chewing was overrated.
They had sex again afterward. And again around
midnight. It was same story every time–as soon he started to
orgasm, she’d latch onto him and make him come inside her.
Rudy assumed it was some sort of fetish.
That night, as he lay in bed with Jenny sleeping at
his side, he realized he’d never seen her squeeze out his
sperm. Of course, she might’ve done it in the bathroom, or
wiped it with a towel while he wasn’t looking…But he
didn’t think so.
He made a mental note to ask her about it.

***

Rudy didn’t attend his college classes on Monday.

Nor did he do so on Tuesday. Or Wednesday, when
he said screw it and decided to take the week off. He’d never
been a popular guy, so people didn’t call him much. They
spent the week in bed, eating junk food, watching movies,
and fucking like rabbits. They did it in every position he
could think of, on every surface, both sitting and standing.
Jenny went along with anything he suggested, as long as it
ended with him coming inside her. She wouldn’t let him put
his fingers inside her vagina for some reason, yet her anus
was fair game. Who would’ve thought?
They spent a lot of time talking, too…Or rather, he
spent a lot of time talking. Jenny just lay there, listening to
him and occasionally asking questions. He told her all about
his studies, his friends, his hometown. After awhile, he
started telling her about his troubles with his wealthy
parents, his insecurities about his looks, and how much he
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hated his name. He even told her he’d never had a girlfriend
before.
As for Jenny, she said she didn’t want to talk about
her past. Rudy respected that, confident that in time she’d
open up.
He was a nice guy.

***

“Have you…Umm…Are you putting on weight?”

“What?” Jenny mumbled. She lay at his side, his
sperm still inside her, already half-asleep. It was Saturday,
past midnight.
He licked his lips. “Nothing.”
She muttered something else, and then her breathing
became quiet and steady. Slowly, careful not to wake her up,
Rudy looked her over. There was no denying it. Her ass and
thighs were chunkier, her cheeks fuller, the cheekbones not
nearly as prominent as they’d been when he met her. There
was even a little potbelly. She had to have gained at least
twenty pounds in, what, a week?
This was doubly strange because Jenny’s diet
consisted entirely of meat and water. Pastries, fruits,
vegetables, sweets, alcohol, even meat-related products such
as hotdogs–she wouldn’t touch any of that. She ate all meat,
all the time, and always with her hands. He kept expecting
her to get stomach cramps or something.
Rudy lay there for awhile longer, wondering about
that. Eventually, he switched off the light. He was starting to
drift off, when he felt a dampness under his foot. Blinking,
he leaned on his elbow and touched that part of the bed. The
sheets were drenched. He touched around some more and
realized Jenny’s legs were soaked. The wetness was
spreading from her. An unsettling thought crossed his mind:
Did she piss herself?
Suddenly, Jenny sat up, her hand going to her belly.
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She turned left and right, like she didn’t know where she
was. Then she looked at him. “Rudy. Wake up,” she said,
poking his face with her finger. “Wake up.”
“Huh?”
She kept poking his face. “Wake up, Rudy. It is
coming.”
“Stop it, I’m awake. Wha-What is it?” He sat up.
Moonlight was coming in through the window, painting the
room blue. She pulled the sheets off him, stroking his limp
penis. He touched her arm. “Wait, Jenny…I can’t, I’m
sleeping. Wait till–”
“Now,” she said, her voice so firm it made him feel
scolded.
He opened his mouth to tell her he didn’t feel up to
it, that they’d had sex an hour ago anyway, but then he
closed it again. Better to get it over with and go back to
sleep, than risk disappointing her.
Jenny seemed to be in a hurry. She stroked him until
he stiffened, then sat on him, stuck his penis inside her, and
started grinding her hips back and forth, her eyes closed
tight. She sucked in her lips until they were a straight line on
her face, and began puffing and grunting, like she was
running a marathon or something. Rudy just lay there,
staring at her.
“Uh, Jenny, you okay?”
She didn’t reply. She just kept panting. It was too
dark to be sure, but Rudy thought he could see her belly
swelling and contracting, as if the organs within were
shifting.
“Jenny? What’s going on with your–”
She moaned–no, shrieked–louder than ever before,
then fell on top of him. Her forehead banged against his teeth
hard enough to rattle them.
“Ow, shit, what–”
He felt sharp pain in his shoulders, and realized her
nails had dug into his skin. He shouted and pushed her so
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hard she fell off the bed. There was a wet ripping sound. He
sat up, his hands flying to his shoulders, and said: “What the
fuck, Jenny?” Then he noticed the blood on her abdomen and
saw a gaping hole where her vagina used to be. He realized
he could still feel the warmth and the tightness of her flesh
around his penis.
Rudy looked at the thing between his thighs, and let
out a high-pitched wail. The shadows hid the worst of it, but
he could still see its long pale body and its many wiggling
legs. “Oh God,” he screamed, “oh Jesus!” He grabbed at it,
felt its slick skin under his fingers, and then the tightness
around his penis became agonizing.
His scream became a gasp as Jenny wrapped her
fingers around his throat. She climbed on top of him, driving
her knees into his belly, slamming him onto the bed. He tried
to push her away, but her fingers were so long they closed at
the back of his neck like a vise. He kept kicking and
thrashing, his lungs straining for air, his crotch feeling like it
was dipped in acid.
Black splotches crowded the corners of Rudy’s
vision and a cold numbness settled on the lower half of his
body. He didn’t know it, but his legs had already stopped
kicking. He fought for a while longer, and then all strength
deserted him. His hands fell on the bed. It was over.
But he didn’t die.

***

Jenny knelt on his torso for awhile longer, staring at

him.
When she was confident he was pacified, she
unhooked her hands from his throat, sat on the bed, and
exhaled loudly. Then she looked at her baby where it lay
curled between Rudy’s legs. It was letting out soft squish
squish squish noises, its sides inflating and deflating, as
hungry as any healthy newborn should be. Jenny smiled and
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laid a kiss on its back.
She sat there for awhile longer, pressing her finger
against Rudy’s naked eyeballs to make sure the baby’s toxin
had done its job. Aside from the slow breathing and an
occasional blink or a moan, he showed no signs of life.
Satisfied, she crawled under the bed and started spitting out
long sticky strands and wrapping them around her
midsection. By the time she finished, her ass, belly, and
thighs were covered in a thick white cocoon. She closed her
eyes and went to sleep.
Jenny woke up about twenty hours later. It was
night. She tore the cocoon apart with her hands and got out
from under the bed. Her belly ached and her head felt woozy
and she had to lean against the wall to steady herself, but still
all seemed well with the world. The baby was at its place
between Rudy’s legs. It was bigger now, its skin a lively
pink, its mandibles burrowed deep in his abdomen.
Rudy still lay on his bed. His round belly was gone,
and so were his flabby cheeks and his massive thighs. All
that remained were bones covered with shriveled muscles
and desiccated skin. His eyes were still open, but now they
were dry and colorless.
Jenny went into the bathroom and examined herself.
The hole between her legs had disappeared, replaced by a
large swollen “vagina,” same as the one Rudy had been so
fascinated with during their time together. She looked into
the mirror, saw a flat belly, long thin limbs, sharp
cheekbones. Satisfied, she went into the shower and
scrubbed herself clean.
When her hair had dried, she opened Rudy’s closet
and started taking out his clothes. They were too big for her.
She sniffed her old clothes–the ones Rudy met her in–
decided they smelled too much of previous mates, and
returned to the closet. She managed to tie a hoodie at the
back to make it fit her better, and punched new holes in a
belt so it’d more or less prevent Rudy’s pants from sliding
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down her legs.
The baby mewled as Jenny picked it up, squirming
in her arms. “Shhh, we must be quiet,” she whispered to it,
then kissed it. “Mommy loves you very much.” The baby
squirmed some more, then laid its head against her chest and
dozed off. Jenny wrapped it in a blanket and carried it out of
the apartment.
She made her way out of Rudy’s neighborhood and
headed west, not because she knew where she was going but
because that was where the smell of trees and grass came
from. After awhile she found a park. Her mouth twisted, but
she kept walking. She saw a large bush, and crawled into it.
There, kneeling among the roots, she unwrapped the blanket
and lowered the baby onto the ground. It looked around, its
mouth working, its antennae probing the air. Then it lowered
its face into the dirt and started digging.
Within seconds its mandibles disappeared into the
soil, then its head, then what passed for its shoulders. Jenny
knelt there, watching it go. She had to resist an urge to help it
dig. Such pampering would do it no good in the long run, she
told herself.
When it was gone, Jenny began picking up handfuls
of leafs and rocks and dry twigs, and throwing them onto the
hole. Afterward, she pressed her ear against the ground and
listened. She thought she could still hear her baby burrowing,
reaching ever-deeper into the earth. Into dreams.
Jenny crawled out of the bush, wiped her clothes and
her face, sighed. She left the park and kept walking until she
came across a boulevard. She followed it and, eventually, it
led her to a bus stop–a nice one with a bench and a metal
roof. So she sat down.
And waited.

About M. B.:

Mijat Budimir Vujačić is an economist by trade,

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storyteller at heart. He is a published author of three horror
novels written in Serbian: Krvavi Akvarel, NekRomansa, and
Vampir. His stories appeared in SQ, Devolution Z,
Encounters, Acidic Fiction, Creepy Campfire Quarterly,
Under the Bed, and Infernal Ink magazines, as well as in
professional anthologies Toxic Tales, Silent Scream, The
Nightmare Collective, and The Worlds of Science Fiction,
Fantasy and Horror Vol1. He believes a strong work ethic is
the root of all success, and that it is best to err on the side of
action. A fan of all things horror, he is also an avid gamer,
hobby blogger, hookah enthusiast, and a staunch dog person.
He lives in Belgrade, Serbia. You can reach him via e-mail:
mbvujacic@gmail.com or follow him on twitter at:
www.twitter.com/MBVujacic

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The Watcher
by Douglas Ford

My failure to notice things in those days made me

easy prey. I barely noticed the invasion of Iraq for one thing,
and while my fellow students protested and fretted over how
much a gallon of gas would cost, I spent my energy trying to
keep Abby Sinclair from breaking up with me. If I could just
keep the relationship intact through college, I thought, we
would celebrate our graduation with a short engagement
followed by a modestly sized wedding. Never mind the
heated arguments, more and more frequent now, nor the
obvious anxiety she had about introducing me to her parents,
the source of her tuition and the weekly partying she could
never afford otherwise. Her father, it turned out, would not
approve of my brown skin, a prejudice she didn’t reveal at
first. It must have embarrassed her, I suppose, so she tried to
hide it. But I put things together over time by decoding code
words like “conservative” and “traditional.”
“You mean he’s not going to like imagining what his
virgin white daughter does with someone who looks like
me,” I said during what became our penultimate break-up
argument. This one happened on a weekend trip to Daytona
Beach, a tense trip that finally came to a head in a crowded
bar.
“Don’t—” she started to say, but I’d have none of it.
“I get it. Daddy wants to keep you to himself.” And
then I said something my parents taught me never to say.
Jake, no matter what kind of stupid shit white people say
about black people, never let the same kind of foolishness
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come out of your mouth. But still, I said it. I said, “I get how
white people are. Only way to keep it pure is to keep it in the
family.”
That did it. We broke up for good.
After that, I could no longer count us a couple. It felt
as if I had just pulled away the last fatal brick, and I could
only watch helplessly as the entire tower collapsed. Saying
little else, I left her in the bar where we had gathered with
her friends, and knowing that I couldn’t go back to the hotel
room, I walked to the beach, thinking I would sleep near the
water and take a bus back to campus in the morning. I had
enough to drink that I felt drunk, and the way the moonlight
rippled on the waves brought forth a rush of nausea. I sat
down in the sand, my back to the lights of the hotel, and
waited for the feeling to pass.
That’s when the veteran came up to me.
I didn’t see him until he appeared just a few feet
away. “Hey bro, drink a beer with me,” he said. He carried a
six-pack, and despite the humidity, he wore a green army
jacket. Normally, I wouldn’t accept alcohol from a white
stranger who crawled unbidden out of the darkness. All those
survival warnings from my parents no longer mattered that
night. Let him kill me, I thought. So full of self loathing, I
just didn’t care.
I took the beer he offered and sipped it. It was warm.
He opened one for himself and sat down in the sand near me.
“Just got back from the war,” he said.
I had no reply, but the beer obligated me to say
something.
“How was it?” I said.
“It was alright. Fucking nuts.” As I struggled to
untangle that contradiction, he went on. “Saw a woman
giving birth in the street, right there during the Battle of
Fallujah. Can you believe that shit?”
I took a sip from the bottle and said that no, I
couldn’t.
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He said, “Things blowing up, and she was just laying
there in the street, her legs spread open, screaming and shit.”
He paused to finish his beer in a single mighty chug. “I was
running, but I had to stop because I couldn’t believe it. You
could see a head trying to come out and everything.”
“Good thing you didn’t get blown up,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t but Gary Puett, that was another story.
Gary was my buddy. I got my head together and started
moving, but Gary, he was running behind me. He stopped
where I stopped just a second before, his face all concerned
and shit. ‘We gotta keep going, come on,’ I yelled to him,
but he just stopped dead in his tracks, there with dirt flying
up and shit. ‘We gotta do something,’ he yelled back, but I
kept waving him on.”
He took out another beer, twisted the top off, and
chugged half of it. Then he looked at me. Suddenly, he thrust
out his hand with his elbow cocked high. “Name’s Dave, by
the way.”
I extended my hand, and he clasped it with his
fingers up, not down, as if to say we were bros. His grip
briefly cut off the blood in my hand. I told him my name.
“Good to know you, Jake,” he said.
“So what happened to your friend?”
“You mean Gary? Shit.” He sipped from his bottle
and drew his knees up. “What do you think happened?” He
reached inside his pocket and drew forth something red and
compact—a pocket knife, I realized. He set the bottle down
and began playing with it, opening and closing the blades
inside.
The knife distracted me, sure, but now I wanted to
hear the rest of the story.
“Did the woman make it out okay? Her baby?”
“No, she didn’t make it out okay. Gary was my
buddy. Did I tell you that? I went to his wedding. I was his
best man. You want to know what old Gary did? He squatted
down there in the middle of that exploding street and took
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out his knife. I’m not talking about a pig-sticker like this one.
I’m talking about a real government-issue knife. I stood there
trying to get him to run, but he just yelled, ‘I gotta save the
baby!’ Don’t ask me what gave him the idea. I mean, that
motherfucker was no doctor. But know what he did? He took
that knife and stuck it into that lady’s stomach and started
carving away, her screaming the whole time in Arabic, and
before I knew it, he held it up in the air by the leg, like he’d
just caught a grouper or something. The baby was all
covered in blood, but crying. That’s when the mortar hit.”
Another chug from the bottle finished that one, and
he tossed it toward the surf.
“A big ole flame swallowed the three of them up.
The woman died, probably because of Gary’s nonexistent
surgical skills. Holding the baby up saved that arm, at least.
The rest of him—his other arm, his legs, everything else,
blown off. The crazy thing is that his skin and the baby’s—”
Here, he made a gesture I didn’t understand. “Like, fused
together.” He looked at me. “What do you think of that?”
I tried to return his gaze, but I had to turn away. The
water looked black.
“It’s fucked up,” I said.
Then he said the thing that put me on edge. That has
me on edge even today.
“I could cut you. Right now.”
In the dark, the knife waited for me like the tip of a
spider’s leg. He said this as if he had to struggle to hold
himself back.
The survival lessons of my parents come back to me
in such moments, moments that force me to concede my
stubborn belief that I lived in a world different from theirs. I
did what they taught me to do. I smiled. “You don’t want to
cut me,” I said. “I’m a nice guy.”
We listened to the breaking waves as he seemed to
consider my words.
“Yeah,” he said, finally, “you seem like a nice guy. I
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won’t cut you. Instead, I’m going to introduce you to
someone. Someone fine. You like white girls?”
Trying not to think of Abby Sinclair, I said that I did.
He gestured to the hotel behind us, on the ground
floor a bar bright with lights and music. “She’s in there. Hot
as shit. She likes coloreds, too. Come on.”
If the beer hadn’t dulled my senses by then, I might
have thought of a graceful way to avoid his company. Plus,
fear of the knife made me more agreeable than sensible.
Seeing the way he moved his crooked and gangly legs, I
thought again of a spider, but as I walked next to him, I
warmed to the idea of a girl’s company. I didn’t relish the
thought of loneliness, and besides a quick hook-up would
help me forget Abby Sinclair and her racist father. The fact
that my new friend referred to “coloreds”, a term that would
have enraged my parents, just meant he was a simpleton who
hadn’t been taught properly. The woman he promised to
show me would erase all infractions. I genuinely believed
this.
And at first, she did, with her skirt, her cleavage,
even the slight space gap between her front two teeth. With a
bumbling excitement that made him seem less dangerous,
Dave the Veteran introduced me to her, and he surprised me
by remembering my name. I learned her name–Brenda–and
as she shook my hand, she raised her eyebrows and made
sidewise glances at Dave to indicate she understood how
crazy he was and that she would save me from him.
Somehow, she distracted him away from our
conversation, at one point speaking to him out of earshot and
apparently sending him off for some meaningless task. At
one point, I glimpsed him talking to someone who looked
like the manager, and it looked like an angry conversation.
Knowing him well enough already, I assumed that he’d done
something to get himself into trouble—probably taking his
knife out again.
Because of Brenda, I didn’t care what happened to
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him. She extended our handshake longer than necessary and
touched me often. I tried not to stare at the way her breasts
challenged the capacity of her shirt, squeezing together at the
top to create a round, pale cleavage. I failed however, and
she noticed.
“I just got a boob job,” she said, as if to offer an
invitation to look without embarrassment. I did so, quickly,
and looked up to meet her smiling eyes. “What do you
think?”
“They look very nice,” I said.
“They feel real, too. Go on, touch them.” I hesitated.
I gazed around the bar, looking especially for Dave and his
knife, but he’d disappeared, probably thrown out for some
kind of misconduct. “Go on,” she said. So I did, in drunken
defiance of Abby Sinclair who no longer wanted me, not to
mention my parents who constantly tried to protect me from
a world they claimed would never accept me. I touched this
strange woman’s augmented breasts and felt their hardness,
putting forth every effort not to look aroused or astonished,
pretending that I had enough experience and knowledge that
I could give her an expert opinion. I squinted one eye and
furrowed my brow, causing her to laugh.
“They’re nice,” I said, although they had none of the
softness found on Abby Sinclair’s smaller chest, the only
other breasts I had ever touched.
“Nice? Just nice?”
“Okay, spectacular,” I said.
“So you say, so you say. I was thinking of letting
you get a better look, but now, I don’t know.” She laughed,
and once again I observed the gap in her front teeth. I wanted
to kiss her very much. It made no sense that I had touched
her breasts and not even kissed her yet. And I very much
wanted to do so. “I had a top notch doctor,” she said. “The
kind my husband would’ve called military pay-grade, and
trust me, he’d know. So you’re damn right–they’re fucking
spectacular.”
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Husband. Thanks to my beer buzz, this information
dampened my confidence just slightly, but enough to keep
me from registering her verb tense.
“I think I recognize you,” she said. “Are you on
Adult Finder?”
“No,” I said. “Are you?”
“Yep, I can give you contact info if you want. You
could look me up. I’m under couples.”
“You mentioned your husband. Is he—”
“Dead?” She laughed. “No, in fact, he’s here. Don’t
worry though. We have an open relationship. You sure I
don’t know you?”
“Pretty sure.” I struggled for a moment to think of
something to add. “I wish I knew you better,” I finally said.
“Well, come up then.” She hooked her arm in mine,
and she led me to the hotel’s elevator. “I guess you just look
like a lot of guys I’ve fucked.” My groin stirred when she
said that. “You’re just my type.”
“And what would that type be?”
Her eyes half closed, she licked her lips and brought
her mouth close to mine. We began kissing as the elevator
arrived. Her tongue probed my mouth as I felt the car begin
to ascend, and I looked up, concerned because neither one of
us had pressed the floor button. At that moment, I saw him.
Dave. He leaned against the wall of the elevator next
to the panel of buttons. Watching.
“Don’t mind me,” he said.
“Dave doesn’t like my boob job,” Brenda said.
“I never said that. Just said you didn’t need it.”
Brenda kept her arms around me as if sensing my
need to back away. I tried to keep Dave in my line of vision,
not liking how he managed to slip aboard the elevator
without me noticing. His eyes stayed fixed on Brenda. “I
didn’t know she was your wife,” I said.
Brenda laughed while Dave frowned. “Man, we ain’t
married. I told you.”
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“He’s definitely not my type,” Brenda said.
Dave gestured at his crotch. “You’d love to hit this.”
Brenda held up a middle finger and laughed.
“Nah, you’re a watcher.” Brenda nibbled my ear
lobe before whispering, “He’s a watcher. Everyone’s a
watcher. You still want to see my tits, right?”
Drunk on beer and the promise of something
forbidden, I said yes. The elevator stopped, but the door
didn’t open. Dave reached out with a hairy finger and started
jabbing the open door button, mumbling about how he didn’t
like closed spaces. The door remained shut, and Dave kept
pounding the button with a spidery finger so long and bent in
more places than seemed possible, as if it bore too many
joints for a normal human finger. He must’ve broken it and
not set it properly, I thought. Brenda caressed me and kissed,
but I felt my body go rigid with the fear that we would never
get off this elevator, and this crazed veteran with PTSD
would kill all of us.
But finally, the door opened.
“Our floor,” he said, and walked out into the
hallway. We followed.

***

We fell onto a bed covered with scattered laundry,

her on top of me, kissing me and straddling me. The room
smelled salty, worn, and smoky. Dave the veteran flopped
down on the chair across from us, grunting like he’d just
come home from a grueling day of work. I could feel him
watching as he opened another beer, and thinking about what
he had planned made me apprehensive. Did he expect to join
us? I hoped not, but my mind hearkened back to something
strange my dad said to me on the day of my high school
graduation.
Normally strict about how many glasses of wine he
drank, he had one too many and sat me down in the corner
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away from the rest of his party, his expression signaling one
of those you-need-do-know-this conversations. Son,
everyone’s going to want your dick, he said, and I’m not just
talking about white girls, either. You’ll see—white boys
spend way too much time worrying about what’s between
our legs. Some of it’s fear, but some of it’s something else. I
wrote that off to my father’s homophobia, something I could
never claim—never wanted to, in fact, but as Brenda worked
her way down my body, pulling up my shirt and unbuckling
my pants, I could feel the gaze of someone else.
My hands on top of her blond head, I watched as she
took me inside her mouth, astonished as she seemed to
swallow me up in a deeper way than Abby Sinclair ever
could—or would. I might have exploded right away if not for
the effects of the alcohol, as well as the uncomfortable
feeling of being watched.
I avoided looking in Dave’s direction. I didn’t want
to lose my concentration or risk losing the erection that
opened the back of Brenda’s throat. But I thought of his
knife and the possibility that I had stumbled into some kind
of scheme, a robbery maybe or an elaborate hate crime. I
looked out of the corner of my eye. Dave, to my relief, kept
his face turned in another direction, toward the door
separating us from an adjoining room. He appeared anxious,
worried.
Yet the feeling of being watched persisted. Brenda
stopped sucking me so she could pull off her top. “You still
want to see my new tits?” she said, and I said that I did, and
she pressed their hard points into my face as she straddled
me again, this time with all barriers removed—somehow she
had taken off her shorts without me noticing—and I felt her
wet slickness as she slid up and down on top of me.
As she shifted her position, I became aware of the
closet on the other side of the room, the door slightly ajar.
My paranoia wouldn’t go away. Now it seemed
probable that somewhere, inside that closet a camera filmed
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everything. Maybe I’d fallen in with some cheap, low-life
pornographers who didn’t even have the ethics to ask me to
sign a release statement. Still, I gripped Brenda’s hips as she
grinded up top of me with greater and greater urgency. I
didn’t even want to stop, even as I became more and more
certain that the feeling of being watched came from
something in there. Even the way she had positioned our
bodies on the bed seemed like design, intended to provide
the most gynecologically graphic view to the camera eye
hidden within. As she continued to grind she pressed the
palms of her hands down on my chest, and seemed close to
climaxing, when we both heard it.
The sound caused her to stop her motion and look at
me, as if seeing me for the first time. She looked different
too, older than I at first realized. We stayed frozen like that,
looking at each other, until she finally said, “Aw fuck,” and
dismounted in a way that made me feel like a horse.
The noise we heard sounded almost like a baby
crying, but more raspy, like air escaping through the pipes of
a broken commode.
Dave stood up at the same time she did, and he
blocked her from the door leading to the other room.
“Nope,” he said, “nope, nope, nope.”
“Goddammit,” she said. “I’ll take care of it. Just let
me by.”
“You got something else to take care of. This is my
responsibility. Mine. Your responsibility is there.”
I propped myself up on my elbows, watching this
exchange, unable to ignore the fact that when Dave said
responsibility, he seemed to gesture not at me, but toward
something further away.
Again, the closet.
He gave her a long look before opening the door just
wide enough to let himself through, closing it behind him.
The sound of a lock followed. Brenda returned to the bed,
but she pushed my hand away when I reached for her.
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Instead of climbing back on top, she began rummaging
through the clothes on the bed for clothes to dress herself
with. “I’m done,” she said.
“Listen—.” Unsure of what I’d just witnessed, I
didn’t reach for her again
“I don’t need to listen to nothing,” she said. “I do
nothing but listen.”
“That a baby?” I said. “In there? Your baby?”
“I don’t have any baby,” she said.
“I heard something,” I said. I started to stand, feeling
that the time to leave had come, but she wouldn’t allow that.
She stopped picking through the clothes and moved upon me
with speed and anger.
I expected her to hit or to scratch, but instead she
pushed me back onto the bed, swinging her legs around and
sliding back down on top of me. “I know what you want,”
she said, “I know what all you fuckers want.” Reaching
between her legs, she slipped my dick back inside her, then
leaned forward to bring her lips close to my ear. She pressed
down and took me deep while she whispered. “This is all a
show,” she said, “but I’m done with it. I decided that tonight,
down there in the bar while I was talking to you. Decided
that I was going to smother him with a pillow.” My dick
softened, but she didn’t seem to notice and continued to
grind as she whispered. “You got a room, right? I’ll fuck you
in your room with no one watching. Just let me go there with
you tonight.”
I whispered back to her. I thought she didn’t want
Dave to hear from the other room. “A show, you said. For
Dave? He makes you do this?”
“Not for Dave. Fuck Dave. For my husband. There’s
no other way for him to get off. Not anymore. You come
yet?” She continued to grind against me even though I
slipped out of her moments before. I lied to her, saying that
yes, I had come. “Good. Help me do the thing with the
pillow, and I’ll fuck you again.” When she spoke again, she
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did so without the whisper. “That felt good. Now I have to
pee.” She kissed me without any passion and stood up. I
watched the way she looked at the closet as she walked to
the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Still naked but now full of anger, I stood up and
regarded the closet. I had no intention of helping her smother
someone with a pillow. All this on film, too. She probably
wanted to convince me to do it and get it on film. I would
take the cassette out of the camera, or better yet, I thought as
I took the handle of the closet’s louvered door, I’d take the
camera itself. With that, I opened it.
I opened all the way and saw inside.
Clothes caught my attention first. The closet at first
appeared to contain nothing but clothes, but unlike the piles
of dirty laundry on the bed, these were neatly hanging suits,
all black in color, many of them covered in clear plastic
marked with the name of a dry cleaner. Hanging near one of
them I found a mask with wooly hair, its cartoon visage
molded to look like the caricature of an African warrior,
complete with a bone through the nose. I reached out to
touch it. At first I expected it to feel like rubber—a cheap
Halloween mask—but I felt a momentary pang of fear that it
would feel like real flesh, someone’s skinned face.
Before I could touch it, I noticed what lay on the
floor.
At first I thought it was a Halloween decoration,
something like the mask.
Then, I realized that it was moving. It was alive.
The glinting thing I saw earlier was no camera. It
was an eye, a human eye, attached to the stump of a scarred,
ruined being. Whorled scars marked what remained of its
flesh, and it bore only one arm, which it raised to me as if in
supplication. That lone arm told me what I was seeing. I
imagined the street erupting into flames as this once-whole
person held up a baby freshly cut from its womb, the flesh of
both bodies sizzling and blending so that someone had to cut
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them apart later. I knew then what lay beyond, in that other
room, and I didn’t want to see it, just as I didn’t want to see
the closet’s occupant. I could free him, I thought—but then
he smiled, and a gob of drool ran down his face. I realized
what that meant and why they had positioned the door the
way they had. All of this amounted to a show for the watcher
in the closet.
The toilet flushed, and I knew I had to move fast.
He could read it in my face, my intention to run, and
he opened his mouth as if to scream, but nothing came up.
He lifted his raw, crooked arm as if he could stop me, but I
rushed my clothes back on and made it to the door just as
Brenda was coming back into the room, her arm lifting in a
way that mirrored her husband inside the closet, her mouth
opening with a word that had no time to get out as I stepped
outside and closed the door behind me.
On the other side of the door, I used my weight to
hold it closed as she pushed back from the other side. I could
hear her curse and grunt as she struggled to get to me, and I
no longer cared about what she wanted from me—to hurt me
or to escape with me. Somehow I knew that if I let the door
swing open, I would never again free myself of her.
Strangely enough, I began to think of Abby Sinclair—how in
all those fights we had, she secretly just wanted to get rid of
me, but I’d become something she could never just banish on
the other side of the door the way I’d just done to Brenda. I
should have felt pity, I realized—pity not just for that
trapped woman, but for the scarred wreck reduced to
watching her fuck strangers in the closet.
It came back to me then, what she said about
smothering him with a pillow.
I stopped holding the door, thinking it would fly
open. I would go back inside and take all the pillows from
the room. Take them all away so she couldn’t hurt anyone.
But the pressure from the other side had stopped.
From the other side came an awful silence.
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I tried the door handle, but of course it didn’t open. It
locked automatically, and I had no key.
I tapped gently at first. Then I rapped harder. I called
her name over and over.
When the door finally opened, Dave stood on the
other side. He used his body to hold the door open as he
dragged something toward the doorway.
“Help with this, will you?” he said.
I looked at what he dragged toward the threshold—a
bag made of dirty white fabric. A laundry bag. What it held
though made it difficult for him to lift.
“I said to help me, goddammit.” He nodded toward
the trash chute by the elevator.
When I still failed to move, he said, “Motherfucker, I
fought for your freedom. Now, help me out. It’s just laundry.
Dirty clothes.”
Together we struggled to pull the bag toward the
latched door of the chute. Dave pulled it open, and together
we managed to get the bag inside. I could feel the contours
of what the bag held. It did have clothes—I could feel those
—but it felt heavy, just too heavy.
“This isn’t laundry, man,” I said.
Dave didn’t answer. He struggled to stuff the bag all
the way in. Finally, it cleared the opening, and we both
waited for the sound of it striking the bottom of the shaft
below. I heard nothing, but maybe Dave did. He nodded,
satisfied, at something I couldn’t detect.
“That wasn’t laundry,” I said, again.
“Come back in and check,” he said. “The bed’s
cleared off. All sent to the cleaners.”
In the open door, Brenda reappeared. She leaned
against the door jam, naked and smiling. Her left eye looked
funny. It appeared puffy and red.
“Come on in and let me finish you off.”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
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“No, thanks,” I repeated, but she had already
disappeared inside the room.
“Not coming in then?” said Dave.
“No, thanks.”
“Then, we need to settle up. You understand, right?”
At first, I didn’t. When I said nothing, Dave brushed
his thumb against his middle finger. Money. I owed him
money.
I took out my wallet and began counting the little
money I had left, only forty eight dollars. As I held it out to
him, the door opened again. Still naked, Brenda resumed her
position in the doorway.
But now she wore the mask I saw hanging in the
closet. It had a grotesque red grin that held my gaze. I
couldn’t look away, even as Dave took the money from my
hand and walked back to the door. She stood aside and let
him by. Her hand went up and waved to me as she let the
door close between us. It closed slowly, and she kept her
face in sight, the grotesque grin that could have been made
with blood. Eventually, the door closed all the way, finally
removing her from my sight.

About Douglas:

Douglas Ford lives in Southwest Florida, just off an

exit made famous by a Jack Ketchum story. His previous
works of dark fiction have appeared in Wicked Hollow, Poe
Little Thing, Cthulhu Sex, as well as other small press
publications. Most recently, his stories have appeared in
anthologies published by Big Pulp and A Murder of
Storytellers, along with Cracked Eye, a digital magazine. He
shares his home with his wife, who provides him with loving
support, while his cats merely tolerate him. The various
reptiles in the house watch him warily.

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Angels Aliens and

Archetypes
by Paul Jones

Lights in the clouds, cast from virtual gods

probe the thick black night with searching blue-white shafts.
Celestial beings with anomalous forms
emerge from the fiery heavens–
their deep dark eyes reflect human forms recoiling in terror.
Inhuman hands caress virgin thighs
inflicting cruel desires upon a writhing body.
Unholy seraphs and liars from the stars–
they surf the cosmos in chariots of fire
spreading a false gospel to any who will receive them.
They have been among us since the beginning of time
Angels…Aliens…and Archetypes.

About Paul:

Paul has been writing poetry since 1992 and his

work has appeared in a number of publications and
anthologies over the years. His prose are often dark and
haunting as well as thought provoking. Paul first became
interested in the macabre as a boy, when his grandfather
would spin frightening yarns at sunset about haunted
landscapes, creatures of the night and things undead. Those
long ago days were the acorn that shaped his life in later
years. Paul is now a professional author and Tarot card

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reader who makes his living immersed in the realms of the
spiritual and supernatural. Paul was born in upstate, NY and
now resides in the beautiful Ulster County area with his
family.

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Until Next Time

For more information about Infernal Ink Magazine,
submission guidelines and more, visit us on the web at:
www.hydramstar.com/Infernal_Ink.html

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