416

  “Hello Mousey.” She seemed to know that wasn’t quite right. The rat resumed his drinking while she watched.

  The child whimpered and picked up the bottle, sucking the last drops from it. Dismayed, the rat squealed and leapt after his food source. Squeezing between the bars of the cot, he found himself staring into the eyes of his tormentor.

  I don’t want to hurt you, I just want the milk. He knew she couldn’t understand him, but the ache in his belly had to be appeased. The child stared back at him and continued to suck. At last, she cast the empty bottle aside. The rat sniffed around the teat, licking in vain. The little girl lay down and slept again.

  Her chin is flecked with droplets. I could have those. No-one is here to stop me.

  He crept towards the drowsy child and licked the milk from her chin. Her pudgy little fingers stroked between his ears until finally, warm and comforted he fell asleep locked in her embrace – a grotesque parody of a teddy bear.

  When Maria came in to the nursery to investigate why her little one was sleeping late, she smiled indulgently as she removed the bloodstained quilt from the cot.

  “Joe, I need some help cleaning up,” she yelled. “It’s in the cot. I can’t see what she’s done with the head this time, but she’s got real case of ‘morning breath’.”

  Joe looked at his stepdaughter who was now awake and smiling, reaching for him.

  “In a bit, sweetie.” He said. “Mummy’s gonna give you a bath and help you brush your teeth while Daddy sorts out this mess.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Spiders

  By WiSpY

  Eight legs?

  A hairy body and multi-faceted eyes?

  Creepy multi-jointed limbs that move with a wave that conjures visions of swarms of their writhing forms enveloping you?

  What exactly is it about spiders that scare most people shitless?

  Harry Greitz loved spiders. He’d kept countless terrariums over the past twenty five years. A proper aracnophile he was, and proud of it. He took great pleasure back in the early years in showing off Caligula, his Theraposa Blondi with his eleven inch leg span to visitors to his house. That was back in day alright. Back in the day when they used to visit him willingly. So many visitors he used to have and it was like he was the curator of the world’s best zoo … see the deadly brown recluse, the Mexican Red Tarantula, the mighty Caligula, who feasted on live birds in the wild.

  First it was just the neighbourhood kids who came, but soon he started getting adult visitors, fascinated to see his home, the walls piled high with the glass encased arachnids. He’d thought about creating a theme park but he city shut him down.

  Then Larry had arrived.

  Harry couldn’t remember who had left Larry for him, but it had been a busy afternoon when the plain wooden box was discovered in the parlour … in front of Caligula’s terrarium, how fitting …

  Larry was unlike anything Harry had ever seen. He’d been bigger than Caligula, even back then and Larry knew he’d been just a baby then. He’d built him a bathtub sized terrarium and placed it in the bathroom. He’d put a chicken wire lid across the top. Then he’d invited the neighbours in.

  It was little Albert Rhineholt who first showed Harry why Larry was really different. Harry found Albert after everyone else had left for the day. He was dead on the bathroom floor and Larry was having a good old feed sitting right there on his chest, slurping up the gooey aftermath of his venom’s work. Harry knew it wasn’t Larry’s fault, he was just doing what nature had intended. Luckily, Larry had totally ingested Albert by daybreak when the police first arrived.

  He’d had to make a stronger cage and this time he put it in the basement.

  Good thing, because Larry had gotten bigger; dog sized.

  And stronger.

  And hungrier.

  The hairs of Larry’s feet had been protruding from under the door for a few hours now.

  One of them had to go hunting.

  CHAPTER 52

  Handy Man

  By Living Challenged

  "I love you."

  His hand, calloused and soiled, held her face, caressing her silken cheek with his thumb. She turned her face and kissed his palm. He roamed further, into her soft locks, entwining the masses around his swollen fingers.

  "I wish you would tell me what you're thinking. Do you love me?"

  Silence.

  He released his grip on her raven hair and returned to her face, tracing the contours of her nose and lips until his hand rested on her tender young throat. The hollow of her neck was damp from the misty night air.

  "Please. Tell me that you love me. I need to know."

  Still he gave no reply. The only sounds in the dark were the shallow breaths she took between petitions, punctuated by an occasional sob.

  Ignoring her pleas, his hand continued its investigation of her feminine form, finding its way to the top of her gown and sliding beneath the edge. He gripped the garment firmly and tugged.

  "No!" She flung his hand from her bosom, and several bone buttons on her dress shot across the porch, spinning or rolling in circles until coming to rest on the oak planks. Her breasts heaved beneath her exposed undergarments.

  A pen and scroll lay on the table next to her, and she slammed her hand on the parchment.

  "If you can't tell me, write it. Say you love me or not. My heart and body is yours either way, but I must know."

  When he didn't move she scooped his hand into hers and brought it to her lips, afraid she had angered him with her outburst. She placed his hand on the paper and pressed his palm against it. The vellum was soft against his rough skin, and he moved his hand over it, caressing it as he had done with her, but he didn't move to take the pen.

  Frustrated, she dipped the pen in ink and placed it between his fingers, wrapping them around the writing tool as if he were a child.

  "Please."

  "My dearest darling Seraphine," he wrote. "Were my heart mine to give, I would gladly place it in your loving care. But alas, it is taken by another. I can only offer my tender caresses and gentle touch, but know this. If yours were the eyes I had first looked into, I would not have lost my head over Jacquie."

  Seraphine placed his hand in its wooden box and locked it tight, satisfied at last.

  CHAPTER 53

  Intermission

  By Splinker

  Here endeth the contest entries. It was a bright and sunny Saturday morning when I received the last entry. I had just finished putting down the last bag of lime down in the cellar when mother started bitching about all the time I waste on Authonomy.

  “If you spent as much time looking for a girl as you do on that damned website, I’d be a grandmother by now. Jesus wept, you are a sorry excuse for a son sometimes Norman.”

  “My name’s Splinker, mother. You know that. And I just haven’t met the right woman yet.” I was halfway up the stairs, on my way to check on the entries and announce that voting was to begin. But mother wouldn’t let things lie of course. She always has to push.

  “No of course not. The only women you keep time with these days don’t have a lot to offer in the companion department, do they?”

  Then that laugh. That laugh of hers that always makes me want hurt myself a little.

  “Don’t talk about them like that mother. They are all special to me, you know that.”

  “Like I’m special, Norman? Are they –“

  “Please don’t call me that mother. My name –“

  “Don’t you interrupt me, boy! You may be Mr. cat’s meow with those other layabouts and whores, but down here you’re just a thankless son who brings misery and shame to his poor mother. So don’t you dare take that tone with me.”

  “I’m sorry mother. But I just have to log on and move the contest a long a little. Then I’ll come back down and we can have a nice little chat. I promise.”

  “Oh, you’ll be back. But it won?
??t be to talk to me. We both know that Norman. We know why you come down here. We know why you stay. And it’s not for your poor mother, God knows.”

  “Mother, please. My friends are waiting. They all worked very hard. Just let me get the voting started and then I’m all yours, I promise.”

  That laugh again. Nails on a chalkboard.

  “Oh, Judas Priest, lucky me. My good for shiftless son is going to come play with mommy when he’s done playing Mr. Bigshot with his computer friends. What’s wrong with those people any way? Why would anyone want to spend time “talking” to someone like you?”

  “Mother..”

  “Go ahead then, Norman. Go ‘play.’ Not like you’re good for much else. We’ll be here waiting.”

  “Yes Mother.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Last Man Standing

  By Richard Maitland

  The unburied dead lay rotting where they fell.

  The purple fog had first been detected on the western margins of the Pacific, half a world away.  Brief mention of it on the television news channels attracted no interest.  Apart from meteorologists who puzzled over it and concluded it was further evidence of global warming, no one much cared. 

   Until it started to drift west.

  When it reached the oil countries, America began to panic.  Would this push up the price of gasoline?  Opinions were traded in bars, round the water dispenser:  “But, hey – ain’t that where that motherfucker Bin Laden hangs out. Woo-hoo!  Payback time!”  But as the fog continued on its course, America – isolated from reality by the hugeness of its fortress – took refuge in denial.  “It can’t come here.  This is America.  We’re special.  It can’t come here.” 

   When it reached Africa, this changed to: “And even if it does, we’ll be ready.” Supermarkets were emptied, schools closed, the President went to his bunker, and America battened down the hatches.  They could sit it out.  Whatever it was.

   Whatever it was, smothered Asia, smothered Europe, and everyone died.   And the cloud continued west.

   It rolled over the sea, and poisoned the bayous; polluted the Everglades.  It swirled up the Hudson River.  It licked the base of the Statue of Liberty.  It did not discriminate.  Blacks, Whites, Hispanics; Jews, Catholics, Protestants and atheists; the rich in their mansions, the poor in their huddled tenements – all, all were obliterated.  It seeped in round window-frames, down chimneys, through elevator shafts, under doors.  There was no escape.

  The purple haze continued west, Death in the vanguard; deadening prairies, choking the redwoods, silencing every singing bird.  It swept over the greatest country in the world and killed everyone in it. 

   Everyone, except for Justin Blakemore.

   He sat, where he had sat for two days now, on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest, rocking slightly.  It would not be long before his food gave out.  And when the faucets ran dry he would have, at best, a few days of painful pointlessness. 

  Justin got slowly to his feet.  Better to do it while he still had wits and strength enough.

   He opened a window.  The stench of the dead on the sidewalk thirty floors below reached his nostrils.  He climbed onto the windowsill. 

   Jumped.

  And as he fell, arms outstretched, embracing death, he heard -- through an open window several floors below – the insistent ringing of a telephone.

  CHAPTER 55

  Lady Chatterly’s Zombie

  By Lisa Scullard

  The woman! If she could be there with him, and there were nobody else in the world! The desire rose again, his loins began to stir like a live man’s. At the same time an oppression, a dread of exposing himself and her to that outside Thing that sparkled viciously in the electric lights, weighed down his shoulders. She, poor young woman, was just a youthful, alive female creature to him; but a young female creature who he had gone into and whom he desired again.

   

   Driven by desire and by dread of the malevolent Thing outside, he made his round in the wood, slowly, softly. He loved the darkness and folded himself into it. It fitted the turgidity of his desire which, in spite of all, was like riches; the stirring restlessness of undead flesh, the fire in his groin!

   

   She had lain still, in a kind of sleep, always in a kind of sleep. The activity, the orgasm was his, all his; she could strive for her own no more. Even the tightness of his arms around her, even the intense movement of his body, the lock of his teeth against her throat, and the springing of his un-death into her, was all a kind of sleep from which she could not begin to rouse.

   

   It had been a queer obedience with which she had stretched out on the blanket and offered herself to him. His soft, groping, helplessly desirous hand had touched her body, feeling for her face, a lock of her hair. He stroked her cheek, with infinite soothing and assurance, and at last, the soft touch of a kiss.

   

   For her part, Constance had wondered as he lay in the aftermath against her breast, why? Why was this necessary? Why had it lifted a great cloud from her and given her peace? Was it real? Was it real?

   

   Her tormented female brain still had no rest, even as it seeped out onto the pillow. Was it real? And she knew, if she gave herself to him, that it was; but if she kept herself to herself, it was not. She would be old; millions of years old, she felt. And she could bear the burden of herself no longer. She was to be had for the taking. To be had for the taking.

   

   The man lay motionless. What was he feeling? What was he thinking? She did not know. She must only wait; she did not dare break his mysterious stillness.

  CHAPTER 56

  It’s In The Bag

  By Joe Kovacs

  Okay, she’s shallow and a bit weird, but she’s amazingly well-stacked. I can forgive a woman anything if she’s got great tits.

  What does she see in me? Oh, I don’t care. It’s not every day your mister average Joe, bank manager, gets it on with a catwalk queen.

  This is one hell of a blind date. First she snogs me, before we’ve even said ‘hello’, and then she tells the waiter she wants a private booth, so that we can ‘get to know each other.’

  I’ve never got to ‘know’ someone so quick in my life!

  The conversation, what there was of it, was charged with nuance. ‘I’ve got a cat, his name is Kevin,’ I stuttered. ‘I’ve got a pussy, do you want to stroke it?’ she replied huskily.

  There was only one answer to that.

  So here we are, in her kinky little bedsit with its strobes and its pole, and I’m about to become her sex toy...

  *

  Oh good, he’s in the shower.

  Can’t wait for him to come out.

  I’ve got a little surprise.

  Now, where is it? This bloody purse is like a rucksack. Too many pockets, can’t find a thing.

  Okay, that’s better. Out with the whip and mask, and out with the pink fluffy handcuffs. Hmmm...pink?...that’s so last year. Got to get me some black leather ones. Never goes out of style, does black. Now, what are these gloves doing here? Oh yes, I’ll need those later on, to ‘clean up’. Got to clean up, don’t I. Mustn’t be a dirty girl. Though I am a dirty girl, aren’t I? He really liked it when I tickled his nuggets back in the bar. Bet he doesn’t get a lot of that on a first date, ha! Told me I was smoking hot, and offered me a fag. Cigarettes...disgusting. I can still smell his fag breath on me, horny toad. Oh good, here’s my mints...that’ll be the first thing I pop in his mouth. The second will be me. But what’s this? My phone? I thought I’d lost that. Hmmm...fifteen messages, and all of them from Ralph. Okay, dude, I’m on it, no need to panic. You’ll get your money. Just as soon as I’ve had my fun...

  Oh, here’s Mister Bank Manager now, pink as a baby and just as shiny-clean.

  And here’s what I’ve been looking for all along. My extra-large sharpened screwdriver.
br />   Mmmm...time for my favourite part of the date.

  CHAPTER 57

  Unlucky

  By Gretchen Steen

  “The dew on my skin, lying under the predawn sky, I waited for the warming sun. A beautiful day lies ahead, amongst my friends, the brisk air and sunshine. I do remember the brief saffron flower that shriveled and swiftly fell away. The open spaces have become cluttered and my family is growing ever faster.”

  “Oh, not the evil crows again, to peck and scratch and devour. There must be something out there, to relieve this weary soul. My shiny curves and broad middle will surely please someone, but here, they will not find me.”

  “Here he comes, machete in hand, I guess it’s time to go. Brush my bottom, my vine like arms lay wasted. Off we go, I’m so very happy, to the big, wide world. Now I see I’m not alone, ‘hello Fritz and George and Manuel’. Off we go, on a bumpy ride, to where I’m still not certain.”

  “One by one, we’re carried away, and put in a disheveled heap. They come and probe and prod us, but we don’t utter a peep. Then up I go, oh joy I’m saved, away from that rowdy bunch.”

  “A little boy, named Tommy, had taken me for his own. His sister Lil had cried and sobbed until Fritz was taken too. ‘Hurry now, time is wasting’ I heard a voice behind me.”

  “With that voice, a strange satisfaction did come. Quickly, and with precision, the scalpel did its work. In and out, its blade cut repeatedly into my lustrous skin. I felt no pain only pleasure. Then scraping and gouging, my insides were gone. How can I possibly go on?”