Author: Brian Asman
Date: 2020-12-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: epub
Description: From the demented minds of Bizarro authors Danger Slater and Brian Asman comes Boinking Bizarro, an anthology of weird literary parodies. You’ve never seen the classics quite like this. We’ve taken that old, musty canon and dressed it up in lace, leather, and lipstick. Wowza! In Boinking Bizarro, a glory hole attendant seeks to give his wife the family she deserves, a time-traveling professor gives blind poet John Donne a hand, a slick serial killer gets the tables turned on that ass, a PI delves into the mysterious goings-on at a whorehouse, the forgotten erotic ouevre of Alfred Horsecock is
Publisher: Death's Head Press

BOINKING BIZARRO
© 2020 Death’s Head Press
All rights reserved

Death’s Head Press
150 Pleasant Street #306
Houston, Texas
www.DeathsHeadPress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-19502-5936-6

Cover art: Jim Agpalza
Book layout: Lori Michelle
Typeset and redesign: Son Agia

DANGER SLATER

THE CRAVEN
by Edgar Allan Pole

Once upon a midnight dreary

I was thumbing my way through the Sears catalog

That came in the mail earlier that afternoon.

I was curious to see what kind of deals they had going on.

I needed new trousers.

My last pair were getting worn out

But I’d been putting off buying new ones because,

To be honest, finances were pretty tight.

So I was flipping through the pages

Checking out the housewares, the luggage,

All the different types of furniture I couldn’t afford,

When I came across the underwear section in the back.

There were pictures of all these women in their bra and panties,

Staring up at me from the page.

Most of them were pretty good looking,

And they weren’t supermodel thin either.

They had ‘real’ bodies. I liked that. I preferred it.

And I couldn’t help myself, I started to get a bit frisky.

It had been a while since I had gotten laid.

In fact, I hadn’t been with anyone, woman or man,

Since my girlfriend Lenore unexpectedly died.

Lenore was really hot. A bit thicc herself.

She probably could’ve modeled underwear for Sears too, if she wanted.

But alas, a few months ago she slipped on a banana peel

And fell into a giant vat of sulfuric acid and melted.

I told her not to get a job as a janitor at that sulfuric acid manufacturing plant.

“It’s too dangerous!” I said. “And you know how much you love bananas!”

But she said to me “Someone has got to pay the bills around here, Edgar,

And you’re certainly not gonna do it with your gothy little horror poems.”

She was actually pretty rude about it, in retrospect.

Like, I am not above constructive criticism,

But maybe try to soften the blow a bit?

Like, if you’re gonna give someone notes on something they wrote

Try the ‘compliment sandwich’ approach:

A thing you liked—a thing they can improve on—and another thing you liked.

Anyway, as I was unbuckling my worn out trousers

And getting ready to . . . *ahem* . . . lube the tube, so to speak,

This random raven showed up outside my house

And started rapping on my chamber door.

How quaint and curious, I thought.

I didn’t even know ravens could rap on doors, physiologically-speaking.

I took an ornithology class at the local college a couple of years back

And we had a whole section on North American Corvidae

So I knew for a FACT that ravens didn’t have hands with which to knock on doors.

Corvidae is the taxonomic name for the raven family, by the way,

Which also includes crows, magpies, jays, rooks, and over 120 other species.

Actually, now that I think about it,

It was probably way more likely the raven was pecking at my chamber door

Not rapping on it.

But either way, I opened it up and this bird was just sitting there

Looking at me all weird.

“Go away, you wretched creature!” I cursed at it.

“Can’t you see that I’m feeling SUPER HORNY and SUPER SAD over my dead Lenore?

All I want is some alone time with my Sears catalog

Without your creepy, judgmental gaze upon me.

Let me lube the tube in peace!”

The raven just raised its eyebrow and said to me, “Nevermore.”

“Nevermore?” I said.

“Yeah. NEVER-MORE. You got wax in your ears?” it said.

“No, I heard you just fine,” I said. “I’m merely confused as to what it’s supposed to mean.”

And the raven replied, “Look dude, I’m just a bird. It’s just the thing I say. Ca-caw!”

And I said, “Oh, that’s kinda a bummer.

I thought maybe you were some kind of metaphor for loss,

Or the inevitability of death, or something along those lines.

I was hoping you’d be able to offer me some kind of insight into the human condition.”

And the raven said, “Again, I’m a bird, so I don’t quite understand the symbolism here.”

“Well, what are you unclear on?” I asked it. “Maybe I can help clarify things.

I’m kind of a poet, you see. Or rather, an amateur poet, I should say.

I haven’t sold much of my work.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” it said.

“Excuse me?” I indignantly replied.

And the raven said “Not to be a dickhead,

But if our interaction thus far is any indication,

I’d say you’re most likely having problems connecting with an audience

Because your meter sucks

And your words don’t rhyme.”

And I said, “Oh great, now I’m getting lambasted by a goddamn crow.

Have you ever heard of a ‘compliment sandwich’?”

And the raven said “Look, homey, I’m just here to tell you

That no one wants to read your tired emo crap, okay?

You want to make money at this? Write about SEX. Sex is what SELLS!”

“Ugh. Lowest common denominator crap,” I scoffed.

“I am an ARTIST, you dumb bird, not a smutpeddler!

I write about REAL EMOTION. I answer to a HIGHER CALLING!”

“Dude, it’s midnight and you’re sitting here jacking off to the Sears catalog

And crying over your dead girlfriend like some kind of cuck.

If this is your ‘higher calling’ then maybe being an artist ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

The raven made a good point, I had to admit.

Maybe I should do something more bankable with my meager talents.

Maybe I should start writing porn parodies instead of these pathetic poems

About my lost Lenore.

I don’t know what kind of fiction you’re into,

But let me ask you this:

Are you more likely to pick up a book called

The Pit and the Pendulum,

Or The Pit and the Perineum?

The Fall of the House of Usher,

Or The Balls in the Mouth of Gusher?

The Tell-Tale Heart,

Or The Tell-Tale Boner?

Alright, that last one wasn’t very clever.

But being clever isn’t the point.

The point is, if you’re reading this it means I already got your money,

And in the end, that’s what’s really important here.

Right?

RIGHT?!?

CHANDLER MORRISON

MY COCK ALSO RISES
by Ernest Lee Humpingaway

People are always asking me about my junk.

Their inquiries are sometimes jeering, more than a little cruel. Other times they’re timid, embarrassed. Mostly they’re blithely, unabashedly forthright.

“Does it look gross?” they’ll ask, their eyes shamelessly dipping toward my crotch.

“So, it doesn’t work at all?”

“Did you lose the pillar or the stones? Or both? Neither?”

“Can I see it?”

“Do you have to sit down when you urinate?”

These questions come from friend and foe alike, and—with greater frequency—from complete strangers. How everyone—in the world, it would seem—came to know of my pitiful war injury is beyond me. I’ve never been secretive about it, nor do I advertise it with any sort of abandon. I wear the tragedy not so much on my sleeve, but in my heart. I suppose in some ways, perhaps, that makes it painfully apparent.

In any case, their questions don’t bother me. How could they, when the true struggle comes from the very object of their curiosity? To live each day subjected to the common toils of man without the opportunity for man’s basest release—the anguish is eternal. God Himself is justified in the endless torment of His subjects only because they can hide briefly from Him in the arms of each other.

I do not have that hiding place. I am a shell-less snail, unprotected from the elements. By forever softening my dick, God has abandoned me in the cruelest way He knows how.

“God,” Brett says, startling me from my reverie as if she’d been alongside me within it. “I don’t know why I do this to myself.”

We’re on the bed in my hot hotel room, sweating and naked and unsatisfied, always unsatisfied. The Lady Brett Ashley, ever the embodiment of her title with her regal curves and the affected lilt of her voice, sits astride me like a diffident queen in repose. The sunlight seeping through the open window frames her short golden hair in an ironic halo.

“I don’t know either,” I say, averting my gaze, looking at everything but her. Anything but her.

She groans and grinds against my useless dick. Her hands burrow into my hair, and then she sighs and rolls off me. She takes my cigarettes from the nightstand and lights one, sitting up against the headboard, not looking at me. Not looking at my ruined cock.

As my eyes dart around the room, they fall on the paper sack in the corner. The sack contained an impulsive purchase from several afternoons ago, when I’d stumbled into a novelty shop, drunk and confused after the bullfight. I’ve thought little about what happened—did anything happen?—as I’d stood sipping Pernod with Brett and Robert Cohn and Mike Campbell while the matador engaged in his majestic, violent ritual with the grunting beast. I’d been very tight—we’d all been tight—and surely whatever I’d thought had happened was purely my absinthe-stoked imagination. Surely, indeed, but not so surely as to keep me from making that strange purchase afterward, with the intent of procuring a prostitute and then … trying something.

Yes, that had been the intent, but a sounder mind had prevailed as the Pernod wore off and exhaustion set in, and I’d largely forgotten about it until now.

“Jake?” Brett asks, and I feel her regarding me with something like suspicion. I look over at her. She’s gazing at me through the haze of smoke, her chin slightly upturned and her cigarette hand tilted elegantly at the wrist. “You’re thinking about something.”

“I’m always thinking. Everyone’s always thinking.”

She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean, darling. There’s something on your mind. Something you want to bring up. Something you’re … ” She trails off. “I can’t tell, exactly. Something you’re … afraid of, I think.”

I look back at the paper sack, thinking about the bull.

The bull.

Yes, something had happened that day. I can blame it on the absinthe, or call it a delusion invoked by the sun or the heat, but I’d be lying to myself. It had been the bull. Something about its sleek and shining fur, the taut swell of its muscles. The animal rage in its fevered eyes. Something had … something had caused a …

A stirring.

A stiffening.

“Jake?” Brett asks again, more urgently. “Darling, talk to me.”

I sigh and sit up, reaching over and taking her cigarette. I take a drag , staring at it contemplatively as it burns between my fingertips before I hand it back to her. “Do you love me?” I ask.

“Oh, God, Jake, let’s not do this again. You know I love you, but there’s Mike to think about. I love him, too. And now there’s this thing with Romero, whom I also love, and you see, of course, there’s the thing about your dick. Namely, it does not work.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But…” My eyes drift once more to the paper sack, and Brett’s gaze follows.

“Jake, no, don’t tell me you went and bought more of those witch doctor potions. You remember how much blood there was last time. And that business with the leeches … ” She shudders.

“No,” I say. “It’s nothing like that. Not this time.” I think of the bull, can almost feel its hot breath on my neck, and now I shudder. “This time I want to try something different.” I get out of bed and walk over to the sack, picking it up and holding it to my chest, almost protectively. The paper crinkles.

“Jake,” Brett says softly, crushing out her cigarette and leaning forward. “What’s in the bag?”

There had been so much power in the bull’s movements. So much strength and determination, so much sheer will. And the horns. God, the horns. The sensuous slope of their curves, those deadly ivory points.

“I have something for you,” I say, my voice trembling. “We’ve tried a lot of things. We’ve tried so many things, but we haven’t tried this.” With unsure steps, I advance to the bed and take the item out of the sack, presenting it to Brett like an offering. I suppose, in a way, it is.

“I … I’m not sure I understand,” says Brett, narrowing her eyes at the item. She takes it with visible trepidation, turning it over in her hands, holding it at a distance from her body as though it might bite her. “You want me to … what? Put this on?”

I try to speak, but my mouth is dry and my throat is locked up, so all I can do is nod.

“And you think that will … what, Jake? You think that will get you hard?”

I shrug and then, sheepish, nod again. Licking my lips and clearing my throat, I say, “It might not … it might not be enough to just wear it. You might have to … well, um, you might have to act.”

Sighing and chewing her lower lip, she puts on the headband with visible reluctance. Standing, she walks over to mirror on the bureau and examines her reflection, running her hands over the crude plastic horns curving out from her head.

I put my hand on my cock and begin to stroke.

Turning back to me, Brett looks at my groin and raises an eyebrow. “Is it … is it working?”

“Not yet. I told you. You have to … act.”

“Act like … what?”

Impatient, I say, “Maybe, um, get down on all fours. You know. Like a … like a bull.” I continue to stroke, but my cock is still flaccid.

“God, Jake, this is too weird,” she says. But, bless her, she complies. She gets on her hands and knees on the shag carpet.

“Shit,” I say, a little breathless. “I think something is happening.” Indeed, my dick feels … meaty in a way it hasn’t in a long time. Not hard, but definitely … thicker.

Possibly spurred on by what this might mean, something changes in Brett. She looks up at me and seems to recognize something in my face, and she embraces the role with new alacrity. She snorts and shakes her head—a nice touch, and I say, “Yeah, that’s good, just like that.” She snorts again and grinds her palm on the carpet, simulating an impending charge.

A miracle is happening. The sky is opening up. All the doctors were wrong.

I’m getting an erection.

“Okay, now come over here and fuck me like the … um, like the bull I am,” Brett says, bobbing her head and rolling her hips.

“No,” I say. “Say it like a bull would say it.”

“Like a … how would a bull say it? Bulls can’t talk.”

“I don’t know, like, deepen your voice, or something. Kind of … grunt it, you know?”

“Um … grrr,” Brett growls. In a throaty voice, she says, “Come over here and FUCK ME.”

I feel my cock begin to soften slightly. “That sounded more like a bear,” I tell her, exasperated. “It has to be a bull.”

“GRRRR. COME … OVER … HERE … AND … FUCK … ME.”

“That was definitely a gorilla voice. Why are you growling? Bulls don’t growl.”

Looking up at me, tilting her head, she says, “Do gorillas growl? I don’t think they do.”

I think about this for a moment. “Good point. It wasn’t a gorilla. It was more like a … like a dinosaur.”

“Well, whatever, just hurry up and get on with it before you lose it.”

I’m stroking furiously now, desperate not to let the half-cocked erection wither. Sweat is beading on my back and at my temples, and I’m certain it’s a losing battle when, like something out of a dream, Brett emits a long, droning, “MOOOOOOO,” and I’m back in the game.

Positioning myself behind her, I place my palm on the sweat-slickened small of her back and angle my dick toward her vagina, which, I’m sorry, I can only describe as gaping. Big, pink, and wet, with damp tufts of curly black hair sprouting around its edges—a woman’s sex has never been so unappealing as Brett’s is in this moment. It’s like a festering wound. But I’m still semi-hard, and goddammit, I’m committed. I shut my eyes, trying to focus on the memory of the hulking, ferocious bull, and I’m mere centimeters away from sliding home when it hits me.

The smell.

Nay, the stench.

The ripe, musty odor of Brett’s cunt wafts up and assails my sinuses, promptly pulling me from my bovine fantasy. The bull’s aphrodisiacal aroma of hate and fear and manure had been so different from the clammy, all-too-human scent with which I am currently, tragically confronted.

And just like that, my mystical erection is gone.

I fall back into a sitting position, gasping and defeated, my wilted cock sticking to my perspiring thigh. Brett looks over her shoulder at me, her horns slightly askance on her head, and says, “MOOOOOO. WHAT ARE YOOOOOOU DOOOOOING?”

“I lost it,” I say, averting my gaze from hers. “I had it. For a second, I really had it. But now it’s gone.”

Brett sighs and takes the horns off, sitting down against the foot of the bed and looking at me with big, sad eyes. “Well, darling, maybe it will come back.”

I snort—like a human, not like a bull. “Yes,” I say. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Later, after Brett has left to meet up with Romero, I leave the hotel to wander the empty, lamplit streets, smoking a cigarette and taking occasional pulls from a beer I don’t remember buying. I’m a little tight and my gait is shuffling and unsteady. I’m not sure where I’m going. I haven’t been sure where I’ve been going ever since the war. Ever since the injury.

I’m trying not to think about Brett and Romero, not really paying attention to where I’m walking, when I find myself in front of the holding pens behind the bullfighting arena. The occupant of the pen closest to me is lying in the back of its stall, obscured by shadow. The silhouette of its huge, angular bulk is just visible from where I’m standing. The outline of its shoulders rise and fall with each lazy, whooshing breath. I flick away my cigarette and set my beer in the dirt, stepping closer to the bars and peering into the darkness.

“Um … psst,” I hiss, feeling only slightly ridiculous. “Are you up?” The bull stirs—and, by God, it’s not the only thing that stirs. Two yellow eyes blink at me from the shadows. It grunts—a truly erotic sound if there ever was one—and it raises itself onto its feet, lumbering into the dim light cast by the overhead lanterns.

Standing there, face to face with the object of my desire, separated only by a metal gate which I, with my opposable thumbs, could so easily unlatch—I am breathless, overwhelmed. Its shrewd, angry eyes are almost even with mine, which stand wide in unblinking wonder. Flies flit in looping patterns around the bull’s gently flicking ears. A clear, viscous sludge drips from the flaring nostrils of its pierced nose.

My burgeoning erection strains against the fabric of my pants.

All I can think is: I want more than anything for this animal to suck my cock.

The bull licks its dripping snout with a surprisingly long and narrow tongue. It levels its gaze at me, and then—like some holy gift from a God I’ve never known to be at all benevolent—it speaks.

“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, BIG BOY?”

It doesn’t sound like a bear.

It doesn’t sound like a gorilla, or a dinosaur.

It doesn’t sound anything like Lady Brett Ashley.

It sounds like hope, a prayer, deliverance.

I unlatch the gate with one hand, unfastening my pants with the other.

My cock rises, firm and proud and unashamed. Diamonds don’t get this hard.

“Show me,” I say, and it does.

AMY M. VAUGHN

A BIRD CAME UP MY WALK AND I PUT IT IN MY VAGINA
by Emily Getta Dickinson

It is an easily discoverable fact that I wrote nearly 1,800 poems in my lifetime. It is also no secret that as an adult I rarely left my home. What is less well known is that I wrote my first poem when I was but 13 years old.

Having begun to experience tingling in my nether bits whenever a certain grocer’s boy delivered our necessities, I embarked upon an exploration of those regions. Finding that my dewy depths could not be sated solely with my fingers, I availed myself of a nearby candle, unlit of course.

Imagine my surprise when, having dunked said candle into the cave between my legs hardly more than thrice, it disappeared with a woosh, like that of a bucket falling down a well. Search as I might, that candle was nowhere to be found. And though I was frightfully concerned, I had to concede there was nothing more I could do.

Throughout the remainder of the day and over the night I was accosted by the most peculiar internal sensations. I learned from inside out everything there was to know about a candle—not only its smooth and giving texture, not just the tallow smell, but what it meant to be aflame, to give light, to waste away in service of nightly activities.

The next day, as I sat at breakfast with my family, I began to gag. Feeling something rise up my throat, I retched into my napkin and hid away the product of my union until I could secret the package upstairs to my room. Upon unfolding the bundle, I found not what I expected, which would have been a lumpy ball of wax and string, but instead a wadded piece of paper, and on it, a poem. It had no title (none of my poems would), but its first line read Good night! Which put the candle out?

Given, it wasn’t a very good poem, but it also wasn’t bad for my first attempt.

From that day forward, I waited for the grocer’s boy with increased anticipation. I became startlingly forward—making eye contact and stealing accidental brushes of my skirt across his trousers as we passed, of skin across skin as he handed me the smooth glass milk bottles to put into the ice box. I saved the heat these torrid moments created between my thighs and used it when I could be sure I was alone.

At first, I made only small things the objects of my poems.

A little bread—a crust—a crumb

How happy is the little stone

No rose, yet felt myself a’bloom

This went on until one evening, espying my late grandmother’s maplewood clock upon my mantle, an idea did come to me. Was it necessary for the thing to pass through my sideways lips? Did it have to be consumed to incorporate its essence?

Taking the timepiece in both hands and placing the sturdy thing upon the floor, I must admit I squatted upon it in a most ungenteel fashion, meaning to—to what? To experiment, I suppose, but finding instead my opening opening farther than it ever had before.

The next evening I did vomit thus:

A clock stopped

In time I found the size of object mattered not at all, my downward-facing pocket would expand to encompass anything. Whatever I could find—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—retch, retch, retch—poem, poem, poem—until my mother became suspicious.

“I could have sworn I had a great big carrot just here.” “Do you know where the hairbrush has gotten to?” “Peculiar, we’re short a cup and saucer set.”

And so, I had to be more cautious, but I did not let it stop me. There were too many poems to write.

One day mother was out of the house, gone visiting a friend, when the grocer’s boy came by. She would be back at any moment, but still we wasted not the opportunity and did talk directly of our affections for one another. We even stole a small kiss—small but full of fireworks.

From that day I became bolder yet as I thought about my grocer’s boy.

A bird came up my walk

A little dog that wags his tail

A drop fell on the apple tree

I spent months sneaking things into my vagina, gathering up my petticoats, foregoing bloomers at the risk of being caught, all to incorporate the essence of things into my very being, and to cough up the printed word.

Finally, lying in bed unable to sleep one hot and miserable night, I discovered I could put even abstract notions up my poetry hole—

A little madness in the spring

A slash of blue

Such is the force of happiness

All the while helping mother in the kitchen, tidying the house, and doing my chores in the yard, without ever knowing when the poems would come. The family became accustomed to my discreet retching, and I filled hat boxes and trunks and dresser drawers with flattened and dried scraps of verse.

Years had passed since I first shoved that fateful candle into my vagina when my situation irrevocably changed. It was a fine and balmy afternoon. I was outside among the butterflies and bees tending to the family garden, and who did sneak up behind me but the grocer’s boy—a boy no longer, and me no longer a girl. He placed his hands upon my hips and pressed his manhood to my backside. Flushed head to toe, I led him by the hand behind the work shed where no one from the house could see. We kissed with abandon, which did nothing to settle my roiling blood. Hiking my skirts, me without my knickers, I invited him inside. He fit easily, divinely. Yet only thrice he pumped before woosh, a day and night of ecstasy, of union with my beloved and then—

To my small hearth his fire came

Short lived but loved was I

With me always now, and never

Lost to my art—a sacrifice

The pain, the grief, was too much to bear. I yearned for death, having caused the transmutation of my love, my dearest grocer’s boy. But death did not come for me, so I resolved to live as one but dead, to haunt this house and never leave, lest another love become but another poem.

JOHN WAYNE COMUNALE

THE RECEIVING TREE
by Shel Silverpeen

Len was a guy with problems. For starters his name was “Len”. Not Lenny, or Leonard, or even Lennon. His name wasn’t short for anything, nor did it hold any significant family meaning, or personal value. Len was just Len, and he fit the name exactly how you’d expect.

He was short, legally blind without his glasses, and had been prematurely balding since he was thirteen. His head was too wide, his features were all squished together in the center of his face, and his lips were like two fat wet slugs humping beneath his nose.

Another problem Len had was his job. He worked at a gloryhole, and while you could technically do worse, you couldn’t do much worse. While gloryholes weren’t just for bathroom stalls anymore, the surge in popularity didn’t make the job any more glamorous. Gloryholes were being installed in every church, school, and mailbox, and while the ease of convenience meant more work, it didn’t come with more pay.

Sure, the workers got together to try and unionize, but were fooled into accepting stock options in lieu of a raise. It turns out stock in a gloryhole company is pretty much worthless since no investors want to be associated with them on paper. So, Len and his fellow gloryholers got screwed and were forced to take on the heavier workload (no pun intended) with no additional compensation.

The gloryhole Len worked was inside a hollowed-out tree alongside a bike trail in Felcher Park. It wasn’t one of the busier gloryholes, but it had its moments along with a fair share of regular customers, and Len had the innate ability to recognize any cock once it had been in his mouth. It was like a gift, really. Once he ran his tongue up a shaft and around the tip every vein, bump, and wart was instantly committed to memory.

There was a saying in the gloryhole business that went, ‘You can learn a lot about a man by having his dick in your mouth’, and Len took it seriously to heart. He didn’t know his customers by face or name, but by their dick. Len took pride in his ability to identify those who visited his tree with regularity, and worked hard to make sure he gave each of them exactly what they liked. Over time he learned what each person liked from the nearly imperceptible quivers and shakes of their member and the slight bob of their glans.

The only bright spot in Len’s life was his wife, Niedra, whom he adored more than anything else in this mean ol’ world. He would suck a thousand cocks a day if it meant keeping his love content. She was a magnificent woman, light-years out of Len’s league, but for reasons he dared not question she loved him back just as much.

Niedra wanted a child badly, and for she and Len to raise a family of their own, but try as they might she couldn’t get pregnant. When they went to a doctor to see if perhaps they were doing it wrong the examination revealed Niedra was churning out eggs like nobody’s business while Len, on the other hand, was shooting blanks.

It was just another thing to add to the long list of problems in his pathetic life, only this one affected him on a deeper, harsher level. He couldn’t help his looks or other physical defects the genetic lottery had doled out to him. These were outside Len’s control, and he’d long since accepted his fate as a short, bald, ugly little fucker. Despite the doctor saying his defective jizz was no fault of his own, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for letting his darling wife down.

Niedra was upset naturally, but through tears she still did her best to comfort Len, reiterating how it wasn’t his fault. Despite feeling his lowest Len didn’t want to upset her further, so he kept his true feelings to himself with a silent vow to impregnate Niedra no matter what it took.

He became obsessed with his infertility, and started doing intense research on alternative and holistic medicines claiming to correct the issue. He ate roots of plants with names he couldn’t pronounce, and bought powdered rhino horn off the dark web to add to his morning tea. He tried wearing loose underpants, tight underpants, and even no underpants, but nothing restored potency to his loins.

He pretended he didn’t notice the sadness in Niedra’s eyes each morning when she kissed him goodbye for work, but it tore him up inside. Len didn’t know how much longer he could bear seeing his wife in such pain, especially when he considered it to be his fault. Dark thoughts swirled in his mind as he began to contemplate taking his own life so Niedra could be with someone who could give her the family she wanted.

He continued the pity party when he got to his gloryhole, but was distracted by a customer almost immediately after sitting on his tiny stool inside the tree. Len took the customer into his mouth, recognizing him instantly as Mr. Blow-n-Go.

He called him this because it was exactly what he did. Len imagined him to be a high-powered businessman or big-time attorney who didn’t have time to waste. Every time he put his dick in Len’s gloryhole it took little oral-coaxing to finish him off, and today was no exception.

Len took the warm salty load of his first customer of the day in his mouth, as advertised, and when Mr. Blow-n-Go withdrew Len turned to the silver spit bucket at his side. He was struck with an idea just before releasing the contents of his mouth, and paused to explore it.

Everyday Len spit load after load into the bucket, which were then automatically flushed down the commode at the end of each shift. But, what if he didn’t spit the loads into the bucket or anywhere else? The gears in Len’s head started to turn as the idea took shape. A moment later he was presented with another customer.

He accepted the member carefully into his mouth without spilling any of Blow-n-Go’s load and recognized it was Pencil-Dick Willie right away—so named becauseof the number two pencil tattooed on the side of his massive hog, which Len worked expertly with his mouth. He knew how to keep that pencil sharp. Before long Pencil-Dick was gone, and Len was carrying two loads in his chubby little cheeks.

He continued this practice throughout the day, and while it became increasingly difficult Len made it eight and a half hours without losing a single drop. He even took Mr. Throat-Rammer’s load without swallowing, and managed to keep Mr. Sprinkler from pulling out and cumming all over his face.

Len thought he was in trouble when Mr. Tidalwave’s cock poked proudly into the tree, but his cheeks proved to be far deeper reservoirs than he realized. He was able to handle the extra-thick gusher of a load with ease, and still had room to spare. Saving loads in his mouth made the day pass quickly for Len as he daydreamed about the family he and Niedra would finally have. He couldn’t wait to see his love happy once again.

Len received the final load of his shift from Mr. Necktie, which filled his mouth to the brim mixing with all the other hot, sweet loads he couldn’t wait to bring home. He’d suppressed the urge to swallow all day. A small amount did slip past his reflex from time to time. Not a significant amount mind you, but enough to feel it slowly glide down his throat to his stomach.It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It reminded him of when he drank raw eggs because he saw it in Rocky, and thought this was all he had to do to get in shape. He shut it off right there never to watch the rest of the movie, and went immediately to the kitchen. When he cracked the egg directly into his mouth the thin outer membrane held for a fleeting moment until Len pushed through with his tongue. The ruptured yolk made the consistency slightly more wretched, and before he could decide if he wanted to swallow it or not, a few thin yellow tentacles had already escaped down his throat, pulling the rest of the lukewarm, snot-like slop along with them. That was a long time ago though, and as a seventeen-year veteren gloryholer Len had far more control over the muscles in his throat now.

Len wanted to get home quickly, but couldn’t risk jeopardizing the loads, so he forced himself to take it easy and be extra careful. He’d made it this far, and the last thing he wanted to do was blow it when he was so close.

Finally home, Len threw open the door and saw Niedra sweeping in the kitchen down the hall. He raced to his love as she was bending over for the dustpan, arriving just in time to throw her dress up over her back. Thankfully it was Wednesday, and Niedra never wore panties of Wednesdays, which saved him valuable seconds that might otherwise have cost him dearly.

She looked over her shoulder in panic until she saw it was her darling sterile husband with incredibly swollen cheeks.

“Len, sweetheart,” she said. “What are you do—”

Before she finished Len thrust his hands between the butt-cheeks of his beautiful bride, spread apart those glorious buns, thrust his face against her lovely plump labia, and let loose the precious cargo he’d been storing with the force of a wide-open fire hydrant.

Niedra squealed with delight and bucked forward, but Len held her tight to his face, not allowing the bond to be broken until he’d completely emptied the tanks. When the last load passed his lips Len fell backward on his ass gasping for air..

Not even Mr. Throat-Rammer could fuck the satisfied smile off his face.

Niedra stood up straight, dress falling back into place. Her face was flush from the surprise yet delightful sex act, and she fanned her face with her hand.

“Oh my, Len,” she gushed. “What was that all about?”

Len got to his feet, still smiling as he told her about his epiphany that morning, and how he’d decided to act on it. He told her how he kept load after load in his mouth without spilling a single drop, so he could bring it home and use it to impregnate her with. He proudly declared if he couldn’t produce a working load from his own body, the least he could do was carry several dozen in his mouth for hours at a time in hopes one would do the trick.

When Len finished he was met with a look of blank confusion, but he didn’t understand what Niedra could possibly be confused about? He’d explained himself very succinctly.

“That’s such a … nice gesture, sweetheart,” she said.

“Well, I thought so too,” Len clipped, agitation now showing in his voice. “Only it doesn’t seem like you appreciate it.”

Niedra started to speak, but stopped herself and turned around instead. She pulled her dress back up, and bent over again to show rather than tell Len the reason behind her confusion.

He’d missed.

Len watched the loads he’d spent all day caring for like they were his own slowly and steadily roll out of his dear wife’s asshole like shit-speckled storm-frothed waves. The loads, along with all their potential, cut brown-tinted trails of slime down the inside of Niedra’s thighs on their way to a steadily growing puddle between her feet.

Len’s anger melted into sadness, but quickly re-solidified into hope. There would be more loads to collect at the tree tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He would bring a mouthful of loads home everyday for as long as it took to give his dear darling wife the family she wanted.

Len apologized, gave Niedra a kiss on her cheek, and went upstairs to brush his teeth.

CODY GOODFELLOW

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FUCK
by George Whorewell

It was a dull, sweltering day in November, and all the chronometers of Orgytania were striking FuckO’clock.

Wigstick Smeg’s coworkers in the Ministry of Bum filed out of their booths and into the auditorium for the midday Two Minute Grope.

“I’m gobbling so many bell-ends today, they’ll transfer me to the Knobs this time, for certain,” bleated Glasscock, his insufferable section leader, as he rosined his lips from a tin of Hegemony salve. “See if they don’t.”

Wigstick rejoined with some reflexive obscenity to keep his end up, but he was oddly distracted even when the lights dimmed and the telescreens lit up the padded murk. Pulsing body-music and clouds of pheromone musk erupted from recessed cones in the ceiling. As the suggestive stock footage began to play all around them, the workers stripped and randomly paired off or bunched up in the dark, imitating the trains entering tunnels, sausages being stuffed, and madly pistoning Wankel rotary engines on the screens. Wigstick found himself standing quite still and fully dressed, transfixed by the gaunt but maddeningly fit form of the woman in the row before him.

Glasscock debagged Wigstick and fumbled at the knackered elastic of his Y-fronts, but Wigstick brushed him off when he saw the new woman beckon him closer as she undid her belt and dropped the trousers of her shapeless Party uniform.

“Just some tongue, if you please,” she said. “I’ve had hemorrhoids.”

Wigstick wasn’t usually keen on bum-licking at work, given the appalling inefficacy of the Hegemony bog rolls in the Ministry loo, but it was somewhat less unpleasant than kissing most of his coworkers on the lips. But when the striking girl in the next row presented her movable feast, Wigstick knelt to apply himself with a hunger he seldom showed at lunch. Though she was hardly his ideal partner—on a revelatory binge, he’d recently concluded that such a creature must have nipples on her bum and a backwards digestive tract that could convert his bog-loaves into serviceable vindaloo takeaway—she was something he had never and could never imagine fancying, and thus, he was quite captivated.

Taking hold of her hat-rack hips and parting her pallid, pouting cheeks with his thumbs, he pressed his nose into her crack like a perfumed pillow, tickled her balloon knot with a dry, ulcerated tongue, and wriggled into the puckered ring of her sphincter. She squirmed deliciously and pushed herself into his face, encouraging Wigstick to rim her ever more deeply.

He was lost in bliss and danger-close to spunking in his shorts, when he bumped against and shrank away from an unlooked-for interloper under his tongue. Could she really be so inconsiderate as to cut a monkey tail while he was snaking her drain at a mandated Bum Ministry function?

Just as he was about to call her out, smokestacks collapsed, volcanos ejaculated, and faded away on the massive telescreens as the androgynous, saturnine glare of Big Bugger appeared, signaling the climax. His partner convulsed with a dutiful moan and simultaneously trumped and queefed in his face, only to expel the upsetting foreign object into his gaping gob.

“Doubleplusgood lickety-boo, comrade,” she cooed starkly, “but you’ve put us off the beat.”

All around Wigstick, workers spasmed in synchronized release until the orgone meter needles quivered, just as workers on assembly lines, baby-farm exercise yards, slaughterhouse killing floors, even the battlefield trenches of the Incelvanian Front all added their ecstatic plasm to a pool, braiding their individual orgasms into the collective burst of orgone energy on which Orgytania depended. Behind him, Glasscock ecstatically mewled, “Drop your dong-loads on my face, comrades, I’m a cum-dumpster for the State!”

Looking up at her, Wigstick noticed clam-shaped epaulets on her boiler-suit uniform; she must only be on loan from the Ministry of Quim. He might never see her again. Watching as she hoisted her trousers, lit a Hegemony cigarette and joined the flow of workers leaving the auditorium, accepting their dish of celebratory blood-pudding for meeting the weekly cum-quota.

Wigstick plucked the uninvited foreign object out of his mouth. He’d nearly swallowed it when she turned and favored him with an almost mocking smile. He looked away shamefully as he pocketed her deposit. Eye contact was strictly forbidden, as it led to monogamy, twatcrime and spunk-hoarding. But he’d already committed a crime in denying the State its agreed-upon ration of jizz.

Only when he was safely back in his booth did he take out the object, which was a wad of receipt tape. All the flavor was gone by then and the paper was nearly too sodden with their commingled fluids to come unrolled, but he could read it clearly enough, even if he could not begin to comprehend it.

It said, Will you marry me?

“Wake up, comrades. I hope all your nocturnal emissions were productive ones. Rub your eyes and pop out of bed, it’s time to Beat the Bishop!”

Wigstick was barely half-awake, but he rolled off his grotty waterbed and presented his semi-tumescent tackle for the greedy eyes of Big Bugger and the wanking inspector.

Big Bugger was beautiful, never mind what they looked like. Big Bugger was a hermaphrodite with a priapic bazooka and a giant clam between their sturdy legs, so they didn’t need you to fuck them; but Big Bugger liked to watch, and had heroically sacrificed a normal life to become the conduit for the collective orgasmic energy, the vessel of all unfulfilled desires that preserved their mighty Hegemony.

He strove to keep up with the barking inspector, but his heart wasn’t in it. What had he dreamed of, last night? He had gorged himself on strawberries, rarebit cheese, Hegemony chocolate and toilet oysters to lose his forbidden longing in wet dreams of Big Bugger, but his twatcrimes continued to compound on the delinquency of yesterday’s Two Minute Grope.

He knew that it was a grave offense to the tenets of Ingsuck, which held that any worker, of any age, weight, appearance or gender was equally entitled to a proper shagging, and that to prefer any type, let alone an individual, was almost unthinkable.

He realized his erection was flagging, and let himself think of her, which brought it round nicely, though for the first time in a life of semi-publicly slapping the soldier, he felt a vague sense of … shame?

“655321, your stroke is out of sync with the dickship of the proletariat,” the peg-shriveling voice of the wanking inspector berated him, and not for the first time, judging by her tone. “Close your eyes and dream of Big Bugger. Now … Pump and release and pump and release … 727272, stop sneak-eating your smegma, it belongs to the State.”

Relieved she had someone else to lay a bollocking on, Wigstick tried to get into it, but in no time, she was on his case again. “655321! You’ll never spunk up at this rate, and how can you expect to last the whole Two Minute Grope if you don’t? I’ve seen your sheets, my lad, they’re nothing to be proud of! You’ll let your team down and blow their quota! If you don’t beat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding, if you don’t beat your meat?”

Wigstick told himself he wouldn’t, but when Fuck O’Clock came round, he sought her out among the crowds, and when he saw her it was like a sunrise in that dank, manky cave. How homely, how absolutely fucking horrorshow every other face and body suddenly appeared next to her innocent leer when it broke free from the pimply, gap-toothed mob. How his dick stiffened even as he shunted aside those reaching, in accordance with the tenets of Ingsuck, for the nearest genitalia to their own.

When he approached her, she drew him close but made no move to disrobe, pushed his hands away from her gulping growler even as she panted. “We’ll be hooked for twatcrime,” he whispered in her ear. “At least let me flick your bean a bit.”

“No,” she said. “I saved myself for you.”

He let her trap his hands as if he were under arrest and said. “Yes. I will. Whatever it means. I want you.”

“Forsaking all others,” she husked, trembling and biting her lip. “So long as we both shall live.”

“Erm … yeah sure,” he said, jerking when she kneed him in the bottle and adding, “I will.”

They were still holding hands when the climax siren blared, and spontaneously spent in their Y-fronts together without touching themselves or each other, just long enough after the rest of the room had come that a few took notice and whispered acrid smoke in each other’s ears.

Wigstick Smeg strode purposefully through the park, pretending to watch the knots of random strangers dogging on the grass. Feeling eyes all over him, he hurried down a narrow black alley that led out of the regulated inner city, into the warren of ruins left to the oiks. Only when he could not see the throbbing monolith of the Ministry of Knob looming over the sagging rooftops of the old city could he begin to relax, which was a daft delusion, for the circle-jerks and the secret filth were everywhere.

A big, odd, many-columned ruin was the landmark that showed him where to turn, and a snatch of an old nursery rhyme played in his fretful brain. Two pricks with one ball, that’s the church of Saint Paul, but arsed if he knew what a church was. He knew only that before Ingsuck, people got dressed up and invited all their friends and family to watch them fuck in churches, and it cost a ton of money.

At Piccadilly Circus, he made a final check for surveillance before ducking into the crooked doorway of the antique Lovecraft XXX Adult Cinema. The seedy décor was frosted with rodent droppings and scandalous posters everywhere (with faces! And what faces, like gods of fucking!) for long-forgotten and forbidden films, filling him with a maddening mixture of self-loathing and exaltation, just as they did the first time.

The old geezer who called himself the Vicar was waiting behind the snack bar counter, and laid a finger alongside the syphilitic crater of his nose. His curious black uniform and white collar somehow put Wigstick in mind of the ruined church and quickened his anxiety, but he raced up the stairs and into the upper theater, which, for the last month, he and Jillion had rented for a forbidden love nest.

They covered the sticky floors with exotic rugs from Onanistan and furnished the little cinema with an antique bedroom set scavenged by the geezer, and spent their rare nights together playing cribbage, arguing about money and making plans for the future. They never actually shagged, but if he was particularly attentive to these elaborate fantasies she was pleased to call feelings, and even demonstrated experiencing them himself, she let him nibble her bum before cuddling with him until shortly before curfew.

At first, Wigstick delighted in every new game she coaxed out of the Edwardian romances someone had used to insulate the boarded-up window in the far corner. But then she insisted that he was never to fuck anyone else, and ordered him to see the Vicar about a strap-on vinyl cock for work orgies. Tonight as they cuddled interminably and played mahjong on the canopied brass bed, he felt a gnawing emptiness at the center of all of it, and could pretend no longer.

“Is this it, then?”

“Is it what, then?”

“Being married. Love … whatever. Like this … so long as we both don’t die?”

“Well, what else would it be?”

“I mean … what if we have to … what if we want to fuck other workers?”

“But I don’t want to fuck other workers. I scarcely fancy fucking you.”

He hung his head and wondered seriously if he couldn’t train to bob his own apple, until she laughed. “We could,” with a well wicked grin like she couldn’t keep this surprise a moment longer, “have a baby.”

“Have it?”

She nodded. “Yeh.”

“Have it for what?” His face screwed up in concern. Kinks were kinks, but for all he knew, eating babies was some kind of twatcrime, like serial eye contact or chatting up with intent.

Her keen eyes read it on his face before he could mask it. “You gobshite knob-end, don’t you know where babies come from?”

He pulled his most abstemious and supercilious face. “Fuck sake, darling. I read the fucking books, didn’t I?” Indeed, he’d struggled manfully through a stack of her mildewed bodice-rippers and cobbled together some dim grasp of the necessaries of love and marriage. Obstacles must be overcome, rivals vanquished and fortunes won, and usually there was some huge, melodramatic sacrifice, after which the world seemed to hush in deference to the moment when the beleaguered young bride told her groom that a baby was coming.

But how any of these confusing gyrations of circumstance planted the seed that would one day become a fertile baby-tree, he was none the wiser. It seemed like getting their end away was the last thing true lovers did, perhaps some time after the utterly pants story ran out of pages.

Of course he knew where babies came from. Like anyone, he’d been born at an industrial baby farm in Nookshire Prefecture, and raised on a nearby tractor farm. The Ministry of Quim provided for his education and trained him with snogging dummies until he could get his end away quicker than anyone in his dorm block. His earliest memory was of a nurse smothering his blood-red face with her enormous bum when he threw a tantrum, how she squirmed on his face as he tried to gum her fanny. He’d never seen a baby-tree, but he didn’t need to see a thing to know it existed. Where the fuck else could babies come from?

She scooted up against the headboard with her knees akimbo and kicked away the sheets to bare her bushy fanny. She was a bit skinny, her hips jutting out like moose antlers, but she was beautiful. Not like Big Bugger was beautiful, but being with her was better than being with anyone else. He felt—and it was a word he’d never really thought to use for anything, never mind himself—special.

“Get stuffed,” he scoffed. “Babies come out of there? Fancy that!”

She nodded, smiling wearily. “I learned it from watching the oiks. They can’t half hold hands without getting up the duff. And you know what goes in to make a baby come out, yeh?”

“Sure … but where do we get money, anyway?”

Laughing so her charmingly lopsided jubblies jiggled, she grabbed him by his cock and pulled him on top, then into her. He slid in and went off before he’d got halfway home. “Sorry,” he mumbled as a weak shiver of premature release made any further effort seem a pale mug’s game.

“Mustn’t grumble, luv,” she said, taking his face in her hands. “I took out my baby-blocker.” She showed him a weird bit of kit like a tea infuser that’d apparently lived in her growler all along. “We’ve got all the time in the world to fuck our heads off and duff up my oven with a brace of beautiful babies.”

“But I don’t understand … why?”

She punched him in the shoulder. “To love, you utter pantser. To raise and teach and train to be better than the workers from the baby-farms. We could take turns keeping it in our pockets, or hide it here, in a jumbo popcorn bucket, so it doesn’t escape while we work … ”

He leaned in to press his lips to hers just as a terrifying bullhorn voice transfixed them in a naked tangle, and gas-masked circle-jerk commandos smashed in the boarded-up window to encircle them in a firing squad.

“This shag is your last, but ducks, don’t you cry,

No luckier than them, as can fuck til they die!”

“If you want to know what the future will bring, picture a dog licking its own bollocks forever and ever. Its skinny biro dingus cannot retract and it can never know release, but it cannot and will not ever stop licking itself.”

Wigstick Smeg hung by his wrists in the darkest corner of the most dreaded place in the world. Room 69. His naked body was sheathed in a rubber hospital johnny and slathered so thick with surgical gel that he felt like his whole kit was in somebody’s mouth. He had yet to grasp the reality of the unfathomable cock-up in which he found himself, and now he couldn’t get that dog’s dick out of his brain.

Though he had removed the syphilitic nose and mask, Party Chairman O’Kneel still wore a vicar’s vestments, and Wigstick began to suspect it wasn’t a disguise. He also wore a porkpie hat on a head shaped like a big toe with a patchy tuft of weedy ginger beard erupting from his lavishly wattled neck. Acne scars big enough to hide tube-fare tokens in, a bullfrog’s physique and a cock somehow thicker than it was long, but the pair of buff lady torturers on the rotating waterbed that dominated the torture chamber vied eagerly to trap it in their mouths and tongue-wrestle each other at the same time.

“You can be honest here,” O’Kneel chortled. “We’re past any secrets, yes … far beyond the reach of twatcrime. They’re the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen, yes?”

They were, indeed; fitter even, than the voluptuous sirens in the Lovecraft theater one-sheets. Looking at them gave his straining knob a charlie horse, but he found himself looking away and picturing Jillion in all her gawky, gap-toothed, oddly asexual glory, making shrinky-dinks or crying for no reason. Her eyes, he thought, remember those burning, mad brown eyes—just the two of them, leave the other out—remember how they made you feel.

“Did you know, Wigstick, that once, we lived under a tyrant.” O’Kneel signaled for the plump, bright-eyed brunette torturer to lie noggin to undercarriage atop her lithe, dreamy redhead counterpart, and slicked his gargoyle knob from gaping gob to quivering quim and back as he lectured his victim. “Yes, all of humankind groaned under the dominance of genocidal lookism.

“Only those who appeared healthy, free of disease, with symmetrical features and less quantifiable physical and emotional traits that came to be codified as beauty and loveliness, could hope to be shagged on the regular, and those with superior attributes paired off exclusively, denying those less aesthetically fortunate access to their bodies. Over time, they grew more attractive, while the rest of us … well, you got eyes, don’t you?

“The masses could only hope to fap shamefully to video nasties of these impossibly attractive monsters, closing their eyes and coupling miserably with each other while fantasizing about more appealing partners. When even professional females would not consent to bump uglies with us in our bitterness, we sought succor from each other, and so realized that sexual gratification is an inalienable right unconstrained by gender, free of any biological or emotional burdens. And yet we were still in chains of unfulfilled desire.

“The draconian regime of lookist standards kept every ugly, overweight or simply unpleasant worker from providing a better future for themselves, for not only could they never bust a nut in the object of their hearts’ desires, but they could not breed with them, and have any hope of siring children less hideous to the eye.”

Wigstick, who’d learned just yesterday where babies came from, could only nod meekly.

“But we, the pasty, the pattern-bald, the crooked of tooth and pungent of breath, rose up and revolted against the lookist regime. We fucked their superior genes out of existence, scattered them among the masses, and created an iconic golem of universal sexual desirability that each worker could become and couple with, free of shame, to lead us to vistas of unimaginable pleasure.

“Think of it, Wigstick! We live in a world where everyone is equally desirable, where anyone can and must fuck every last one of his fellows. We have freed the worker from involuntary celibacy and separated the sexual instinct from the reproductive urge. And do you know why?”

“To bolster the great hegemony of Orgytania and hasten total victory in our war with Incelvania–”

Someone swatted his bum with a ruler so hard his galvanized cock punched a hole in the rubber johnny, but somehow he did not instantly spend the moment he was aroused. What had these monsters done to him?

“Wrong! Your leaden proletarian orgasms don’t even serve to keep us bolstered any more! We realized after our great victory that the end and the means could be the same. We gave you what we always wanted for ourselves. Continual sexual satisfaction without judgment, without regret or commitment, and bob’s yer uncle.

“Of course, anyone who violates the tenets of Ingsuck and becomes pregnant is sent to a farm, as was your tedious slag, Jillion. Yes, you manage to get one up the duff, but once you’ve spilled your seed, what’s to do with the packet?”

“It was all her idea–”

“We fully realize that, Smeg. We want nothing from you but to put you right. As we did your old chum from the Bum Ministry.”

Waving to a telescreen, O’Kneel conjured up the empty gaze of Section Chief Glasscock, who licked his chapped lips and uttered a robotic mantra. “I … love … clunge … I want … I crave … axe wounds. I simply can’t … get enough tuna taco.”

Someone offscreen waved a cattle-prod tipped with a still-smoking dildo in his face. “Fancy a juicy John Thomas, Kev?”

Poor Glasscock rabbited halfway out of frame before the chains snapped taut around his neck. “No … thank you … perhaps later. All naughty bits is beautiful … but I … I would … prefer … a nice vagina, please.”

O’Kneel clapped the telescreen off and spanked the ladies off the bed. “I’m afraid your adjustment had to be a bit more radical, ducks.” Climbing the bed, he rode its magic-fingered rotation until he stood just beneath Wigstick’s trembling member. “We had a long list, so we took the liberty of starting while you were monged off your head. In fact, we’re just about done … ”

The Party Chairman debagged him and flung the rubber johnny onto a nearby iron maiden, then held up a mirror. Wigstick shied from it, dreading to look at what they’d done to him.

His nose had been chiseled until it was no longer the defining feature of his otherwise unambitious phizog. His teeth aggressively white and straight, identical pearls filed to points. Hair bleached to the color of snow some dogs had a slash in. It got worse when he looked down.

His pasty, pot-bellied, bandy-legged body had been obliterated. In its place, like a bullock in a butcher’s shop tanning bed, hung a livid, swollen thing knotted with ropes of muscle and sinewy, powerful limbs. Were they even his bones? He was terrified of this body, and he was inside it.

Most alarming of all was his cock, which had never been a source of either shame or pride, but which now thrust out of his shaved groin like a purple-bladed cricket bat. Even as rigid as it was, its vein-gnarled length became still more engorged as the ladies grasped it in their tiny hands and began worshipping its immensity with their lips and tongues. The blood scarpered out of his head so fast, he swooned and would have fainted, if he wasn’t hanging. They maneuvered the bed under his dangling feet and lowered him onto it.

“We of the Inner Party grow weary of watching hairy, lopsided boiler bags slapping pale, flabby flat asses, however. So we have been forced to reinvent what we wantonly destroyed. And since there can be no recorded images of unattainable attractiveness, all our shows must be live.” Clapping his stubby hands, O’Kneel reactivated all the telescreens, which rained down sweaty stares and panting, catfish-whiskered mouths upon Wigstick’s chicken-fleshed nakedness.

Ancient elite Inner Party workers fapped and flicked in iron lungs and oxygen tents. A 400-kg. mutant in a muu-muu made out of a colossal Incelvanian battle flag caressed their lolling pannus, hung suspended by hooks that pulled their skin into awful sugar-glider wings. A circle of masked Onanistani mullahs strummed their sandalwood wangs in uneasy unison while eyeball-fucking him where he huddled on the rotating bed.

“You see, you help to maintain a form of world peace,” Chairman O’Kneel said, “and for that service to the State, you shall know many … rewards.” Ripping off the vicar’s vestments along breakaway velcro seams, he strutted over to the control panel. At the flick of a switch, the chains drew Wigstick taut as a tourniquet over the drum of the bed.

“You shall perform for our pleasure, and no matter your extremity, you shall not know relief until a quorum of our committee presses a button–”

All of them pressed the button.

Wigstick arched his back and drummed his heels on the bed. The brutal electrical orgasm left him twitching while O’Kneel explained to them in their own languages about not abusing the button, during which time they triggered four and a half more orgasms.

As soon as his tortured screams had subsided into equally uncontrollable bouts of tearful, hysterical laughter, the redheaded torturer mounted his monstrous knob, while the brunette stood over his face and adjusted the ball gag O’Kneel had installed so Wigstick wouldn’t swallow his tongue, having added a rotary dildo contraption that made a playground of his face.

Wigstick closed his eyes when O’Kneel began nibbling his service exit and sucking on his toes, and wished himself away. He knew that even though he’d sold Jillion out and imagined she’d done the same to him, what they’d shared in that mingy cinema was real, something no tyrannical regime could erase, even though nobody would remember them and he hadn’t thought to write any of it down.

But as the brunette straddled his face and squatted on his gag, he knew again the contentment that had stifled his tantrums at the baby farm. As the ripe cleavage of the torturer’s bum eclipsed every part of the world and rhythmically drowned him in flesh and jolted him with involuntary ecstasy, he leaned into it and knew the perfect surrender that is the last spasm of the horizontal dissident.

He loved Big Bugger!

JESSICA MCHUGH

AMERICAN SLY-HO
by Breast Eatin’ Ellis

TWO FOR ONE ALL-MURDER TACOS is scrawled in fake blood on the side of Dorsia where a crowd of animal rights activists in crop-tops exposing reams of pale blubber screech about senseless slaughter and heartless humans, and as the sun spills like a bloody yolk over the city and a passing car blasts the Glee Cast version of “Bust a Move,” the people flapping over-sized pictures of strangled cows and seals with pulverized skulls make me erupt with laughter, and despite their glares of disgust while I listen to a voicemail confirmation for tonight’s delivery from Post-Apocalyptic-Mates, I laugh harder … and get harder.

Being paged for my res is a delicious surprise. The vibrating beeper in my pocket grabs me by the balls and pulls me into the restaurant, where I’m greeted by a hostess, not American, who’s lucky she has big tits, otherwise I’d call her a bitch for telling me my table isn’t actually ready.

“It’s for two, right?” she asks, more timid than she is in my mind, her gigantic breasts smacking the mirror as I fuck her from behind and bash her face into the glass.

The truth is I’ve forgotten if this is a date or a business meeting, but it sure as shit isn’t a table for one. Nobody makes a res at Dorsia unless they’re trying to impress someone, even these days when it’s hardly the impenetrable fortress it was in the 80s.

“Yes, two’s fine.”

She taps the iPad a few times and nods. “The table should be ready soon, Master Bateman.”

“Right … well, if ‘should’ and ‘could’ gave me wood I’d fuck your eyeball out of the socket.”

She smiles but doesn’t look up from the screen. I can’t tell if she didn’t hear me or my response exceeds her grasp of English, but she points me to the bar without a word.

I order a J&B on the rocks, and a pair of bottle-blond hardbodies instantly catch my eye. They look familiar, waving coyly from the other end of the bar, and for a second I think I might be meeting with them, but I soon realize they’re familiar because I fucked them both, on separate occasions, in the bathroom of Mirage last month. They are seemingly just realizing this too and stare at each other in horror.

“Patrick! Darling!”

What remains of my PETA hard-on dies. Cringing, I turn to the small pale thing in a mammoth mink coat waving at me from the entrance.

Evelyn.

I’m meeting Evelyn?

Why on earth am I meeting fucking Evelyn?

The reason charges through my mind when she hooks her furry arm onto mine. The cat. We’re supposed to be discussing visitation rights for the fucking cat. Except I haven’t had the fucking cat for going on three weeks—not in its entirety anyway. It was the last thing I fed the rats over a week ago, and I’ve been teasing them with the remainder of its meat through the cage divider for the last few days. Sometimes raw, sometimes sauteed, always causing the same delicious squeals of starvation like an overture to the beautiful tragedy starring whatever girl Post-Apocalyptic-Mates sends me tonight.

“Why don’t you just get a new cat?” I say as I sip my J&B. “Purebred this time. What you actually wanted.”

She unfolds a napkin on her lap and sighs. “It’s nice to see you too, Patrick. You look tan. Thin too. Are you doing something different?”

I want to punch her teeth out for asking—not because I’m offended, but because I’m curious if I’d have more sympathy for the woman if she were all gums.

I rejoice when the sommelier arrives and pops a bottle of Dom 2008, a banner vintage I can’t believe I’m wasting on Evelyn’s emaciated ass. But it distracts her for a few minutes, thank God. I pass him a hundred dollar bill—fifty for a tip, fifty for the baggie he slips under my embossed napkin. As Evelyn drinks, I excuse myself to rip a line in the bathroom. I’ll need all the energy I can get to survive this meal and still hold my own tonight. I’ve only ordered from the doomsday escort service twice, and it’s already become my go-to for the kind of pussy that stops time. But tonight, I’ll indulge all my passions. Good pussy might stop time, but a good kill throws the fucker right into reverse.

I’ve lived in Braeydonn Gardens for three years this week, two years and forty-nine weeks before Adam Sandler moved his bitches into the penthouse, by the way. He doesn’t actually live here, hardly even comes by, but whenever I mention my address, people go nuts with questions about the Sandman. They act like he’s some gold-plated god that squatted over the city and shat out the luxury condos brick by brick.

Wonderful, I say. Give him the fucking Nobel Prize for first-class shitting.

But then he throws his bitches at the top fucking floor like he’s spattering the building with a fistful of cum that clings to the apex but also drips into every crevice until all you can smell is Adam Sandler’s 90s nouveau riche sperm.

He claims he only has three up there, but I swear on God’s hairless ballsack there are at least seven English bulldogs howling like they’re in heat 24/7. And they reek—not like wet dog or piss and shit—like Evelyn’s dinner parties, like Waldorf salad and beluga on white cheddar toast points with the faint smell of regurgitated chardonnay and asshole bleach.

They’re quiet tonight, thank fuck, but my rats aren’t. They’re screaming in hunger, almost the perfect pitch of starvation for my purposes, I still hear them after closing the mudroom door, so I select the perfect record to both drown them out and set the mood for the evening.

I’ve just started the album spinning when the doorbell rings. I let her ring it a few more times and knock twice before I wrap ten fingers around two knobs.

“Who is it?”

“Post-Apocalyptic-Mates,” a woman says. “Rebecca.”

“Rebecca? That’s not a doomsday name.”

“Weird judgment, but okay.”

“Hmm … maybe this is a bad idea,” I say, stroking my cock. “Maybe I should ask for a refund.”

“No, no.” Her sigh of defeat makes my body ripple with pleasure. “You can call me whatever you want, Mr. Sandler.”

Zipping my pants, I open the door to a woman who looks like Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, except with hundreds of animal teeth glued to her shiny black bodysuit, many of which frame her exposed vulva. Each labium is pierced with three gem-encrusted hoops I could liberate with a tug, and though the bullwhip wound around her left leg doesn’t look functional, I’m eager to investigate.

I grin, and she flinches, glancing at Google Images on her phone.

“You’re not Adam Sandler.”

“Now who’s making weird judgments?” I gesture for her to enter and study each step she takes to my Barcelona chair.

I can always tell how a woman fucks by the way she walks. This one’s got e a wide gait that implies flexibility. But she might just be drunk. Her catsuit looks cheaper and coarser up close, but her hands glide over her body like she’s swathed in charmeuse. She sits delicately, like she won’t give the chair her full weight until I allow it, which I like a lot. Her face is nice enough. It’s round and soft, and it looks like her flesh would melt right off the bone with an appropriate amount of care. I could take or leave her hair. Despite her attempt at hiding it by wearing her hair down, I can tell one side of her head is shaved. Nothing appeals to a real man less than a woman who chooses to look masculine, but I have to admit there’s something about the peekaboo that excites me, especially as I envision ones that venture deeper than her scalp: a flash of skull, a gander of gray matter, a glimpse of bashed-in brain.

“It’s fine if you’re not Adam Sandler, you know. I don’t care. You’re still cute.”

“I’m more than cute, sweetheart. I’m a lady-killer.”

She giggles, removing her black vinyl gloves. “Oh, you’re really cute.”

In the silence of a track change, I mimic her giggle, which sends a shockwave of confusion through her expression.

“Is something wrong?” she asks.

“Bend over, and we’ll find out.”

She’s frozen for a few moments before remembering I’m paying her, and she pulls a tight smile as she stands, places her hands on the back of the Barcelona, and tilts her hips upward.

“Wider,” I say, and she adjusts her stance, causing her pierced lips to part, glistening slightly.

I approach, my cock battling the zipper of my slim-fit Valentino trousers. The cutout crotch in her catsuit rips easy, giving me full access to her slick insides, and as canines tumble across the floor, I explore her holes one finger at a time.

She’s receptive at first, but when the track changes again and she finally recognizes the voices on the record, her asshole tightens around my thumb.

“Is this … The Muppets?”

“Technically, yes,” I say, probing her ass. “But while the characters on Sesame Street are part of Jim Henson’s Muppet universe, and both factions appear side-by-side in projects like ‘A Muppet Family Christmas,’ the residents of Sesame Street established their own vibe and complex storylines outside the campier, more mature tone of ‘The Muppet Show,’ as shown in this 1975 album, ‘Bert & Ernie Sing-Along.’ The song we’re listening to right now, ‘A Really Good Feeling’ performed by the legendary Carroll Spinney, who voiced Big Bird for most of the character’s history, is almost mockingly lighthearted considering the premise of an appropriately-aggravated Bert attempting to take a bath while Ernie and the rest of the barrio stage a sing-along in his bathroom.”

With my thumb wriggling in her anus and three fingers making a sloppy mess of her cunt, she wails and thrashes on the back of the chair. She cums with a groan, and I tell her to face me. After cleaning my hands with a Versace moist towelette, I grab her by the chin and shove her into the chair. It nearly topples, and while she’s still gripping her heart in shock, I push the chair against the back wall. Her head bumps the wall too, but she shakes it off and spreads her legs as I free my cock.

“This album especially pushed characters like Bert and Ernie out of the Muppet sphere by giving them the freedom to make mistakes. We as the audience are given the gift of realizing these characters can traumatize each other, as well as be traumatized by friends and neighbors, clearly shown in the cast medley, ‘What’s the Name of That Song?’ For fuck’s sake, Rebecca, are you ever going to start sucking my cock?”

She apologizes and licks my shaft from base to tip.

“When Oscar the Grouch inexplicably shows up at Bert and Ernie’s apartment, you think Bert might have someone on his side, but after singing a song about how he hates singalongs, Oscar leaves as mysteriously as he arrived, and Bert is left once more to endure being naked in a cold bath, surrounded by so-called friends. It is, without a doubt, Sesame Street’s most sadistic album.”

I grab her head and thrust my cock further down her throat, causing her to gag and drool on herself.

“The true tragedy is the loss of Linda,” I say as Rebecca pulls away, coughing violently. “She’s such a visual force, but she gets completely erased on the albums. They don’t even mention her.”

While Rebecca is gasping for breath, I grab her ankles and yank them into the air, pulling her closer and ramming my cock into her bejeweled cunt. “They try to make up for it with Gordon and Susan’s ‘Hand in Hand,’” I grunt as I pound her, “and you do forget for a while because their voices blend wonderfully, but you inevitably return to the same question: where the fuck is Linda?”

She grunts as I slam my hips faster, and the friction against the Barcelona’s leather challenges the strength of her cheap catsuit. The top layer wears away quickly, sending bits of black latex and animal teeth flying in all directions, and pinholes soon form in the cut-rate fabric.

“Bob’s song ‘Morningtown Ride,’ is a triumph, however. Originally sung by Malvina Reynolds in 1957, it’s an epic meditation on the loneliness we all feel, knowingly or not, in those moments before we fall asleep, and the fear we all share that we might never wake up, captured beautifully in just two minutes and thirty-six seconds.”

As the pinholes widen, her exposed flesh reddens and ripens and bloodies. She hasn’t noticed yet, so I tear the fake bullwhip, which is little more than a braided scarf, off her leg and wrap it around her eyes so she can’t see the blood. Pulling out, I flip her over, and smack her nearly-bare ass as hard as I can. She wails and bucks against me as I enter her again.

“But it also parallels the dumbing-down of a society that no longer values education, as well as our growing disregard for each other’s well-being. For example, Bob inserts several Sesame Street characters into the song’s lyrics, but he neglects to mention Bert, whose bath he’s interrupting to sing a dirge about a death-train.” I spit on her asshole, remove a Mont Blanc pen from my breast pocket, and start screwing it into her.

She tears off the blindfold and looks back at me in shock.

“Don’t worry, baby, Donald Trump had this exact pen up his ass in 1983 and things turned out pretty well for him.”

This is where she draws the line. She tells me to stop and wriggles to get away, so I punch her in the hip and she falls to her side with a whimper.

I grab her by the throat, and she tries to smack me in the face, but I catch her arm and force it so hard behind her back it judders … but it doesn’t dislocate … and it doesn’t break. Her bones slide, even swim a bit in her skin before she collapses to the floor like every girl before her.

I collect the pen, remove my shirt and pants and stand over her, erect, as she whines like one of Adam Sandler’s bulldog bitches.

“Ohhhh … ABC, 123, pigs in a tree, don’t ever sit on a woodpecker’s knee!”

She cradles her arm as she stands, preparing to scream, but I stab the Mont Blanc between her lips before she can make a sound. Again and again, I slice her mouth and gums and chip one of her front teeth. She pulls away, moaning and spitting blood, and my hand flies again, aiming for her eye, but I miss by a mile.

She encourages my faulty trajectory by pulling my arm, causing me to slam my knee on my Alanda prisma coffee table. Growling, I whirl around and grab her hair as she darts away. It tears from her scalp like new grass, a fresh peekaboo, but she doesn’t stop running. Much good it’ll do her once she realizes how many locks she has to undo to escape.

I whip the clump of hair across the room and pursue her with deliberate strides as she clambers toward the door. Passing the kitchen, I grab a rolling pin. I’d hoped to use it to destroy her insides before bashing in her skull, but most of life is improvisation anyway, so I’m willing to roll with the punches.

“Freeze, motherfucker.”

When I enter the foyer, the bitch isn’t wrestling with the locks. She’s holding some kind of bizarre pistol, a bulbous silver thing, aimed at me.

“Careful, baby. You’re going to shoot off one of your tits.”

“You’d do worse to them,” she says.

“Sounds like a good night. I’ve got some friends in the back who’d agree with me.”

I swing the rolling pin, she squeezes the trigger, and everything goes dark.

For a few seconds I think I’m covered in her hot blood. I think I see her skull crushed and erupting, the ultimate peekaboo, but then I open my eyes to a disorienting world.

Almost instantly I vomit down my chest, onto my feet, and all over the wood chips.

Wait … what the fuck? Why are there wood chips in my living room?

Because it’s not my living room, I quickly realize. There’s no furniture, no windows, and it smells worse than Sandler’s dogs.

I sink to my knees, my brain foggy, my vision blurry. I try to rub my eyes clear, but I can’t see anything beyond the vomit-soaked pine. Jesus Christ, what did that crusty doomsday cunt do to me?

What sounds like a prolonged needle-scratch suddenly makes my brain feel like it’s going to explode, but it’s not the record. It’s too loud, too close.

Walking until I hit wall, I realize it’s not my eyes that won’t clear. The walls of the plastic cage imprisoning me are scratched to hell and covered in a film of dried piss … as is the divider that keeps me separated from the famished creatures on the other side. The rats writhe against the divider, paws and teeth smacking the plastic as they squeal like rabid boars.

The top of the cage lifts, pelting me with a gust of fresh air, and Rebecca squints down at me.

“Not so tough anymore, are you, Master Bateman?”

“You fucking bitch, what did you do to me?” My shout comes out as a squeak that makes her body shake with laughter.

Blood drips from her scalp onto her shoulder, but she seems unbothered, even amused by it.

“I suppose I should thank you. The home office has been asking me to conclude my research and leave Earth for weeks. Because of you, I finally have all I need to make my final judgment of the human race.”

She digs her fingers into her bloody scalp and tears out a chunk of wet flesh, revealing a smooth emerald shell beneath.

“Oh you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. So what now? You’re going to destroy Earth because of me?”

Dangling the meat over the cage, she giggles. “Destroy Earth? Never. Humans are filth, but there are good creatures here too, and they don’t deserve to die because of monsters like you. Dogs are lovely, capybaras are sweet, lemurs are funny, and of course, rats are so very playful.”

My stomach drops.

“Well, when they’re not starving,” she adds.

I can’t tell if the rats are screaming or rejoicing when she lifts the divider. I close my eyes and imagine people holding over-sized pictures of my body ripped open outside Dorsia, my shattered skull buried in wood chips on placards, and written on the wall of the restaurant in Donald’s Trump’s 1983 anus ink are the words COME ON AND SING ALONG WITH ME.

LUCAS MANGUM

PARADISE LUST
by John Milfton

Blind and destitute, he labored. I listened and transcribed, but not his words. I transcribed only my desires for him. John Milton, who helped behead a king. John Milton, who wished to justify the ways of God to man. John Milton, my love. Disgraced in his twilight years, in the dark times since the Restoration, the epic he dictated to me was to be his masterpiece, his opus, the fulfillment of his calling. England’s grand epic. His beautiful phrases, spoken in his sacred tongue, the tongue which I longed to feel against my flesh. He could even speak as he tended to me. In fact, I would have preferred it, to feel those words manifest upon every inch of exposed skin, to impress upon me his scars.

In another life, I was a professor of literature at a prestigious university in the American South. My curriculum consisted of bringing a progressive perspective to works and authors deemed problematic by my peers. I took this approach, not in the hopes of dismantling the canon, as many professors and students aimed to do, but to reinterpret these traditionally conservative or patriarchal texts and bring them into the twenty-first century. Readers really can see anything in any work, so long as they have strong convictions, and maybe a little guidance. Confirmation bias, it’s called.

Milton’s masterpiece was my top priority.

I grew up in a small town with more churches than people and no economy to speak of. Christianity was an ever-present force in my life, but while I remained a believer, I always felt the Bible and church doctrines were missing something. I couldn’t define it. I could only feel the sting of its absence. Everything changed when my uncle Silas, an atheist from the big city, sent me Paradise Lost.

This. This was what I was missing. Milton’s epic poem with its genderfluid angels, incestuously-conceived grim reaper, and eloquent, bad boy Lucifer was like the Biblebut with all the boring parts taken out and a whole lot of interesting stuff put in. Not to mention Milton, for all his perceived piety, was a huge pervert. Check out this passage, for example:

“Mean while at table Eve

Ministered naked, and their flowing cups

With pleasant liquors crowned: Oh innocence

Deserving Paradise! If ever, then,

Then had the sons of God excuse to have been

Enamored at that sight; but in those hearts

Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy

Was understood, the injured lover’s hell.”

That’s from Book V, lines 443 to 450. In layman’s terms, Eve was super-hot, served dinner in the nude, and if angels were capable of getting horny, Raphael’s angel-dick (or pussy) would’ve been throbbing like a subwoofer in a downtown nightclub and slick with precum. Now me? I’m no angel. Reading Paradise Lost was not just a spiritual awakening. It was a sexual one. Multiple times through my initial perusal of the tome, and most subsequent readings, I got all sorts of throbby and slick in my lower deep.

I needed others to see this. As more and more classics got pushed from the halls of academia to make room for contemporary works, I came to see my mission as even more vital. Classics had to make a case for relevancy and if university leadership didn’t see them as progressive enough for their increasingly agenda-heavy curriculum, they could very easily be deemed obsolete. I would not let that happen to the text which changed my life. Paradise Lost had a beautifully filthy heart and I was determined to reveal it.

Unfortunately, universities were no longer neutral ground for the exchange of ideas. Instead, they served as indoctrination centers motivated by political correctness and had come to fully embrace censorship when faced with something that challenges them. Worst still, the students were all too ready to lap up that Marxist bullshit. They even came to expect it when they showed up on campus and earned free-thinkers like me chewing-outs at the Title IX office on a fairly regular basis.

Never did I expect the religious nuts who got their jollies from policing my body while I was growing up to become crusaders for free speech. It sometimes made me wonder if I’d fallen into some alternate timeline.

Of course, those on the right side of the political spectrum weren’t my allies either.

No one saw things the way I did. I was all alone.

Despite how many times I highlighted the more progressive and even downright risque passages in Milton’s epic, I always faced the same backlash. It was misogynist. Disgusting. Patriarchal. Sexist. Full of backwards-thinking religiosity. I got bad professor ratings, called out on Twitter, and, once, someone even sent me a turd in a box, though I’m not sure what they were hoping to prove. Was there some nuance in grooves and lumps of that turd I overlooked? Doubtful. It was they who lacked an understanding of nuance. They could not see the transcendent beauty in the text which had changed my life and saved me from my backwards upbringing. They couldn’t see transcendent beauty in anything problematic. They needed their information spoon-fed to them in some ethereal safe space. In some cases, it needed to smack them right on the nose, which of course would render their precious space unsafe and land me in a heap of trouble.

In depressed frustration, I started printing up zines. The content consisted mostly of passages from Paradise Lost that I thought made a case for the poem’s relevance. I may or may not have included crude drawings of male and female genitalia, tits, and ass.

Perhaps the drawings took matters a bit too far, but I was pissed.

Then they fired me, and banished me to the past with their illuminati cult magic. They said I belonged there. Said I was a relic, despite the fact that I was younger than everyone in the room. At least they let me choose the year.

And what year could I choose other than the year my own personal Jesus began work on England’s great epic?

I traveled back in time to the year 1658 and immediately set about finding the man himself. My scholarship was my advantage. I knew where he lived during this time and showed up on his doorstep. One of his aides answered the door, frowning at my alien clothing. The aide denied me entry, so I snuck in a window and found Milton in the bath.

Since he was blind, I figured I could steal an eye-full of his genitalia without making him uncomfortable. To my dismay, they did not live up to the man’s literary legacy. Now, of course, one’s physical endowments have nothing to do with one’s writing prowess, but well, one can dream, no? And I had dreamed often.

Still, to be in his presence—while he was naked, no less—made me all throbby and slick in my lower deep.

“Who’s there?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

I gave him my name and said I was one of his aides. He called the bluff immediately. He said he didn’t recognize my voice or my name.

“Who are you? And what do you want?”

“I know this must be alarming, Mr. Milton, sir, especially given how many political enemies you’ve amassed, but I’m an admirer of your work. I wanted to meet you and see you. I want to help you with Paradise Lost.”

He bolted upright at the mention of his epic.

I thought maybe I’d made a mistake.

“Tell me, what do you know of it?”

“I don’t expect you to believe me, sir, but I’m from, well, the twenty-first century. Your work, particularly that poem, has resonated for generations. Centuries.”

“Are you a devil?”

“I don’t think so.”

“An angel then? No, why would God send one of His underlings. He reveals himself to me in other ways.”

“Yes, your words. His words.”

“Let’s not get carried away. His word is the Bible.”

“But your words are far more interesting. A lot of people think so, too. I mean, where I’m from you pretty much rewrote Christianity.”

He reddened and frowned.

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“Respectfully, I have. Let me be a part of it. Paradise Lost.”

“You’re really from the future?”

I recited the passage about Eve and unlibidinous angels. The color drained from his face.

“You are a devil.”

“I assure you I’m not.”

“You’ll help me?”

“I’ll help you.”

I don’t know what made him accept my offer and I wish I could say I wrote down things exactly as he spoke them, leaving the text I so loved perfectly intact. Just know this: everything I did, I did for him.

He spoke and I wrote. I wrote Paradise Lost, but I stripped it of its religiosity.

I stripped it of its elevated prose.

I stripped it as I wished to strip myself, as I wished to strip him, unimpressive genitalia be damned.

God-willing, my Paradise Lost would set the Western world on fire with lust and tear away their prudish inhibitions. Or maybe the timeline from which I was exiled would remain as tight-assed as when I left. I honestly don’t know how all this time travel shit works. But I’m pretty sure my new timeline would have no such scruples. People will say what they want, fuck who they want, and no god or government or dean or social media mob will say shit about it.

CHAD STROUP

WHOREHOUSE OF SKEEVES
by Clark Z. Analewski

Attn Mr. Birdwhistle,

It is to my understanding that you’ve already met with my liaison this past weekend to discuss the sudden disappearance of my beloved daughter Lara. Her last known whereabouts, according to several trusted sources, were at Cherry Blossom Ranch, just outside town. In the unlikely event a man in your line of work is unfamiliar with this particular venue, I’ve printed out a simple map for you. Please dispose of it properly after use.

I’ve also included the first installment of your considerable payment, in the form of a cashier’s check. The balance will be available to you upon the successful location of Lara. This is non-negotiable.

Please find my daughter. Quickly. And alive.

Sen. Gary Fernsby

P.S. I expect nothing but the utmost discretion. Only report to me from this point forward. Consider your acceptance of this job a binding contract.

I’m here now, car idling, my main man Lou Gramm setting the musical mood on the stereo, and the first thing I notice about Cherry Blossom Ranch is that it is, in fact, located on an actual ranch. I’ve got to say I wasn’t expecting that, so it throws me off my game before I’ve even begun to play. Never a good way to start off a job. But it’s too late to rewind.

The building itself appears much nicer than I expected. Well taken care of. But these observations manifest while I’m still sitting in my car. From a safe distance. The air conditioning smothering me with its fresh, cool love. Once I step out into the open air, into the oppressive humidity, before I even have the chance to truly admire the dimly lit scenery, the scent smacks me. Hard. Wet socks left in a dark corner for weeks. Food gone to rot.

The stench is sense-crippling—the kind of aroma that makes you pray to die without hope of resurrection. I try to convince myself I’ve smelled worse, but I’ve never been very good at fooling my brain. Tonight is no different.

Toddling toward the brothel, I decide the best plan of action is to breathe through my mouth, but this only helps marginally. My tongue itches, the papillae crawling with irritation, and I will myself to ignore it. Luck is most certainly not my lady tonight. What at first appears to be a mannequin perched on the porch turns out to be the esteemed madam of the house. She greets me as if she were expecting me. I later discover that she was but never find out why.She passes me her business card, and boldface type claims her name is Dahlia1—no last name, like Madonna but without the iconic upper lip nevus. I believe her for the time being. I have no reason not to, despite my natural instinct to distrust everyone I meet. Dahlia defies age. She could be 25, could be 45. Highly unlikely she’s 35 though. Makeup, a trick of the lighting, perhaps the influence of the force that dwells within the breathing, stinking brothel? I’m too much of a gentleman to inquire. There are more important matters to attend to, and my ADD is pulling no punches tonight.

Dahlia places her hand at the small of my back, leading me inside. A gentle touch. Long, fake fingernails penetrate the fabric of my shirt, arouse my spine. Upon entering the foyer, the smell overwhelms me. The enclosed space really makes the putrid fragrance pop. Moisture invades my nostrils. Aggressive, persistent. Irritated tears threaten to spill. The mouth breathing method is a losing battle. And so I fly the white flag.

Inside the brothel, the space is somehow darker than the night’s sky. The hallways go on forever. My sight takes a few moments to adjust. There are clients waiting, impatient, wearing suits. And girls gathering, nonchalant, wearing little more than what God graced them with.

Madam Dahlia guides me to arguably better lighting, additional illumination that seemingly wasn’t there at first glance, but then suddenly was.2 And in this new light is where things become… complicated. Where the smell starts to make scents sense. The brothel’s walls, ceiling, and flooring are all in the spotlight. The walls are decorated not with gaudy paintings or neon lights or photographs of indeterminate origin, as one might expect. And the striped wallpaper has been peeled back to reveal the raw drywall behind it. The ceiling threatens to collapse, and the floors wouldn’t know a mop from a Komondor. Everything is covered in a thick, translucent mold.

And, to my greater dismay, so are the girls.

CHERRY BLOSSOM RANCH, 5/12/88

INTERVIEWEE—“STARLA” (LAST NAME WITHHELD)

INTERVIEWER—GISELLE COOPER, THEPONY WEEKLY

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH WITHOUT EDITOR APPROVAL

GISELLE: How long have you been employed here?

STARLA: Dunno. Two years, give or take? I don’t keep track of that stuff. Hey … the IRS isn’t gonna see this, are they?

G: No need to be concerned about that. What’s your connection, if any, to Jim Birdwhistle?

S: Never heard of him. Wait—hold on a sec. Is that the one guy from the corn chip commercials? With the mustache and the purple scarf? He’s kinda hot.

G: Never mind. When did you first become aware of the mold growing inside and around the building? And when did it start … attaching itself to the girls, yourself included?

S: Honey, maybe the question you should be asking is, when did it first become aware of us? We didn’t have no say in it. Ever think about that?

G: Am I understanding this correctly? You’re implying it was…is sentient? That’s a little difficult to swallow.

S: That’s what she said.

G: Very cute.

S: Well, I ain’t implying shit. Just telling you the way I see it. Which also happens to be the truth. Whatcha think of them rotten apples, hmm?

G: I’m not here to sensationalize the story. But, that said, facts are facts—the mold’s suddenly gone now. Not a trace. Just a few unreliable eyewitnesses who don’t want to come forward, for obvious reasons. So who cleaned the mess, got rid of it?

Seems like a fairly large undertaking, something you’d have to hire professionals for. Yet there’s no record of that.

S: Can’t speak for the other girls, but one day I woke up and it’d just … vanished. Like it had never been here in the first place. I just wish I knew it was leaving so I could’ve said goodbye, you know?

G:Considering you and the other women here were directly affected by it, shouldn’t all of you have gone to the hospital to get checked out?

S: Oh, sure. You know, Dahlia may treat us well enough, but we don’t get no insurance here. What, you think this is some sorta bougie joint or somethin’? Anyway, we’re fine now, ain’t we? Business as usual. Hey, can I bum a smoke?

G: Sorry, trying to quit. Speaking of your madam, why did she allow business to continue when things clearly weren’t normal? From what I understand, the mold was first thought to have been an unidentified STD. Surely at that point operations should have ceased for safety purposes, at least temporarily.

S: We all got to earn a living, baby. Hell, I got two mouths to feed, and ain’t neither of ‘em my own.

G: Let’s stay focused on the mold. Why did—

S: Shit, get off that trip, lady. What makes you think it’s mold anyway? That’s what everyone’s got in their head because that’s what someone said they thought they saw. But it ain’t mold, you know. Everyone wants to know the deal, so they say, flappin’ their mouths around, but no one wants to actually listen. I tell you what, when it talked to us that first time, we sure as hell listened, and then some. You wanna know the truth? That shit you’re calling mold came straight from—

END OF INTERVIEW

ED. NOTES: TAPE CUT OFF MID-SENTENCE. WHY WAS IMPORTANT EVIDENCE TAMPERED WITH AND RECORDED OVER WITH A LIVE RECORDING OF “I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS” BY FOREIGNER? WHEN MS. COOPER RETURNS FROM MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND, CONFIRM WHETHER ANY COMPLETE COPIES OF THIS INTERVIEW RECORDING EXIST.

Impossible to peel my eyes away from the gruesome sight. Feels rude to stare, even given the situation. They must think I’ve never seen a full-grown woman’s exposed breasts before.3 Though I suppose these ladies are used to far worse ogling than what my eyes have to offer. And, let’s be honest—it’s what’s also currently attached to their chests as well as the rest of their bodies that has made me incapable of looking away. Some patches resemble thinly sliced kiwi, while others are closer to soft pretzels that have sat too long in the Nevada summer sun. Grotesquerie has always fascinated me, though I’ve no idea why. I’m sure my therapist has some super neat ideas about that.

Unsure why there are so many men still lingering here, eager to transform into tricks despite the, shall we say, unorthodox circumstances. Wondering what it takes for the mold to slither from wall to woman. And if it’s also transferable from flesh to flesh. Thing is, I already know the answer. It told me, whispered in my ear the moment I entered the premises. I just didn’t know what the voice meant yet, or that I was even hearing it at the time. It’s almost like a parasite. Doesn’t anyone else see what I’m seeing? Or are their priorities just severely skewed? Cum and currency can often alter the way a person thinks, even if only temporarily.

Though I scan the ladies’ faces twice for accuracy, I can already tell by the photographs provided to me4 that the senator’s daughter is not among this meat market. And I wasn’t expecting her to be. That would have been far too easy. And clearly a trap. But, then again, I’m already trapped here, aren’t I? My God, the hallways drag on. So, so long. But perhaps one of the ladies will remember Lara, if in fact the sources were reliable and she was ever here in the first place. It wouldn’t be the first time I was provided with faulty information. And Madam Dahlia isn’t budging on her knowledge (or lack thereof), but I’m not giving up hope. Yet. Got rent and child support to pay.

Startling but ultimately not surprising, I recognize one of the tricks.5 He won’t acknowledge me. I think he owes me money. But I don’t ask him any questions right away. He can wait for now. I need to converse with the girls first. I briefly consider heading back to my car for some gloves, then remember I left my last pair at home, on my coffee table. What I should be asking myself is why I would have thought to bring gloves in the first place. I never wear gloves. I’ve been told I have nice hands, that I could make a living as a hand model even, and so I tend to enjoy showing them off at any given opportunity. So I’ll just keep a safe distance. Hope for the best. No risk, no reward.

The first girl I speak with is a blonde named Candy, though she won’t confirm if her name is spelled with a “C” or a “K,” and that’s going to make me lose sleep for at least the next two nights. I ask if I can interview her in private, somewhere quiet, to which she agrees after I slip her an impressive tip. She takes me down a hallway with practically no light, and we make so many turns around so many corners that I’m not sure which direction I’m facing any longer. Eventually, we arrive at a rhombus-shaped room6 filled with bondage gear—accessories made of chain and leather. We enter, and she shuts the door. I wonder briefly what it might be like to be flogged and gagged by this formidable woman, and if that’s included in the tip I so generously gave, then send that thought off to the compartment of my brain reserved for “possible future endeavors.” Time is of the essence, Jim. Can you at least try to focus for once in your life?

Maybe it’s the lighting in here—always the lighting trying to trick me—but when Kandy faces me and prepares to speak, it almost looks as if some of the mold has invaded her sclera. And it’s moving. Slowly.

She smiles. Wide. Too much of her grey gums showing. Teeth all crooked and fuzzy. I don’t like it. Not at all.

Then her tongue—or something resembling said organ—spills out. Inches upon inches, putting Gene Simmons to shame.

And I don’t remember much after that.

Except that’s not right at all. I do remember. Every last bit of it. And I’ve come to share it with you.

The deeper I dive
into the brothel’s corridors
the more I forget where I’m going
and where I first came from

The mold
it’s speaking to me
beckoning me from so, so far away
and I never want to turn back

1. What Dahlia failed to realize is that, after completing the investigation, I ran her fingerprints that she’d left on the card. I discovered that she was NOT, in fact, a descendant of Elizabeth Short. However, I did not initially believe this to be true regardless, as that would have been a ludicrous assumption, so the point is essentially moot. I’m only including this for my own context. What’s most upsetting about this whole ordeal is that my police contact now claims the card has mysteriously vanished from evidence.

2. Not cosmic ray visual phenomena, as my wild instincts first screamed. Must have just not noticed it initially. I’m no electrician, but surely there was a glitch in the fixture. Someone really should take alook at that.

3. For the record, I have. Several times. And not just on video.

4. Said photographs were committed to memory upon first glance. It’s a little-known fact that I’m a natural born eidetiker.

5. Though I at first believed this sizable man to be the father of my close childhood friend Benjamin Proctor, as it turned out he was someone of a far higher profile: (name redacted).

6. The only room in the building, I’ve noticed, that is absent of any mold. Not sure what that means exactly, or if the peculiar shape of the room comes into play, but surely these factors must hold some weight. Will need to revisit this theory later.

CHRISTINE MORGAN

THE MAN IN THE IRON GIMP MASK
by Alexhandjob Dumas

“Punish him. Humiliate him. Make him suffer. Make him crawl.”

These, the orders given, and with a nod duly accepted.

“Do no lasting harm or damage, leave no scars, but show no mercy.”

Another nod, brief and curt. She need not be told her business.

“However he might beg or plead, he is a prisoner. A vile thing deserving only torment. Take no pity upon him. Have we an understanding?”

She inclined her head more deeply, permitting the cruel curve of a smile. “We do indeed.”

Such had been their discussion, above, in a vast chamber of opulence and comfort where courtiers by the dozens lazed and lounged, attended by comely servants, amid a host of hedonistic pleasures and epicurean delights.

All was dim golden lighting, silken draperies, plush cushions, rounded contours …  low music and slow murmurs, languid laughter, sighs and moans …  the scents of wine, incense, sultry perfumes, oils …  robes worn loose, open, and flowing, or worn not at all …  bodies reclined in sanguine repose or entwined in various permutations …  an undulant seascape of rolling hips and leisurely caresses.

The flawless flesh of supple youths and nubile maidens made for serving platters, laden with rich delicacies. Oysters. Caviar. Soft cheeses. Plums so ripe as to dissolve upon the tongue, sliced peaches succulent and juicy. Mousses whipped from chocolate, honey, and cream. Meltingly delicate meringues. A feast of effortless decadence. Nothing crisp or chewy, certainly nothing crunchy, no, not here.

Into this scene, she had been summoned. Incongruous among them, strides purposeful and brisk, spiked heels sinking silent in the carpet. The tight-bound lacings of a gloss-black corset held her posture rigidly upright and lent her breasts a jutting prominence so as to be aggressive, almost threatening. A bell-shaped cage of spaced steel bands, like a dressmaker’s frame bereft of cloth, formed a stiff skirt from waist to ankles, through which her long high-stockinged legs and buckled garters could be seen, as could her naked buttocks and loins.

Around the hips of this strange metal garment, suspended on blunt hooks, hung an array of crops, switches, and paddles, as well as a neatly-coiled whip, clips and clamps and manacles, and other such tools of her trade. They clanked and jingled with each step the way chains or a jailer’s keys would.

Shining black leather gloved each lithe, toned arm to above the elbow. Her shoulders—broad but not mannish—and upper back were bare. So was her throat, nape left exposed, tresses upswept into a strict, severe arrangement held by onyx and silver pins.

Those distracted from their pursuits by her passage dared glance only briefly upon her, and then with looks more akin to fear than to desire. Only one, the man before whom she stood, was able to meet the cool, sharp glint of her gaze.

Indolent, he sprawled on a bed of pillows and furs, a trio of his favorites lavishing their moist, open-mouthed attentions upon him. His hair fell thick in a glorious mane. His lips were as full, pouty, pink, and plump as a child’s. Despite the sternness of his words, even his eyes held a certain apprehension as he evaluated her, as if in unease, as if having second thoughts.

However much a prisoner the poor creature awaiting below might have been, however much a traitor, however vile a thing, did anyone—enemy or otherwise—deserve the kind of treatment he’d described?

Yet, he, the king, had spoken.

He had spoken, and Mistress Aramis would deliver.

As she descended to the dungeon, what a change of scene it was!

Here were the stark lines, angled corners, sharp edges. Here, the hard surfaces: coarse stone and rough wood, iron plates, iron grates. Here, her heels clicked with menace, echoed like gunshots.

The light blazed harsh. The air hung still and chill, perfumed not by incense but by rust, despair, sweat, piss, and blood.

It was fiendishly well-appointed, the room to which a silent servant—aged, homely; very unlike those she’d seen above—soon brought her. Left to her own devices, so to speak, she inspected the devices to which she’d been left, finding them indeed suitable. Solid construction, readily adjusted into several positions of increasing contortion and discomfort. Levers, ratchets, hinges, and pulleys all appeared recently oiled, in good repair.

For rope, she had choices ranging in thickness from ship’s cable to spinster’s twine. There were straps and buckles, complex harnesses, collars, and chains. A cold-basin held cubes of ice, while beside it a pot of candle wax simmered over a burner.

Mistress Aramis, surveying all this, nodded approval. She then turned to examine the room’s one feature that might’ve seemed out of place, had she not already—and with no small amusement—divined its purpose. Along one wall shined the glassy expanse of a  large mirror, doubtless concealing a window and viewing area behind.

Again, she allowed herself the cruel curve of a smile. Very well, then. For what she’d been paid, she could hardly object.

The sounds of scuffing, shuffling footsteps drew her notice to a door. It opened to admit two more servants, burly and disfigured giants wearing broad belts, padlocked metal codpieces, hobnailed boots, studded bracers, and little else. Their heads had been shaved, their scalps criss-crossed with old scars. Their eyes had been put out. Burned by hot pokers was her guess, leaving sunken gnarls of ruined sockets.

Although blind, they nonetheless made their way unerringly into the dungeon, hauling their struggling captive between them. A long homespun tunic, like a penitent’s robe, covered him from shoulders to shins. His feet were bare, as were his hands. And, on his head …

On his head, around his head, entirely enclosing his head, was bolted a crude iron mask. It must’ve weighed ten pounds, his neck straining from the effort of keeping it upright. Small slits marked where his nostrils were, air whistling with each of his frantic inhalations. Through larger ones, his eyes rolled, wild with desperation.

She saw at once how all of these slits, as well as the earholes on the mask’s sides, had been fitted with sliding plates, so as to be closed off at her whim and deprive him of senses or breath.

His mouth, however, was another matter. There was no slit, no gap through which he might eat, drink, breathe, or speak. On the contrary, to her experienced eye, it was clear some manner of internal gag was affixed, wedging his jaws uncomfortably wide with a blocking solidity lodged within. Perhaps in the fashion of a scold’s bridle, with a spiked metal plate to press down his tongue and cause further pain should he attempt to defy it.

Muffled throat-noises of pleading and protest were all he could manage as the servants none-too-gently escorted him across the room and threw him at her feet. He fell heavily to his knees, extending his hands in hopes of preventing a full headlong sprawl …  but to no avail, for the weight of the iron gimp-mask pulled him down. It clanged against the stone floor, resonant and atonal as a great flawed bell.

Mistress Aramis stepped forward, lifted one spike-heeled shoe, and settled it firmly atop the mask, applying such pressure as to hold him pinned helpless.

“My, my,” she said. “What filthy, despicable, nasty wretch might we have here?”

She strutted a full circle around him, putting on a good performance for the ‘mirror.’ A few idle flicks of her favorite crop made him flinch as he huddled abject on the floor.

“Oh, but that was nothing yet,” she crooned. “On your feet.”

He struggled upright, imploring noises issuing through whatever served as the mask’s gag. She ignored his mewling and ordered him to strip. When he hesitated, the crop cut the air a vicious swish and struck him a smarting blow.

“I will not tell you twice.”

Once shed of the penitential garment, he stood naked, shoulders hunched, arms crossed low with hands covering his groin. She circled him again, taking her time. Smooth skin, unblemished but for the reddened welt she’d landed across his chest … not plump, but well-fed and well-made … no muscles earned by labor, or workingman’s calluses … clearly not accustomed to pain or deprivation.

“Aren’t you a soft and pretty pampered piglet?”

Smirking, she had him shackled wrist and ankle between two posts—facing the ‘mirror,’ of course—so he squirmed fully vulnerable and exposed.

Then, she went to work. The crop, the lash, the paddle, until that pristine canvas of skin was striped with scarlet, until his shapely buttocks shone bright red.

Until, she noted, his efforts to shield his loins were less out of modesty and more out of shame, a futile attempt to confine or conceal his burgeoning arousal.

“Look at yourself!” she said. “Enjoying this depravity, you base and vile, disgusting creature!”

Stifled sobs wracked his helpless body. He strained to lift his iron-engulfed head and meet his own reflected gaze, as she commanded. Tears ran from the eyeholes of the iron mask. And yet, his erection jutted more turgidly than ever. When she pinched hard metal clamps upon his nipples, his hips bucked with involuntary lustful thrusts.

“Perverse abomination!” Mistress Aramis leaned close, trailing her gloved fingers down his belly. “Craving release already, aren’t you?”

He groaned deep and desperate in his throat. Her fingertips glided lower, then lower still, so that she dandled the pendulous fleshy sack of his scrotum in her palm.

“But we’ve only just begun,” she purred, and gave a firm and twisting squeeze.

If not for the gag, his anguished howl surely would have been music to her ears!

She had him unshackled then, and made him crawl as had been requested. Made him crawl to her, made him stretch himself upon a bed of nails. The cubes of ice, and drizzling molten candle wax, came next, applied at her random whim so he could not anticipate which sensation would next assault him, or where. Or whether it would be neither ice nor wax, but another stinging kiss of the lash.

So it went, on and on, with devilish inventiveness as she put the room’s various accouterments to diligent use. He groveled and wallowed, uttering pitiful wordless pleas, wretched before her ministrations.

Once, when he found the temerity to try and resist, she stood astride his head, one spike-heeled shoe planted to either side, and crouched within the confines of her cage-frame metal skirt to urinate upon the upturned mask; how he writhed as it trickled through into his eyes and nose.

Finally, she bent him over a triangular wooden wedge-bench, his buttocks raised to convenient height, and plundered his nethers with a bulbous, brazen phallus modeled after that of a bull.

At that, he could endure no more, convulsing in shuddering spasms, spurting hot and copious seed before collapsing half-insensate into broken weeping.

The same aged, homely servant came back in, mutely indicating to Mistress Aramis she had fulfilled her obligations and could go. She did so, gathering her belongings and leaving the prisoner to their care.

A job well done, she congratulated herself with no small satisfaction. Surely the king would have no complaints. Might, perhaps, call upon her services again. What, she wondered, had he made of the show?

Off to one end of the corridor, she noticed a discreet door tucked into a shadowed nook, and realized it must lead to the viewing-room on the other side of the ‘mirror.’ Why, then, wait and wonder on the king’s opinion? Why not find out straightaway? A bonus, atop her generous fee, was not out of the question.

She went to the door and opened it, finding it unlocked.

And yes, just as she’d expected … the ‘mirror’ a window of tinted glass; seating suitable for a few chosen spectators to observe the proceedings …

Yet no one sat there. The small viewing-room was empty. Cool and dark, as if unoccupied for some time instead of merely recently vacated.

No one had been there? No one had been watching?

Frowning, she stepped toward the window and peered through the tinted glass. She saw the aged servant mopping soothingly at the prisoner with a damp cloth, while the burly blinded men in the padlocked codpieces took great care in unbolting and removing the heavy iron mask.

They lifted it away from his head, easing the scold’s-bridle gag from his bruised mouth. Sweaty tangles of hair lay plastered limp around his face, instead of falling in a thick and glorious mane as it had done before.

Before, upstairs, in his vast chamber of opulence and comfort, where he had given her his instructions.

Punish him. Humiliate him. Make him suffer. Make him crawl.

Thus the king had spoken, and Mistress Aramis delivered.

MAX BOOTH III

TIT
by Stephen Kink

You wanna talk about the movie, we can talk about the movie. But let me get something out of the way, because I can already predict where this conversation is bound to end up. This ain’t my first interview, buddy, okay? You think I haven’t been asked about this shit before? Kid, I’ve been having this conversation since you were only a speck of hope playing Red Rover, Red Rover inside your papa’s sweaty nut sack.

Everybody wants to talk about the child orgy scene. I know that. I get that. Anywhere you go, you bring up my film, first thing that leaves their lips: “Hey, how ’bout those kids fuckin’ in that sewer, huh?” As if they never messed around in some subterranean dwelling before. These fuckin’ puritan goody two-shoe cocksuckers. Let me tell you something, okay? I’ve ejaculated in plenty of sewers. Ain’t nobody ever said diddly squat. Sure, sometimes the cops got called, but that’s life, ain’t it? You think a cop’s gonna apprehend someone who’s actively spraying jizz from his dickhole? Of course not. They’re gonna turn around and walk the other way, pretend nothin’ happened. Okay, sometimes they tase you, but that’s just the risk one takes when emptying loads where they don’t belong. Sometimes the tasing is actually what makes it so enjoyable. But listen. If tasing is what you’re into, devices exist that you can buy without getting the cops involved. I used to sell a product just like that, actually, which you’d know if you had done your research. Goddamn FBI ruins everything, don’t they?

The question I always get asked about this movie is if the scene was necessary in the first place. And my question to them is, did you even watch the rest of the movie? Or how about reading the goddamn book—did you do that? Because if so, you wouldn’t be asking such a dumb-as-shit question, would you? Of course it was necessary! The fact that so many of you social justice warrior dipshits don’t understand this is, quite frankly, baffling.

Let me put it to you this way, okay? Pretend you’re some little snot-nosed brat, and you have a whole gang of other snot-nosed brats. And you’ve just defeated a really freaky clown that is sometimes a spider and sometimes it’s Paul Goddamn Bunyan. Mission accomplished, you decide to head back up to the street, except holy shit, have you ever tried getting out of a sewer before? They’re confusing! You think children just walk around with maps? What kinda fuckin’ creepy kids even know how to read a map? And what, did you think they would just … exist for the rest of their lives down in that sewer, just give up on ever escaping back to the street? Nah, of course not, so don’t even fuckin’ try feeding me that bullshit logic. These kids had to fuck, okay? It was the only way. If they don’t fuck, they don’t escape. Haven’t you ever gotten lost before? How did you find your way home? Did you just give up and wait for someone to help, or did you run a train on your best friend? Yeah, that’s what I thought. All of you critics and social media bozos are nothin’ but a buncha goddamn hypocrites!

Obviously the scene was tough to shoot. Nobody’s disputing that. In this country we have laws prohibiting children from having sex on camera. Maybe I could have gotten around that law by filming it simulated instead of unsimulated, but I must argue that when making a piece of cinematic history one must not dampen one’s dignity to appease the censorship gods. Do you think the children had simulated intercourse in the book? No, of course not! Those kids were actually fucking, and if I wanted to remain true to the source material I knew deep in my heart the scene would have to be unsimulated, otherwise not only would the audience smell that I was a no good lousy phoney, I would smell it, and what if I never managed to wash that smell away?he smell of being a big fat fake would haunt me until my death!

So I knew the sex had to be legit, but obviously I couldn’t film the child actors doing it, although several of the parents did tell me ahead of time they would have no problem signing permission slips if it meant extra cash on the back end. No. The issue was never the parents. It was the goddamn MPAA! Those sleazy sons of bitches nearly ruined my entire movie!

But I am a filmmaker, and filmmakers always get what they want, even if it means placing shady Craigslist ads for … uh … I guess you would call them “small people” now. The idea was pretty genius, if you think about it, and I’m not just saying that because it was my idea, although I’m not not saying that because it was my idea. The idea was genius, yes, but also quite simple: if we could find the right legal grownups who were also coincidentally the same size as our child thespians, then they could fuck each other all goddamn night and nobody could say shit, and as long as we were smart in the editing room nobody would ever catch on. And, except for that brief second in the film when you see that one actor’s goatee, I think we did quite the excellent job!

Another question I get about that scene—did it really have to last for seventeen minutes? The answer is yes, without a doubt. Look, okay, I’ve said this before but clearly it needs to be repeated: I am a filmmaker. I make films. I told my actors to begin making passionate love to each other and I refused to cut until every last one of them achieved ejaculation. Could I have edited some of the space between initial penetration and the eventual orgasms? Ha ha! Do you think Stanley Kubrick would have allowed such an injustice to take place in one of his movies! Nay! Stanley Kubrick would have said, “Don’t you goddamn even think about cutting a second from these tiny sex gods! They must grind uninterrupted, you fascists!”

So I left it all in, and now people try to act like they weren’t emotionally blown away during the scene when it originally played in theaters. Like they didn’t leave the movie house crying their dumb faces off. It’s just a sign of the times, you know? Everybody has gotten so goddamn sensitive nowadays and you can’t even watch tiny adults pretending to be children have unsimulated sex in a sewer. You realize, on this upcoming Blu Ray rerelease, Disney has cut that scene entirely from the motion picture? You can’t find it anywhere these days. Obviously I have plenty of copies.

You know, if you’re lucky enough to live in my neighborhood, on Halloween I typically hand out these little flashdrives consisting of the “controversial” scene. They don’t have the whole movie on them, but that one scene? You betcha. I went through hell and back trying to get it made and I’ll be goddamned if I’m just gonna sit around and let Disney erase it from history.

Now, the other big question I get whenever I’m interviewed about this movie is whether it was necessary to dress up the clown in blackface, and the answer to that question is obviously it was necessary. Listen, how many times have—oh, what? We’ve run out of time? Already? Wow! Okay, that’s fine. Well, thank you for coming out and doing this with me. I think it’s about time someone listened to my side of the story, you know? Wait, tell me again, what issue of The New York Times will this piece be published in again?

BRIAN ASMAN

POST ORIFICE
by Charles Buttkowski

By the time he turned thirty-eight years old, Harold Chunassky had delivered nearly four billion letters, one-and-a-half billion packages of varying shapes and sizes, and more postcards than he could count.

All with his ass.

Snow, rain, sleet? Nothing stopped Harry from delivering the mail. Hell, they even made him work on his birthday.

“Got you a treat,” the Postmaster General said, entering his tiny cell holding a frosted cake dotted with thirty-nine candles and flanked by a half-dozen Postmen—goons, all of them, with flattened noses and cauliflower ears, each slapping a cattle prod against their palm to the tune of Happy Birthday.

From his rather exposed position in the stocks, Harry craned his head to get a better look at the cake. And the Postmaster General—one of the few things he had to look forward to, because despite the fact she was directly responsible for his entire lachrymose existence, she was also kind of a looker, and knew it. She wore a tight leather bodice dripping with chains, stiletto-tipped thigh-highs, and a leather newsboy cap.

“Delivery for Mrs. Myra Tuttlesworth in Sheboygan,” the mailman behind him yelled out. “Zip 53081. Looks like an Obama commemorative coin set from the Franklin Mint.”

Harry braced himself, gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut. The sound of squirting lube was the worst part of all, because it presaged the violent, speculum-enabled rending of his asshole that was sure to come.

“Just breathe, Harry,” the Postmaster General said with a gentle smile. “Take care of this last delivery, and then we’ll celebrate.” She patted him on the cheek, her leather gloves soft as a baby’s bottom.

“Yes, Postmaster General,” Harry replied, and went to his happy place. A world where letters and postcards and packages didn’t exist. Where everyone just sent email when they had something to say, and 3D printers cheerfully puttered away in kitchens next to blenders and Cuisinarts, rapidly assembling Christmas presents, and all the direct marketers had been rounded up at gunpoint and forced to shove ever-wider bundles of junk mail into their own asses until a thousand tiny rectal papercuts made them bleed the fuck out.

Or, at a minimum, a world where Harry Chunassky’s own butthole wasn’t a narrow, heavily-scarred portal to literally everywhere in the United States of America.

Yes, even Portland.

“That’s a wrap,” the mailman behind him said, clapping his latex-covered hands.

Harry came back to the real world, the goddamn, shitty, butt-stuffing real world. His ass hurt like a motherfucker. You’d think after taking an entire nation’s worth of mail up the shitter every single day for over a decade he’d get used to it, but Harry had a severe case of virgin butt. Every time felt like his first time.

Sometimes Harry wondered if he was actually in Hell, instead of Sub-basement C of the United States Postal Service headquarters, just a hop, skip and jump from the L’Enfant Plaza Metro stop in Washington, D.C.

The Postmaster General smiled. “Let’s get him out of that thing, boys. Mr. Chunassky’s done his duty for the day.”

Two of her goons slipped tasers into loops on their uniform belts and stepped forward. One of them smelled an awful lot like B.O. Maybe both of them. Together they unfastened the pillory around Harry’s neck and silently raised the wooden bar. The Postal Service kept the hinges well-oiled.

Harry stood, rubbing his wrists, his neck. He had a tan La-Z-Boy over in the corner opposite the TV, but he never used it. After a long, hard day of delivering America’s mail, the last thing he wanted to do was sit down.

The Postmaster General raised her riding crop high. “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night nor incredibly gnarly hemorrhoids will keep our Courier from his rounds. Happy birthday to you, our very dear Mr. Chunassky. And a one, and a two—”

The assemblage sang “Happy Birthday” in unison. One of the goon squad members was a halfway decent tenor, but the rest sounded like a gaggle of drowning cats. And then the passable tenor flubbed his name, calling him dear Harby—who in the everloving assfuck has EVER been named Harby?

When they were done, the Postmaster General leaned in so close Harry could smell her perfume (Domination by Calvin Klein, natch) and offered up the candle-dotted cake. Thirty-nine flames separated Harry’s eyes from her leatherbound cleavage, the gift he really wanted.

Despite his situation, or perhaps because of it, Harry Chunassky was a confirmed Tit Man.

“I’m thirty-eight,” Harry muttered, watching the candles dance in the low light of his cell, the space he only got to leave on Sundays and assorted federal holidays, in which he’d been confined ever since his idiot lawyer had lost their appeal. Turned out, eminent domain also applied to bungholes, who knew?

He took a deep breath, made a wish, and blew out every last candle in a single, masculine whoosh.

The Postmaster General slapped the riding crop against her own thigh. “Well done, birthday boy! Shall we cut the cake?”

Harry shook his head. “I, uh, don’t have much of an appetite right now. After Sheboygan. They sure do like their mail.”

“Hmph.” The Postmaster General eyed him for a moment, then shrugged. “Suit yourself, Mr. Chunassky. We’ll leave the cake for you to enjoy at your leisure. Although we can’t leave you anything to cut it with. As I’m sure you understand.”

“Damaging a mailbox is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and three years in federal prison,” one of the goons chimed in.

The Postmaster General shot him a look. “Please, Josef. Mr. Chunassky is a valued employee who takes his job very seriously. I’ll not have you impugn his sterling reputation. On his birthday, no less.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to Mr. Chunassky.”

The goon hung his head. “Sorry, Mr. Chunassky.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“Well,” the Postmaster General said, setting the cake down on the small end table next to his La-Z-Boy, “I suppose we’ll get out of your hair. Have a lovely birthday, Mr. Chunassky.”

“Thanks, Postmaster.”

He lingered there, leaning against the wall. The goons parted. The Postmaster General walked between them, out of Harry’s cell, out of his life. He tried to scope out her can, not for spank bank material but to fantasize about ramming a 747 up her poop chute as payback for years of indignity, but the goon who’d insulted him stepped directly into his line of sight, utterly ruining the vista.

“Bummer,” Harry muttered. “Oh well. Guess I’ll see what’s on the tube.”

The last of the goons filed out, shutting the cell door behind him. Harry walked over to the cake, the thirty-nine candles. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing she’d gotten his age wrong.

He needed all the wax he could get.

Harry turned on the TV for covering noise, some rerun of The Big Bang Theory (an experience not entirely unlike having foreign objects shoved up your ass for twenty-two minutes, plus commercials). He worked quickly, quietly, under the buzzing electric lights stringing the ceiling of his cell. Cheap bulbs, lights that blared rather than whispered, making the whole cell feel like a sauna at times—even after the entire infrastructure of the United States Postal Service had been downsized into one man’s overworked asshole, the gods-cursed budget STILL wouldn’t balance.

Ordinarily, the lights tormented him all night, just like the mailmen and the fucking MAIL itself tormented him all the live-long day. But today, on the day of his birth, those horrid lights were part of the plan. A very crucial part of the plan.

Harry plucked all the candles from the cake, sucked vanilla frosting off the ends, and carefully placed them in triple-stacked paper bowls. He would have preferred porcelain, pewter, almost anything else, but nobody wanted the USPS cash cow smashing a cereal bowl and slitting his wrists with the shards in order to escape booty duty. No, paper would have to do.

He shot a glance outside his cell, just to make sure the guard wasn’t on his rounds. Saw no one, heard no polished jackboots click-clicking their way down the hallway, either. Rounds were on the hour, but you never knew.

Carefully, Harry balanced on the arm of the La-Z-Boy and extended the bowl up towards the cheap, buzzing lights like some ancient supplicant beseeching the sun god for a fruitful harvest. Sweat broke out on his forehead, poured down his neck, dripped from his balls, slid down the crack of his ravaged anus. He was still shirt-cocking it, the top half of his pale blue standard issue USPS uniform soaked and sticking to his armpits. The bulbs were awfully hot. Sweat stung his eyes, his arms groaned in protest despite their slight burden.

But if he could endure delivering the mail, he could endure this.

Footsteps rang out in the hallway.

Harry cursed and flopped down into the La-Z-Boy, wincing at the landing. A guard appeared at the door, peering between the bars. “Whatcha doing?”

Harry gestured at the TV. “Just spending some quality time with my good friend Sheldon.”

The guard looked at him a minute, then shook his head. “Jesus, that’s sad,” he muttered, walking off down the corridor.

Once he was gone, Harry sprung back up and resumed his position underneath those bright, institutional lights.

Ten minutes later, the candles had melted into a piping hot rainbow soup and were eating through the bottom of the triple-stacked paper bowls. He hoped they would last.

“Just a little longer,” he chanted quietly to himself, like a mantra. “Just a little longer.”

Harry reclined in the La-Z-Boy, pushed it back as far as it would go, and squirted the lube around his sphincter. The sound didn’t bother him this time, and he didn’t go to his happy place either, that magical world where nobody jammed anything up his butt without asking nicely first.

He didn’t need to—he was going to make that world a reality.

Gaping his ass with the speculum, Harry smiled and poured hot wax directly into his anus.

It burned like freedom.

BETTY ROCKSTEADY

PINOCCHIO’S BIG DICK ENERGY
by Cocko Cuckoldi

He’s not human when he sleeps.

Sprawled across the stained motel mattress, he looks like exactly what he is—a puppet, clumsily carved, marred with dark whorls where her inexperienced hands left bloody fingerprints.

That was his fault. He had hurried her, in his making.

But that was then, and today there had been no rush. She had plenty of time to labor over the ropes that splayed him across the bed, to tie knots not normally meant for human hands. Long enough to let her eyes wander over the jutting angles of his limbs and the cryptic shadows they leave against the faded sheets.

She tries not to look at the knotted bulge between his thighs.

Maybe he wouldn’t wake up. Maybe the stolen moments in the alley would be the last they shared, her knife to his blocky Adam’s apple, the gleam of fear in his eyes. Maybe the incantations she choked out would be the last words he ever heard.

Within his wooden heart, something creaks, and she is able to watch the mask turn on as his painted eyes blink open. The knotted texture of his skin smooths out, the harsh lines relax, but in these fluorescent hotel lights he looks different than she remembers. Thin. Mean. That night in the woods, beneath the shaking shadows of the trees, he had seemed so much softer as he made his wet promises.

His eyes barely focus on her before he twitches into a violent coughing fit, arms and legs yanking the ropes to their limits. A geyser of splinters finally erupts from his throat. The fan overhead creaks and wet bits of wood patter to the floor.

“Brynn,” His voice harsh as the snapping of branches, so he says it again, and this time her name comes smooth like honey. “I’m so sorry, I’m so …  lost. I’ve missed you so much. I was stupid.” Tears spill and the reek of sap fills the room. Between his thighs, the nub of wood pulses. “I didn’t know how to find you again. I didn’t know what to do. I’m so glad you found me.” He keeps talking, but she can’t keep her eyes off his crotch.

Brynn swallows, pushes a tangle of hair from her sweaty forehead. “I know what you’ve been doing. I know you’re fucking lying.”

“No! That’s you. That’s because of you!” With every word he says, his penis swells harder. “I would never hurt you on purpose.”

It’s the same size now as the night she made him. The night he promised that if she carved him he would be hers, he would love her forever, he would make all the long nights alone sink into the past, he would be her everything.

“Shut up.” Brynn’s voice breaks. She tears her eyes away from his cock. “I know you killed them.”

“You’re crazy.” His dick twitches but doesn’t expand. “Stop saying those things! Untie me. We can start over.”

Now it swells, the size of her forearm, and they are past pretending this is normal and he knows it, and when he screams it is the sound of a tree falling. His arms beat a cacophony against the mattress, pounding the bed against the wall. Her ropes hold. He screams again and again and as he gets angrier, the room goes out of focus. Beams of oily light extend from his joints, up into the ceiling, past the ceiling, to the sky.

Brynn closes her eyes, wills them to disappear, whispers, “Fuck you.”

“Yeah, fuck me. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Fine, let’s fuck. Let me show you how nice I can be.” His voice is smooth again. The fact that she ever believed his gentle lies makes her want to scream.

Instead, she says, “I know it was you who killed all those girls”

“You’re fucking crazy!” Spit flies from his mouth.

Crazy. The word vibrates through her body. Yeah, maybe, but how the hell could anyone stay sane in a world where you couldn’t trust anybody? “They thought it was a baseball bat. Because of the damage. The splinters. The same fucking splinters I picked out for days after you left.” She never got them all. They were lodged inside her still.

“I never hurt anyone.” He had to know what would happen, but he said it anyway.

With a snap, his pelvis juts forward and twisted veins bulge across his abdomen. There’s a tearing sound as his penis expands to the size of a baseball bat. An electric tremor shudders from his eyelids to his toes. He spasms and pain ripples across his face, erases the mask, turns him still and wooden again.

That was it.

That was how many lies it took to kill a woman, to tear her apart from the inside, to rip her to shreds and leave her bleeding in an alley, her life some wasted tribute to whatever pulled those strings.

He stays a puppet long enough for her to wonder if she pushed him too far. Long enough to sit by his side on the stained sheets, staring at the thin grey light seeping through tears in the blinds. To breathe, to listen to the sound of the world going by outside, to look at the wooden form on the bed and wonder if she really is insane. To tighten her fingers on the knife enough to draw blood.

When he opens his eyes again, they are as shining and manic as a trapped animal. His oversized boner sways when he jerks his body away from her. Rapid breath, eyes fearful, knotted muscles thrumming with energy. So she reaches for his hand, strokes a palm as rough as bark, and he calms ever so slightly.

He still thinks he has a chance.

“Tell me about the faery.”

“I don’t know any fucking faery.” He groans as his flesh distorts. The pulsing vein in his cock turns purple, swells with blood. The slit in his prepuce splits open like a mouth, reveals whorled wooden rings.

“You’ll rip yourself apart if you keep lying to me.”

“Then I won’t say anything!”

“Oh?” The little knife is slippery in her hand. He tries to pull away, but his wrist is knotted too tightly. It takes some sawing, but soon his pinky finger falls to the floor with a clunk. Not a drop of blood, just a bit of sawdust.

“Stop, please. I want to live.” The words sound much different than the first time she heard them. Desperate. The honey is gone from his voice. He sounds young.

“What can she do?” That’s not really the question she wants to ask.

“What do you want her to do?”

“I’m asking the questions.” She feels like she’s losing control and she doesn’t hesitate. Three more fingers fall to the floor, clunk, clunk, clunk.

“You’re only making it worse. The less normal body parts you have, the harder it’s going to be to pick up women. What did she promise you?”

“What do you think?” Sap beads his forehead like sweat. “Just stop all this. I promise, we can be together.”

“Really? No tricks, you want to be with me?” When he doesn’t answer, she starts sawing at the palm of his hand, and the stench of rotten wood spills into the room.

“Yes,” his face slackens, no effort to sell the lie now. It’s over.

There’s a snap as the bones in his pelvis shatter, unable to support the expanding girth that spirals ever upwards. Fleshy branches sprout and glans bloom, tap a strangely familiar rhythm against the ceiling. The puppet gasps for breath and something inside him rattles.

It’s almost over.

“Can you really picture it? Forget about all this faery shit and we’ll just go back to my apartment and live the rest of our lives together, pretending to be human?”

The mask the puppet wears is gone and his wooden lips don’t move when he whispers yes, and with that single syllable, his cock erupts through the roof, expands to the size of a tree trunk and tears apart the sky. Roots shoot down from the enormous phallus, breaking through the cheap linoleum floor to twist deep into the earth beneath. Her sloppily-carved idol blackens, hardens, and cracks. Dead crickets spill from the broken wood.  As his massive organ pulses with life, the man-that-could-have-been turns to sawdust crumpled between sheets but there is no time to feel anything, there is no time to process, there is just an insistent pounding on the motel door and an unfamiliar voice that says “What the fuck is happening?” and nearby, sirens. Screams. A whole world of chaos she may have started but has no desire to join.

In the reddening sky, music.

“Hey, anyone alive in there?” The sound of jangling keys fumbling at the door. There’s no use wasting her breath. Instead, she tucks the knife into her boot and begins to climb. She pulls herself up with handholds of sagging flesh and between her thighs, the massive trunk pulses. The screams from the hotel grow distant, replaced by an insane rhythm from above that vibrates through the enormous phallus, straight into her core. Her vulva fills with blood as what’s left of her lover pulses between her thighs.

She shouldn’t look down, but she does. The ground is impossibly far away and her head sways with vertigo.  She tightens her legs against his organ as she waits for the dizziness to pass, but the pulsing heat presses against her sex and a moan escapes her lips.

Refocus.

Breathe.

Brynn looks up. Twice as far away as the ground, the twisting phallus penetrates the sky, revealing pulsing red meat beneath. She should never have gone after him. No human could ever make it up there. She belongs on the ground. If she can just release the grip of her legs and peel her fingers back one by one, she can finally let the earth swallow her.

But the thing between her thighs ripples and her legs tighten instead. Her eyes flutter closed and perhaps it could be a lover that she is wrapped so tightly around. Sweat moistens her forehead, she presses tighter and it presses back and if she doesn’t open her eyes, it’s everything she dreamed of, and maybe the wood still has promises to make, and when she cums there is a sudden emptiness where once he was, and then she is falling upward, into the sky.

She lands badly. Her back slams into the ground, the breath pushes out of her and for a long moment all she sees is darkness and she is sure she is dead.

Neon lights bring her back to the present and when she remembers how to open her eyes, light is all there is, a screaming brightness that makes her head scream and her stomach roll and she doesn’t think she can move until she pulls herself to her knees to vomit on her lap.

Once the sick is out of her, the world comes into focus.

She’s made it.

An insane circus is alive around her and neon blinks an occult rhythm, reveals snatches of panic in flashes of light. Dancing, red lips, sharp teeth. An animal stink. Laughter. Plumes of strange-colored smoke and crowds of people—no,not people-that overtake her, breasts and hips and pelvic bones thrusting her through the crowd. A procession of donkeys nearly knocks her over, their oversized dicks flopping, as statuesque women wearing scraps of leather guide them through the crowd.

Brynn pulls back. Dozens of tents are scattered across the tilted landscape. Throngs of humanoid creatures pour through them, blurred faces thrumming with energy. All around her, beneath the music, guttural voices utter incomprehensible threats. The lights flash too fast and Brynn’s eyes fill as something deep inside her turns over into fear, and as the first tear falls the entire crowd shifts to face her.

They know she doesn’t belong.

Brynn whirls to face a tent. It’s been behind her this whole time, waiting. The filthy red and white stripes are a mockery of cheer. Tatters of torn material drip from the door. Her surroundings fade, the screaming in Brynn’s heart calms and a voice whispers in her head everything is fine but she can’t be fine, not here, and it’s far too late to run, the circus smears against the sky, the tent flops open, and inside there is silence, relief from all this blaring insanity.

She walks inside.

The faery is propped against the tent walls. Milky white eyes stare past Brynn. Her dying breath lingers in the room. One pale blue hand is buried between her thighs, the other splays lifelessly across the dirt floor. Near her fingers, tangles of puppet strings descend into darkness that spills across the ground like an oil slick.

Why did you come here?

Brynn’s mouth opens but she can’t remember what she came here to say. Her eyes drift over the strong soft thighs pushing against the mud, the jut of the hip, the curve of a breast, the dark perfection of the faery’s silent lips.

Why did you come here? The words write themselves in smoke deep in Brynn’s brain. When she answers, her voice sounds nothing like the way she practiced.

“You tricked me … You hurt so many people—you made him do it, didn’t you? He killed those girls, and they didn’t do anything. Why would you do that?”

Why did you come here?

I told you, Brynn tries to say, but her mouth fills with blood and she can’t remember what she’s already said. She doesn’t remember what she promised herself she wouldn’t say.

The knife is heavy in her boot. Useless, but she reaches for it.  It’s time to leave. She’s forgotten why she’s come. She brandishes her paltry weapon and the faery says Do I really repulse you so? and the dark shadows of her face dig into Brynn’s heart and her words are as slippery as the curves of her body and she asks it again Do I really repulse you so?

Brynn says, “Yes.”

As the lie leaves her mouth, the faery’s dead lips twitch into a grin, and Brynn realizes she has made a very big mistake.

GINA RANALLI

THE BUSH JAR
by Sapphia Plath

Unlike Betsy, who made soft whimpering sounds when she came, Doreen was more of a screamer, bucking wildly as she bashed her pelvic bone against Esther’s nose—painful for Esther but also satisfying—yanking and pulling fistfuls of Esther’s hair, until she was finished, at which point she would go completely limp, moaning softly. Esther popped her head up from between her thighs, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and smirking coyly.

“Delicious,” she said, licking her lips as she climbed up Doreen’s body. “Taste yourself.”

She kissed Doreen deeply and the two continued to lay in each other’s arms for several minutes, satiated, damp with perspiration.

After a while, Doreen said, “Good lord, Esther, where did you learn to do that?”

Esther thought of Philomena, her much older benefactress but figured it was best to not divulge the intricacies of their complicated relationship. “Here and there,” she said instead, hoping to seem mysterious.

“Mmm.” Doreen played idly with Esther’s hair. “Buddy said it was Philomena, that old crone, who turned you.”

Esther’s heart stuttered for the briefest of seconds. “She’s not that old.”

Doreen laughed. “You don’t deny it?”

Shrugging, Esther said, “What’s the point? It was a while ago.” Hoping to change the subject, she rose from the bed and went to the window, opening it wide to the outside world, indifferent to the fact that she was naked and anyone passing by on the sidewalk below would be able to see her if only they looked up to her second story studio apartment building. “It’s so stuffy in here, don’t you think?”

Doreen raised herself up, leaning on an elbow to study Esther for a moment before frowning. “What’s that?” she asked.

“That would be my derriere,” Esther smiled.

“Lovely as it is, I meant the jar on the windowsill. A plant?”

“Oh.” Esther looked down at the Mason jar, somewhat embarrassed. It was half full, the clear glass shimmering in the sunlight. “It’s where I put my … trimmings.”

“Your what?” Doreen appeared genuinely mystified.

Esther gestured at her well-trimmed pubic area and found herself slightly amused to see the understanding dawn on Doreen’s face.

“You save your pubic hair? Whatever for?”

“Sentimentality, I suppose.”

Cocking an eyebrow, Doreen said, “Esther Greenwood, you are certainly the most peculiar person I have ever known.”

Opening her mouth to reply, Esther was startled by the sudden sound of flapping wings, flinching as she turned back to the window to see a large, blue-black raven perched on the windowsill, a mere two feet from where she stood, dark eyes gleaming, watching her with purpose.

Doreen let out a cry of alarm, sitting up fast but it only took a moment for Esther to recognize the bird. “Reginald! What are you doing here?”

Reginald held what looked like a cherry pit in his beak and tilted his gaze first to her then to the bush jar beside him.

“Reginald?” Doreen said. “You know this creature by name?”

“He belongs to Philomena. I have no idea why he might be flying loose though.”

Reginald plopped the pit into the jar, causing Esther to frown slightly.

“Of course he belongs to that witch,” Doreen said. “I should have known.”

“Reginald!” A voice from outside called up. “Return to me at once!”

Esther looked out the window to see Philomena standing on the opposite side of the street, looking mildly perturbed.

The raven quickly took flight, returning to his mistress.

“Hello, Philomena,” Esther waved. “How are you this afternoon?”

“Well, I’m not nude and framed by a window for all the world to see.”

Unsure of how to respond to this statement, Esther said nothing. Doreen joined her at the window and shouted down at Philomena. “You sound jealous, Phil. Perhaps you should talk to your crow about the ugly ravages of time.”

Philomena visibly bristled before waving a dismissive hand. “Enjoy your living seed, Esther, and have a lovely afternoon.” She stalked off down the street, Reginald on her shoulder.

Doreen laughed, moving to the bed to retrieve her clothes, and began dressing. “That woman is senile beyond repair.”

Crossing the room, Esther caressed Doreen’s shoulder. “Leaving so soon?”

“I’m afraid so. I have to get ready for tonight’s party. You’ll be there, won’t you?”

Esther considered. “I suppose so. Unless something better comes up.” She smiled teasingly. “Maybe Betsy will come by and distract me from your absence in my bed.”

“That goody two shoes! As if she could ever take my place.”

The two kissed, slowly, and then Doreen was gone, off to her next adventure. Esther flopped down on the bed, idly fingering herself as she pondered what she should wear to that evening’s gathering. Something pretty, she thought, closing her eyes. Almost immediately, she fell into a lazy sleep.

When she awoke, she was surprised to find her bedroom dark. How much time had passed? It wasn’t like her to take an hours-long nap. Was she late for the party?

Groggily, she sat up, squinting in the murk, her gaze drifting to the window for some indication of time, but it was simply too dark to see. Instead, she turned on the bedside lamp and immediately gasped.

The hair in the jar on the windowsill, wiry and thick, had grown up and out, like some bizarre combination of vines and ivy, climbing from the jar and up the window, covering it as completely as any heavy blanket she could have hung to block out the outside world.

Getting to her feet, she trepidatiously stepped towards the window, fascination trumping fear. Was this a dream? What was happening?

The bush - for lack of a better term - rustled, a sound like dry leaves crushed to dust inside a clenched fist, and Esther flinched but nevertheless stepped closer still.

The pubic hair was growing before her eyes, sprouting what looked like … what, exactly? Buds, of some kind?

Esther felt dizzy and disoriented. Her heart began to hammer hard and she watched in horror as the hair grew even more rapidly, crawling over the wall on all sides of the window, including above and below, approaching both the floor and the ceiling.

A soft whimper escaped her throat as those bizarre buds—round and mostly brown—grew larger and larger still. Stumbling back a single step, Esther told herself to run, get out of her tiny studio apartment but there she stood, captivated despite her terror.

The telephone rang, shrill and jarring. Esther nearly jumped out of her skin but hurried to answer it. Doreen, most likely, calling to ask where she was, or maybe Betsy, asking the same.

“Hello?”

But it was neither. Instead, Philomena’s voice croaked in her ear. “Esther, darling, how are you?”

Esther blinked several times, her eyes moving back to the pubic hair slithering every which way like a thousand centipedes, each with a thousand legs.

“Are you enjoying the treat I’ve bestowed upon you, dear one?” Philomena asked, voice full of saccharine cheer.

“Wh … What?”

“The seed, darling. The living seed Reginald delivered this afternoon. I was sure it would be just the thing to lift your spirits.”

“Reginald?” It took a moment to remember the raven on the windowsill and how it had dropped what appeared to be a cherry pit into the jar. “You?” she said, at last. “You did this?”

“Oh, you’re quite welcome. No need to thank me, I assure you. As soon as I heard—from nearly everyone in town, mind you—that you had taken up with every tart imaginable, I just knew I had the perfect treasure to share with you. The seeds are quite potent, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Once upon a time, in fact, even a scarecrow was brought to life.” Philomena laughed. “That’s another story for another time, however. Tragic, really. Nevertheless, I must race off now. Perhaps I’ll give you a ring tomorrow, yes? Have a wonderful evening, dear. Ta-ta for now.”

The line clicked and Esther stood, still naked, with the phone receiver in her hand, jaw agape.

The pubic hair had now taken over half the room, pushing out from the wall, a wild, thick shrub obscuring everything within its reach.

Those buds though. Esther couldn’t take her eyes off them. They were growing larger, taking form, and becoming … recognizable. Not buds at all, at least not anymore.

They were human heads, the size of softballs and growing larger by the second. Staring, Esther saw hair springing out of them and features forming. Small eyes popped open, scanning their surroundings as the tiny mouths opened and let out squeaks of distress.

The bush was, in its own way, birthing newborns.

Esther screamed, dropping the phone as she reeled back, tripping over a throw rug as tentacles of the bush reached for her, wrapping themselves around her ankles, fixing her in place and pulling her legs apart.

Thrashing violently, struggling, shrieking, Esther watched in revulsion as one of the heads slithered towards her exposed crotch. Its eyes made contact with her own and it smiled mischievously, clearly amused.

Esther knew that smile, those eyes.

The thing was Doreen, licking its lips in anticipation.

“Tasty,” it said, in a high, alien voice. “Yummy good.”

It reached her body, the face burying itself between her legs, the small tongue lapping her expertly. Esther squeezed her eyes closed, doing what she could to pull away but it was no use. The bush had taken over, was covering her entirely and now other heads were licking and nibbling her nipples, her stomach, her neck.

When she dared to open her eyes again, she recognized every lover she’d ever had—the bad ones as well as the good—with one exception.

Only Philomena was absent.

In spite of the living nightmare, Esther found herself screaming not only in horror but also in ecstasy, her hips rocking towards the head between her legs as she neared orgasm.

Pubic hair shoved its way down her throat as she came hard, shuddering, fighting for air, and somewhere, probably not far, a raven cawed once and took flight, vanishing swiftly into the fading gloom.

MICHAEL ALLEN ROSE

A COCKWORK WHOREANGE
by Antitty Pervness

There was me, that is Anus, and my three droogs, that is Peen, Jizzy, and Dumb, Dumb being really dumb, and we sat in the Korova Milk Bar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.

We was drinking the finest of Korova titty milk, being milky boys, all. Fresh from the tap it was, with the birds all stacked up against the wally wall, showing their boobles and wobbling them to and fro, them milky sacks jiggling like  two rhinoceroses wrestling under a tarp.

Nothing like a bit of titty milk to get we milky boys primed up for a bit of the old ultraviolence, and of course, my brothers, the cow tipping shindiggery of the night wumpus. We were peeting our titty milk with exciting veshches suchlike Viagra and Cialis and ginkgo biloba, which were administered through injections in the rumpy wump on the birds, and so after a real horrorshow time getting big old dicky-wicks, we thought might be time to viddie some grumpus in the slew, and so down the docks we went, widdershits. Of course, before leaving off for shunts, I took a gallon jug of boob juice to go, for if I go too long without, I get testy.

Firstwise, down the alleys, we see this filthy, homeless moodge, all drunk and probably horny and wearing no pants. I says to Dumb, Dumb, go fist the fellow upside down, of course making my mind up for a real kick in the dickpants on him, but then Dumb, being Dumb, puts his whole rooker in arsewise on the moodge! Now he’s hucking and bucking like a steamship doodlebug, and I look at Dumb’s face, and sure and hoinkles, he’s dribbling titty milk out his nose like snot through a muffin.

“Oh, what a world, where young hooligans can fist a pantsless old man in an alley with no recourse!”

We garble up a laugh factory at his willygagging, and stare titward, as his moobs are gigantine indeed.

This old moodge notices our outfits, quicklike, and sure as winking, he pulls up his dodgy shirtop.

“Oy, milky boys! I see you’re wearing adult diapers, all white and crisp! Did some young ruffians do to you what you’re about to do to me? Having pants to fend off your fistings would be one worthwhile thing in such a stinking world as this!”

I tell Dumb to lay off, for sometimes I find the ramblings of old codgers interesting to slooshy their world wearies. “And what’s so stinking about it?” I adjust my codpiece.

“The young, so obsessed with sucking big titties, and I’m far undermilked, lad.”

Sure and then, we tripped him up and down in the gutter he went, Dumb giving him the boots to the titty, until sprinkling outwise was gumpy loads of lactation. “Drink up, milky boys!” shouted I, as the fountain razzled in the goopy doot, and the poor old moodge scattered his bowels cross the cobblestones. He’d hid those ample titties well, but we, like bloodhounds, found them out, and soon it were time to find more nipple dipples, for the night was young.

I woke up late the next morn with a real starry pony in me gobsmacked noggin, and wasn’t more than a few turns of the clock before along comes me milky boy, Jizzy, with the others, knocking at my door.

“Me and the milky boys were peeting about at the Korova, and you had not turned up, so Peen says maybe you were like offended at some vetch, and so we ought come round and gather you up for a right scrap.”

“My apologies, oh my brother, but a pain in my gulliver made me had to sleep.”

“Sorry about the pain, Anus. Perhaps it’s because of using your gulliver too much like, giving orders and discipline, and nibbling nipples too much. Mayhap you ought go back to bed and rest so you can be chipper again tomorrow and go on sipping your boobie moo?”

“Sarcasm does not become you, oh my brothers. Dumb? What’s that horsey mouth doing fallen open like it’s looking to be filled with a DDD cup?”

“Oy, no picking on Dumb no more, Anus. That’s part of the new way.”

“A new way? What’s this about a new way? There’s been some large talk about my slooshy, and I’ll say no more will abide.”

They invited me on a walk down the river, with Jizzy leading the way, like a big droogie, and I followed, keen to watch them playing with their toys, giant dildos all in their holsters, knowing they’d turn them upon my holes like a gloopy lightning crack if I weren’t to play innocent. I waited for my opportunity, knowing their styles real horrorshow, as I did.

“Well,” said Jizzy, “Firstwise, we’re to do things more democratic like, with each of us having say. But now, more pointedly, we’re tired of jugs, boobies, titties, milk maids, udders, gazongas and jiggle-wiggles. You’re obsessed with moloko, Anus.”

“Here here!” shouted Dumb.

“Is that so?” I asked.

Jizzy nodded. “Every night, you make us meet at the Korova milk bar, and wear these giant white man-sized diapers, and we want to try something else for a bit, viddy?”

“We’re ass men, now,” says Peen.

“Right, and you can’t get milk from an ass,” says Jizzy.

I were about to point out that donkeys give milk, but instead I pulled me britva and went ak ak ak on Jizzy’s poor weenus. It was a big black one, and I rogered him up the pee-hole with it til’ his glazzies nearly popped. Dumb unwrapped his string of anal beads from round his rooker and took swing, but I swished with me britva at his left noga and left him all malenky, slapping like an animal as he fell into the water. Peen just stood there, razzer agape.

“Yes, Peen, anything to say?”

“Nothing, Anus, nothing at all. Look, Dumb’s dying. And Jizzy’s got a widened urethra.”

“His tracts were wide before we began, wasn’t they, Jizzy?” I asked.

“Right right,” he muttered, and now we milky boys know who the lead droog is.

“Now, I’ll have no more talk of asses, butts, derrieres, sofa cushions, fartboxes, or pushin cushions. Come, let’s go viddy a horrorshow time. Any suggestions, oh my newly minted democratics?”

“I puzzled out a real piece of gloop with this starry ptitsa, where she lives with all her cats, and jewels and gold like.”

“Tits?” I asked, mouth watering.

“Right, sure there are,” he said.

I, feeling my power returned, led us off to our doom.

We autoed to a cottage on the outskirts of a village, kind of a slooshy bog of a vetch. A sign listed it “MILK MAIDS” which was kind of a gloopy sort of name that made me thirsty and ready for a bit of the old vitamin dee.

“We thought it might appeal to you, oh fearless leader,” said Jizzy, but I shushed me milky boys and turned down the auto, and gave a malenky knock on the door. Then, I rung the bell, and grinned at the opening riff of Hoobastank’s Crawling In The Dark. Sounds came out from behind the wood, a young sounding devotchka saying: “Who is it?”

“Miss, please, me friend down the road! He’s got the biggest tits I’ve ever seen, and his back hurts from wheelbarrowing them round the flatblock! Please, just a rest for his poor aching breasties, a kindly glass of moloko and a rest on a chaise-lounge, perhaps? Or a winch for his poor boobie-woobies?”

As soon as this devotchka opens the crack of the door, I spend me foot in the creechy hollow and push it to enter the manse.

“What’s the meaning of this?” shouts this geezer, but we pay no mind as we start sacking the wattles and cracking her skullwise with our gizzadooks.

We take turns getting wet with the party parts, and all the while, in the background, playing on the stereo is my favorite transcendence: Hoobastank. Ah, The Stank, the emotional gutty-wuts of “The Reason,” how it moved my gulliver to cloudy digs.

But, soon, I heard the old police auto-siren in the distance, and it dawned on me skorry that this old forella had been on the phone to the millicents when we’d come asking for help. “Away!” I creeched to Dumb, working at the locks and chains and bolts and other protective measures. “The rozzes are coming!”

“You stay and meet them, then,” said Dumb, and I felt a crackle right on the back. I turned and he chained me like right on the glazlids, and I fell squirming and howling around in great pain. “I don’t like what you done to me, old droogy. Huh huh huh.” And he was gone.

I could slooshy the boots of the goloss as they surrounded me, doing the old arm twist and carrying me out. “Well well, little Anus, all to ourselves.” I knew then I wasn’t going to get nothing like fair play from the grahzny bratchnies, bog blast them.

They let me have it unmerciful, clenching their rookers and breaking me belly, but what’s worse came later. After much abuse and pain, this doctor, Doc Boobsky, he had like, a new technique said for reforming criminal behavior. The governor decided I was brutal and dangerous but this new plan, this “Lactatio Technique,” would have me out in a week and back in freedom.

“We’ll be giving you a shot in the dick,” he said.

“Like vitamins, sir?” I asked, knowing that politeness would keep me from going back in the barry place.

“Yes, something like that. And there’ll be special films to watch.”

“Oh, I like going to the pictures, sir,” I said.

But the sinny they wheeled my undernourished self to was like none I’d ever seen before, my brothers. They strapped my dingus going all thumpy wumpy to a wired little metal cap, and likewise one on my gulliver. They propped open my glazzies so I could not shut them, no matter how I tried.

“You must be real keen on my viddying this film. It must be real horrorshow!” I said.

“Horrorshow isn’t quite the right word, my boy,” said Doc Boobsky, as he shoomped through a door nearwise.

And then, oh my brothers, the film-show started with some real funky 70’s style bass, and the picture came on, but there was no credits, and suddenlike, oh, the pornography. This film jumped in on this bukkake video, like where this devotchka was showered with white gummy. It brought to mind my milk, and I felt a scratch in my throat.

“Excuse me, sirs, could I have some milk? Please? I’m dry as a desert.” But no answer came, instead the film jumped to a gangbang, with lots of big cocks rubbing up and downsies and lots of vaginas going all yummy wummy with wet, and people hucking and bucking with great fervor.

Just about then, my stomach started jerking about, and I had pains all over, like I could sick up, but at the same time, not sick up, and my distress was overwhelming. Then, we shot into another film, and it was quick cuts of massive boobies, bouncing about. Titty fucking and sucking and cucking, giant massive mammaries slamming together, but here was the britva to the yarbles: all of it set to music, and in my pain and sickness, I noticed what music it was that crackled and boomed on the soundtrack. It was Hoobastank!

“Stop, you filthy, disgusting sods! It’s a sin to use The Stank like this! An unforgivable sin!”

The film showed “THE END” on the screen, and then the lights came up and I saw Doc Boobsky standing before me. “What’s this about sin?” he asked.

“Using Hoobastank like that! They never hurt anyone! They just wrote bolshy guitar rock hits of the early 2000s! I want to be sick! Please, sir, bring me something to be sick into!” I creeched “Stop the films! I can’t stand any more!”

“Stop it? But we’ve only just started!” was their reply, and then they all smecked loudly.

A week later, I went before the head rozz, surrounded by his bruise boys. He giggled, like, and asked “Anus… you want a suckle on these groody breasts?” Instead of jumping at them like the old me, I felt sick like, and real bolnoy.

“No, please sir! Please!”

Then, the bastards put on some of The Stank, and I lost it, falling out the chair and rolling about boohooing. I had been brainwashed to loathe the sound of some of the most beautiful music ever written, the agony, my brothers, oh, it was searing. They sent me home, and I set up a new life as best I could in a oozhassny shite hole downtown. I had no friends in the world and I’d been kicked out by me pee and em, shunned by society, and now could no longer viddy a titty without razrezzing me glazzies out. Moreso, my beloved Stank now gave me fits. It was time to end it all. One moment of pain, perhaps, and then to sleep forever and ever.I shut me glazzies and creeched out to the world: “Goodbye! May bog forgive you for a life without boobies!” I felt the cold wind on my litso, then I jumped.

But, I did not snuff it, or I would not be here to write what I have written. I cracked my back and nogas, but as I lay broken, I saw the faces of the droogs I knew, and I realized, they’d been playing Hoobastank through the walls, trying to arrange all this for their politics, like showing how cruel the Lactatio Techninque was to do. After I woke from the black, they came again to see me, and told me I’d done them a right service, and all those who had done me wrong were put away. The minister himself brought me a pressie, a little television, and said that I could have anything I wanted. Turns out, the bump on the noggin had shaken loose whatever the docs had broken up in it.

I had a mesel for a moment, then said: “Lactating Sluts, Volume 4?”

I was cured, all right.

WHIT SLORP

NOT-SO-LITTLE WOMEN
by Louise May Alcock

Beth flailed in the bed, screaming as she violently sat up and fell back down onto her pillow. It appeared that some unseen force was causing her to involuntarily convulse.

“Get the priest!” screamed Jo. “It’s happening again!”

Meg ran frantically out of the room.

Beth continued to thrash about. Jo’s eyes were wide with alarm, her clasped hands pressed against her bosom. “And on her birthday!”

Beth had the misfortune of being born on December nineteenth, exactly twenty-one years ago.

Beth abruptly stopped writhing and she stared strangely at Jo. A guttural voice came from her throat, “He’s inside meeee. The little man is insssside me. I feeeel him down there in my nancy.”

Jo dropped the script and sighed dramatically. “I refuse to continue if you insist on speaking of that stupid little man. It’s obscene. There’s no little man inside you. You wish there were.”

“It’s not like that. I’m just providing him shelter.”

“Ha! Shelter in your bean bouquet! You should keep your histrionics down or doctor Whorton will diagnose you as hysterical and admit you!”

“But there IS a little man down there. His name is Jack. I let him in there.”

Jo was becoming exasperated. “The only reason we’re doing this play is to entertain you while you’re stuck up here in bed, and the only reason we chose The Exorcist is because it’s the only one you can perform while bedridden.”

“Are we gonna continue rehearsing or not?” Amy called out from backstage.

“Please do,” said Jo

Amy had emerged theatrically from behind the crimson velveteen curtain. Beth flinched as a tumbler full of water was pitched into her face. “Aaaagghhh! What the—”

Meg ran back into the room. “I’ve found Father Adley!” she proclaimed, presenting Amy, who was wearing a white buttoned shirt, her father’s black jacket, and a black ribbon around her neck as a crude minister’s collar. She held a bible and a small glass decanter.

“Our redeemer compels you!” said Amy as she shook more water from the bottle. “Be gone, tormentor! Leave this child be! Her soul is accounted for!”

“Stop!” coughed Beth. “What is wrong with you!? You’ll drown him!” She screamed as she wiped the wet hair from her eyes.

Amy, the youngest daughter at nineteen, had a tendency to act younger than her years. She became distressed. “Why are we stopping?! This is my favorite scene!”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Beth is going on about the little man again.”

“Oooh!” said Amy, her eyes lighting up. She quickly dropped onto the floor by the bed and propped her chin in her hands, looking up at Beth like a puppy. “Is he still up there? I wish I had a little man in my tinderbox! It’s been months! Does he need a change of scenery, perhaps?” she asked, smiling in her priest garb.

“Amy!” said Meg, throwing her script. “What if Marmie heard you? Do you want her to disown you?!”

Beth looked at each of them earnestly. “There really is a tiny man in me. Please believe me.” Her sincere appeal began to alarm Jo who wished to deflect this nonsense back to the play.

“We can’t resume the rehearsal until you promise to stop raving about the tiny man.”

Beth hit her pillow with a rolled up script. “I’m done with the silly play. Jack will want to come out for air and he doesn’t want anyone else to see him. He’s scared of us giants. He was almost eaten by the last giant he met.”

Jo had heard enough. She put on her petticoat and headed out to Laurie’s house.

It was snowing outside and Jo blinked rapidly, trying to keep the tiny flakes of snow out of her eyes. She was briskly approaching Theodore “Laurie” Laurence’s home, focusing on the flickering candles in the windows and the Christmas wreath hanging on the door.

When he finally answered, Jo thrust herself at him. “Laurie, please come quickly! it’s Beth!”

“Has her fever returned?!” He asked louder than he intended. Jo’s heaving breasts and the tiny clouds of her exiting breath was causing his girthy member to stir in his trousers.

Jo felt it pulse against her. She pressed her breasts to him harder and looked away. “Perhaps. Maybe that’s exactly it! She’s been ranting for days about a little man that lives in her—in her—down there.”

Laurie’s eyes widened and he swallowed nervously.

“Perhaps she is feverish,” said Jo. “I’m scared to tell Marmie. She’s busying herself with Christmas preparations to distract herself from worrying about father. No one knows when the war will let up. She misses him so. I hear her pleasuring herself every night and then crying herself to sleep. Could you come speak to Beth? I’m at my wit’s end!”

Laurie nodded and put on his coat and hat.

Jo knocked softly as she opened the bedroom door. “Beth, Laurie’s here to see you.”

Beth smiled as he approached her bed. He felt her forehead.

“Hmm. You don’t seem warm.”

“I’m not feverish.” Beth said, indignantly. “I know Jo told you about him. That’s why you’re here. I’ll prove that he’s in there.”

Laurie looked down at his hat. “Well, Jo did mention that you had a—visitor.”

“His name is Jack. I told him he could stay in my hootenanny as long as he wanted; he was going to freeze outside all winter,” said Beth as if none of this was remarkable.

“Are you sure you want me to take a look at him?” He asked while looking at Jo to gauge her reaction.

“Of course,” Beth said, also looking at Jo, “if we can have some privacy. Jack’s shy, but you can probably catch a glimpse, or at least feel him. I told him to be cordial.”

Jo shrugged at Laurie. This was all very queer, but she quietly left the room and joined the other girls and Marmie downstairs to string popcorn for the tree.

“I don’t see anything in there, Beth,” Laurie said, his voice muffled from under her nightie.

“Maybe you should feel around . . . inside.”

Laurie pretended not to be shocked. “If it will put your mind at ease. I will if you want me to.”

Beth looked down at her hand. “I’ve always wanted you to. Remember when I gave you a tuggie at Goody Addler’s Halloween party? Maybe it’s your turn to repay the favor in kind.”

Laurie raised one eyebrow. “I’m looking for your little man. Let’s not get distracted.”

“Marmie says only fools and horses work without pleasure.”

Laurie lowered his head while keeping his eyes locked on Beth’s. He slowly grinned and licked his lips. For a moment, in the flickering light, he looked like a wolf.

Beth had been alone with Laurie for some time now. Amy crept upstairs and silently cracked the bedroom door open. She saw Beth, laying on her back with her nightgown pulled up to her waist. Her knees were up in the air and Laurie was laying on his chest with his head between her legs.

His mouth was on Beth’s front bottom.

In the past, Laurie had obliged Amy with many “bagina massages,” as he called them, employing a horrid baby voice to put her at ease. These intimate relations had commenced after her nineteenth birthday party. But despite her affairs with Laurie, Amy wasn’t jealous of Beth. It was about time that she also enjoyed the pleasures of sin. Laurie felt like a safe option for them all; he was practically a brother.

Beth sat up. Laurie’s tongue relented and they both looked intently down at her privates. Amy thought it looked as if her sister and Laurie were searching a carpetbag for a lost item. Beth sighed. “Jack, please come out. Laurie’s a family friend.”

Amy covered her mouth to stop from giggling and closed the door as Laurie resumed his oral investigation. He spent some time down there. Beth looked up at the ceiling. Can Marmie really coerce this kind of ecstasy from her own body every night? Beth knew she would certainly begin trying when she was next alone.

Laurie’s tongue began moving in fervent circles again. “OW!” he cried as he sat up and held his mouth.

“What’s wrong?!” Beth screamed.

“Thumthing bit me!” he said, holding his tongue. “You weren’t lying! There ith thumthing inthide you.”

“Let me see,” said Beth. “Are you hurt badly?”

Laurie stuck his tongue out. A tiny trace of blood spread from the tip like a crimson snowflake.

“Jack!” Beth screamed down into her lap, slapping herself on the south-mouth like she was extinguishing kindling. “You promised to behave! Do you want me to kick you out of my fish-mitten for good?”

Laurie held up a hand. “Oh, I’ll get him out! Don’t you worry your pretty locks about that!”

Laurie spread open Beth’s slobber pocket with his left hand, licked his right index and middle fingers and inserted them gently into her. He looked around the room like he was listening for something. He felt around deeper inside of her and something brushed against his fingertip. He quickly clamped his fingers together and pulled them out.

“Yeowch! The motherfucker bit me again!”

Laurie’s scream was muffled through the floorboards, but it still startled Marmie, who dropped her wooden bowl of popping corn kernels. “Oh, my fiddling britches!” She looked up at the ceiling. “What ARE they doing up there? Darning socks with hacksaws?”

The girls all ran upstairs. Meg flung the door open. Laurie was holding something up in the air. Their eyes adjusted to the dim lights and they could see between his fingers a pair of tiny legs, kicking. Everyone gasped except Beth; she was still in the throes of her first interrupted cunnilingus.

Laurie was fumbling with the holy water bottle from their play. He lowered the diminutive man into the bottle, head-first, holding his arms and legs down so he would pass through the bottleneck without resistance. Laurie replaced the ground glass top and held the small clear decanter up to his glaring eyes.

Jo uncovered her mouth. “There—really was a—little man in her—cupcake.”

Beth nodded and Amy’s head peeked out from between Jo and Meg. She closed the door behind her. “I knew it! I never doubted you, Beth! Lemme see him!” She stooped down at Laurie’s lap near the bottle. He was beating his fists against the inside of the bottle. It sounded like a moth fluttering around in a jar.

“He’s so cute!” she said.

Jack was agitated. He paced back and forth, splashing around in the small amount of holy water that remained in the bottle after Beth’s exorcism.

Beth took the bottle from Laurie. “Jack, calm down. Everyone’s just astonished that you’re real. No one will hurt you.”

Laurie sucked the blood from the end of his finger and glared at the mini man. “I might hurt him a little!”

“He doesn’t mean that,” Beth reassured Jack who brandished his tiny dagger and gave Laurie the big bird. Beth gasped.

Amy snatched the bottle from Beth’s hands and removed the topper. “Where do you hail from!?” she shouted down into the bottle, trying to sound mature. “What manner of business brings you here?”

Jack covered his ears from her booming voice. He shouted back up as loud as he could. “I’m here by happenstance! I didn’t realize there was another land of giants!”

“Another land of giants? Are we giants?!” asked Jo, approaching the little bottle with one of the lanterns. She held the lamp up to the side of the bottle. “Hmm, are we ‘giants,’ or are you just a minikin?”

Jack shrugged. “All I know is that I prefer giant women!”

Amy giggled. “Yeah, I bet! You can climb entirely inside us. I wonder what you could do with my breasts?”

Beth smiled at Amy, “Well, I’ll tell you: he can sleep on them, or you can cover him in churn butter and he can slide around between them. It’s divine.”

“I wonder if it feels better than Laurie’s huge spigot!” exclaimed Amy, looking around the room at the other sisters. “He ravages me by the schoolhouse like a wild boar!”

“He used to do that to me too,” said Jo snidely. “Until I grew up.”

“I hope I never grow up.” smirked Meg. “He still takes me by the woodpile. It’s like a fever dream.”

All of the sisters nodded.

Laurie blushed. Marmie then burst into the room. “Okay, I’ve heard enough! You’re a harem of Jezebels! I don’t intend to oversee a brothel in your father’s absence! You all need a good spanking!

“I’ve had plenty of those,” said Meg under her breath, glancing at Laurie.

“And a real exorcism!” snapped Marmie who had heard Meg’s remark. She looked at Laurie. “And you should be ashamed of yourself! You’ve been giving Beth lip service and playing womb-broom with all of my little girls!”

Meg stepped forward and looked at the ground. “Marmie, we’re not children anymore. We’re women. You can’t shield us under your apron for eternity. We want to experience the world and all of its pleasures.”

Marmie wiped a tear from her eye. “I know I can’t secure you for forever. But I also know I didn’t raise you to be wanton whores!”

Jo interjected, “We aren’t. We just wanted to try being intimate with a man—a man we could trust. Laurie loves us.”

“Well, what’s this nonsense about a man who lives inside Beth?!”

“Oh, Marmie! This is Jack!” Amy announced proudly. She held her hand up next to the bottle as if displaying a product in a general store. Marmie dropped her teacup.

Snow began to accumulate on the windowsills and the lanterns flickered, casting an eerie glow around the room. Beth was flailing around wildly in Marmie’s bed and screaming. Her face was painted green-grey with chlorophyll paste. Amy placed a bible on the bed and gestured the sign of the cross. She kissed a small cookie and pressed it against Beth’s head while making a hiss sound with her mouth. “Serpent, behold the cross of the Lord! We drive you from us, wicked spirit! Depart henceforth and may the Lord’s mercy descend upon us!”

Amy screamed and jumped offstage into a pile of down comforters. The curtains closed. Marmie was beaming. She and Laurie both stood, clapping wildly and the girls bowed. Jack clapped from the edge of Marmie’s bedside dresser.

Later that night, glasses and forks clinked and the smell of pine and roast goose permeated the house. The fire crackled. Marmie held up her glass.

“This really was the best production you girls have ever performed for me. And that’s saying quite a lot. I didn’t want to admit it, but you’ve grown up right under my nose. I am so proud of you all, and your father will be too. He said goodbye to four girls and he’ll return home to four grown up women. My little women.”

“Giant women!” said Jack, holding up the top of an acorn filled with cider.

Everyone laughed.

AUTUMN CHRISTIAN

THE THOTTERY
by Shirley Jacksoff

I promised myself I would not throw a stone.

But every year on the way to the lottery I’d find myself picking out the best ones and putting them in my pockets.

I always played this game where everything ordinary was actually replaced by something special. A cat could be a fairy. A bottle could hold a genie. A stone could be a diamond. But until you picked it up and claimed it, you never could know for sure. You had to be open to the possibility of leaving nothing behind.

I weighed myself down with stones so that by the time we got to the square I was heavy with every step.

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny when Tessie Hutchens drew the slip with the black mark.

I caught sight of Howard, the Markell’s boy, staring at me with what looked like a sneer. The sun could’ve glinted in-between his teeth.

And like every year, I reached into my pockets and found my hand was the perfect shape to curl around a rock. I didn’t realize I’d pulled my hand out. Raised it. Wound up.

Not until I felt the weight fly out of my hand.

“Sorry, mom,” I whispered.

Afterwards Dad took me and my brothers to the corner store for lunch like always. But when he went for his wallet to pay for our hot pepper and beef sandwiches, Dean just shook his head a little and patted Dad on the shoulder. We ate our cold sandwiches outside on the hot dusty boards of the porch. Normally I would complain about the heat and the flies tracing patterns on the back of my neck. It seemed wrong to complain about them on that day.

Everyone who passed us to go into the store was trying not to give us sad looks. A few people patted my father on the shoulder. Someone I didn’t recognize gave my arm a squeeze. Jim the postal worker gave my brother an old coin and he just stared at the point behind Jim’s eyes without saying anything until he walked away. Then he dropped the coin into the dirt.

Several of the men would have already gotten to work building the little pyre where they’d burn her at sundown out past the valley fields. I imagined them complaining about the heat as the dead air weighed down the sheet placed over my mother’s body.

I always looked forward to this sandwich on the day of the Lottery, but it didn’t feel right to eat a good sandwich on the day when you hit your own mother in the back of the head with a diamond.

Still, I ate it anyway. I was starving.

The heat of the morning gave way to a cool overcast. The wind picked up. We headed back home and Dad chewed on the tobacco he always lied about not having. But I suppose he didn’t have a real reason to hide the tin anymore.

“I want to change my name,” I told my dad as I stared at the little gray clouds that looked like spreading ashes.

“What?” my brother Dave asked. “You don’t like Naaaaancy?”

He said my name like a squealing donkey.

“Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!”

I always hated my name.

Nancy.

It sounded like the creaking moment before a wrist breaks. Or the whine of a bee trapped underneath a glass.

It sounded like the name of the girl I wasn’t supposed to be anymore.

Dad stared off into the direction of the valley fields and it made him look like he was deep in thought, like he was about to say something important.

But he just said: “I expect you’ll do what you want now.”

That was as close to permission as I was going to get. But once I’d gotten it, I didn’t know what to change my name. I’d always liked the name Cassandra, but we already had a Cassandra. Maybe a Lily, or an Evangeline. But those didn’t sound right either.

Something twisted in my stomach. When we arrived home I found I’d started bleeding. My mother had taught me about this before, so I knew to use the laundry strips underneath the cupboards.

As I took the strips out, I made a promise to myself that when night came I would not look out into the direction of the field where they were building the pyre for mom.

But lately I was very good at breaking promises.

At night when I slept I felt the tugging of half dreams, the fractured images that leave nothing behind but broken, heated images draped over a cold feeling. I draped my long black hair across my knees. Howard sneered at me from the other side of the room, like he had sneered at me in the field. But there was something different about his sneer. A glint in his eyes. My hands curved into the shapes for holding stones.

I was a black spot. And my name, my true name, was the thing scratched underneath it.

I awoke with my sheets covered in a giant black mark.

Not a black mark. Blood.

I thought Mom might punish me if she saw my sheets like that in the morning, so I gathered them up in a laundry basket and headed out into the biting dark. The screen door scratched the wall behind me. The wind screamed and nipped at me with each step, clawing goosebumps onto my legs.

Only when I was elbow deep in the frigid night water, scrubbing the sheets, my arms and legs numb with cold, did I see the fire light up in the distant fields and remember Mom was dead.

I opened my arms and let the sheets drift away in the stream and disappear underneath the water.

I could do anything now. My mom was dead and I was no longer Nancy.

I headed for the fields where the center lit up in a glowing orange and red halo.

I told myself maybe it was not a fire at all. Maybe it was a dying star. An angel who had a secret only for me.

I traveled quiet through the fields, past the empty town buildings, past the men in the road and the torches that lit the path. As I got closer I heard music. Laughter. The field hands drank beer and talked amongst themselves. Boys wrestled each other on the ground or tossed sticks they’d found onto the pyre. The man who’d offered my brother a coin was roasting a hot dog across the flame where my mom burned.

I tried to feel something. I imagined the drapes of fire wrapping around my mom’s bones. The folds of her ugly smile melting.

But that had been Nancy’s mom. And I was becoming something else. The thing that was now growing inside the place that had been emptied out inside me. This was the game. Everything ordinary was really something special. I could be a treasure inside.

I caught sight of Howard among the boys. But he did not smile. He drank a beer, arms crossed, trying to appear older than he was. The image of him sneering flashed again across my mind.

And then I felt something.

Behind the old shack in the fields I found Howard relieving himself of his beer. I told him to take his pants off because I was a woman now.

He didn’t complain too much.

The wind had picked up in the night, and it pressed us tightly together. I straddled him in the dark and pulled up my skirt. My shoes were roped with sticky burrs and the heavy, shuddering breaths I took felt like they were getting trapped inside my rib cage.

I didn’t know the particulars of being a woman with a man, but I didn’t need to. We figured it out quickly enough.

Orange bits of fire swirled around us in the dark, and it made the shadow that moved amongst them look like angry open mouths. And even though I was freezing, ropes of sweat ran down the backs of my thighs.

My body made motions that belonged to the new me.

My body curved into the shape of a black mark.

I took the stone out of my skirt pocket, but it was no longer a stone. It was not a diamond either. It was the hunger inside me. It was the swirling black mass that was going to overtake the place where Nancy used to be.

The wind seemed to whisper encouragement. It cooed in the cold. The fire in the distance was dying so that I could not see where my hands ended and the darkness began. Like it flowed into me. Marked me.

I raised it above my head, and aimed for Hitchen’s face. He was struck frozen in that moment with his eyes closed, mouth contorted. My heart raced and my thighs clenched when I imagined Howard’s bashed-in face. Blood flowing out of him. Pieces of him being torn off.

Then Howard’s eyes flew open. He saw the stone raised over my head and gasped. He grabbed me. The stone dropped from my arms and fell harmlessly into the dirt. He pushed me off and I hit the dirt too. I crawled onto my knees and pushed my skirts down. I felt the dirt rubbing hard against my skin and the lush black draping itself across me.

I leaned back on my heels and stared into his eyes dotted with fire, searching for recognition. Searching for anything that might give him away to be a special thing hidden inside something ordinary.

But there was nothing but stupid, naked shock as he climbed to his feet, gasping.

“Jesus Christ, Nancy, what’s with you?” he said, pulling his pants up. “You’re going to kill somebody one of these days.”

I had nothing to say. I picked up the stone and slipped it back into my pocket.

It was like he’d already forgotten.

CHARLES AUSTIN MUIR

THE MARTIAN CUMSICLES
by Ray Fatberries

April 2204-October 2206: The Transmission

Over a period of two years, three ships dropped out of the still blue Martian sky to investigate a buzzing pattern transmitted on a commercial channel from quadrant points 4, 51. The first was a science vessel rerouted from Green Valley, the other two were assault shuttles.

No one returned from the expeditions except for the pilots aboard the first ship. No one learned anything about who or what cried out from quadrant points 4, 51, except that “Siren”—as colonization analysts called the point of origin—was very big, very gnarled, and very old. It showed cunning, too, for an oversized plant, throwing a black curtain over every advance into its decaying bulk, the cavity system guarding the secret inside the main trunk.

To enter the mountainous tree meant death. Yet a fourth ship eased down through the boiling seawater atmosphere to send a challenger into the labyrinth. On a day when nightmarish beings were celebrated on the third planet from the sun, a monster stepped into quadrant points 4, 51, a man-thing that spoke with seven heads and walked on eight legs.

It takes a monster to slay a monster, or so its superiors thought in a bunker four million miles away.

They were wrong …

October 2206: Music, When Soft Voices Die

“Good enough, Wicked,” Nina said, and cleared the video images on her goggles. “Send the drones into the tree. Tell them to locate the precise source of the signal … and destroy it.”

WI-KD 9000 did as instructed. Six drones emerged from the abandoned ships and flew into the largest cavity in the main trunk of the enormous tree. As Nina expected, Siren terminated the infrared images almost immediately. She tried several times to pull up the live streams again before transmitting the recordings to Busan Corporation Mars Agency.

The thumb’s up image hit her message display a minute later: Operation: Boom Tree was a go.

Looking at the looming doorway into the tree, Nina wondered if this would be a one-way trip. After all, Siren’s dossier described an aberration even more freakish than the operatives who were about to raid it: A weapon made of human skin and a creature from a horror movie.

She had been warned not to call the thing as such. Above all, not to refer to SHART (short for Special Humanoid-Arachnid Recon Team) as an “it,” even though it met the requirements of an it, being a group of … well, somethings. Seven conjoined, misshapen life forms that had been men before a truckload of exploding toxic waste transformed them into a pancake of heads, muscle, and limbs that gave its movements a weirdly jaunty quality—a spider possessed by the spirit of a Labrador.

True to form, SHART waited eagerly by the tree hole, stamping its feet in the hot sand as if it wanted to fetch something from the darkness.

Unfortunately for Nina, its enthusiasm kept reminding her she owed her life to it. Three years ago, the creature had requested an attack support specialist modeled after Nancy Busan, an operative who had served with it in the first half of the 21st century. Of course, the head office would do anything to please its top agent, a hive-minded combatant force with superhuman agility topped off by a life span lengthened by—so it claimed—black magic. But whether this was true or not, the creature had gotten what it wanted: A bride of sorts, a bioengineered piece of eye candy in battledress.

Poor Nancy … wasting her skills on a hungry-eyed freak. Although, to be fair, she must have made quite an impression to inspire a copy one-hundred-and-fifty years in the future.

But Nina realized she was lollygagging, as if the loneliness of this planet were getting under her genetically engineered skin. Enough: She was an operative with a raid to conduct.

“The drones are down,” she said, as seven heads turned toward her.

“Any idea what happened?” The middle head said.

“Not a clue, J-Bam. But it looks like we’re going in.”

“Who’s got point?” The front left head said. Ry Guy.

“Your eight legs to my two inside that thing? I’d say you guys.”

Seven frowns.

“You all seem disappointed. I thought you were itching to make contact.”

“We are, Nina,” J-Bam said. “But you’ve had our six ever since the shit show on Luna. We thought maybe you’d want to switch it up.”

“She’s right, though,” the rear left head said. Mike Drop. “We don’t have any more intel on what’s going on here than we did at the Tycho ambush. It’s probably better if we put our speed up front.”

“‘Speed kills,’ as the saying goes,” the middle rear head said. Chuck Diesel.

“Fine,” J-Bam said. “We’ll take the lead again.”

“Roger that.” Nina pulled up the countdown timer on her gauntlet and hit the button that had haunted her dreams during the flight.

“What’s that?” Kev-Lar said, front and center.

“The sound of options running out. If we fail to execute in due haste, Dandelion will bomb the target from orbit. Sorry. They’ve shifted the mission focus for this trip … I was ordered not to inform you until T-minus six hours and counting.”

Nina picked up her rifle.

“Goddamn.” Rob Lo, rear right.

“Nasty.” E-elzebub, front right.

The creature loped into the cavity.

Nina followed. When the light from the entrance had dimmed, she turned on her optic and toggled to thermal mode.

“Let’s light ‘em up,” Kev-Lar said.

“Payback’s a bitch,” J-Bam said.

“‘If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in,’” Chuck Diesel said, quoting Sun Tzu.

Nina shook her head at the gung-ho talk. Still, she too itched for a chance to neutralize whatever protected Siren’s secret.

The corridor was four meters high and wide enough to walk four abreast. It ran straight as far as her electronic eyes could see. Five meters ahead, the creature crawled along the ceiling. There wasn’t a single thing about the sight that wasn’t wrong. The rolling of so much misplaced muscle, like a steroid-injected blob with seven human heads hanging upside down from it. Paint it orange on a green background and you had a Halloween attraction that would make the dads pee their pants back home.

Nina lowered her rifle scope back to eye level. And to think of her pushing through these tunnels with the creature on her six, watching her ass with eyes that saw in the dark … not that it hadn’t happened countless times in open environments.

“Ceiling cavity at four meters,” Kev-Lar said. “Wait—something flickered up there. Should we check it out?”

Nina saw nothing through her infrared laser and illuminator. “Up to you, SHART. I can keep up.”

“Go for it,” J-Bam said.

The creature raced toward the cavity and shot up into the dimness.

“By the way, Nina,” Mike Drop said, “you know we changed our name to Strike Team—” The voice cut out. Sometimes the creature’s movements messed with its subdermal transmitters.

Nina jogged after her partner and aimed her laser up into the shaft. The orange blob vanished into an adjoining cavity twenty meters to the left.

Damn, it was hard to see what was going on up there … had she missed something?

“Guys, I lost you,” she said. “What’s your sitrep?”

Nothing.

“Wicked, check the commlink. Are they receiving?”

Nina didn’t wait for Dandelion’s mainframe to answer. She turned on the crawler unit on her thigh and set the telescope function to eight meters. Bride of the Monster, she thought, as four flexible steel limbs extended from the back of her chest harness and pulled her toward the adjoining cavity.

Sixteen meters into the ascent, the crawlers dug their pincers into the wall and waited while Nina inspected the shaft. She swept her infrared illuminator around her and spotted a water stain above her on the right, directly across from the adjoining cavity. Tapping buttons on the crawler unit, she snaked the upper limbs into the cavity. As they retracted, she turned away from the water stain, tucking her chin into her rifle scope and holding her breath. A cold spray kissed the back of her neck.

“SHART’S comm is open,” Wicked’s text-to-speech voice droned on her headset.

Nina aimed her laser down the shaft. No orange blob.

“J-Bam?” She said over the commlink. “Ry Guy? Any of you guys? Anyone home? Come on, speak up. If I don’t get a sitrep stat, I’m going to have to turn on the fox hunter and locate that goddamn signal myself.”

No response.

Nina sighed. “All right, sit tight. You can’t be too far away from me. I’m going to finish the mission and come back for you. Also, watch the walls. One of them just sprayed me with something—might be toxic. Hold your breaths if you’ve got to beat feet, but don’t go tearing ass after any lights you see.”

She threw a light stick on the ground to mark her path; it sank through the rotten wood as if inhaled by a vacuum hose.

Clusterfuck. Well, at least now she knew what had happened to the drones.

Nina pulled her respirator from a cargo pocket and snapped it onto her chin strap. Of all the protective gear, gas masks were her least favorite. They made her sound like a machine—which hit close to home.

“This is your last chance, SHART,” she said through the mask, hoping the taunt might get a pushback.

Over the commlink, someone moaned.

“Hello? J-Bam, is that you?”

“Nnhmmnnhmmnnhmm … uhhhummmhmm hmmhmm … ”

“I’m not reading you. Try English.”

“Hhhhgggggggggrrrrrkhhhhhh … wwwhaahhkkkkhhhhwhahhkkkkk … ”

Nina checked the countdown status on her gauntlet: T-minus five hours and eight minutes.

This was just what she needed. A vertical kilometer’s worth of ghost lights, sucking floors, and now a bomb clock ticking, while her partner—if not someone or something else—was taking a lunch break.

The fox hunter’s notifications flashed on Nina’s message display:

TRIANGULATING SIGNAL
409 METERS CONFIRMED
86 METERS ELEVATION
PROCEED NORTH

409 meters in Siren’s labyrinth dragged on longer than anything else Nina had done in the field. None of her protective gear shielded her from the supposed ghosts of Martian melancholy. She felt sad for everyone who had come here. She even felt sad for the tree, hollowed by eons and deformed into an ecosystem of treacherous seduction.

At 220 meters 43 meters elevation, Nina had discovered what she believed to be its secret weapon: It lured prey by making the walls glow, then sprang its trap with a toxic mist.

30 METERS
23 METERS ELEVATION
PROCEED NORTH-NORTHWEST

Nina shut off the fox hunter. On the left, she saw an opening in the wall with light spilling through it.

She switched off her optic and watched the tunnel turn to the tones and textures of long-decayed sapwood.

Knowing it would fall on deaf ears, she said over the commlink:

“Guys, I’m close to the target. We’re T-minus zero minutes to unfucking ourselves and bugging out of this shit hole.”

More chewing noises and moaning came back. Then:

“‘Come to me now thus, Goddess, and release me … ’”

The cavity opened into a vaulted chamber strung with white crystal lanterns. The target sat in a modular control room built out from the back wall.

Twelve meters away, the creature stood in an empty reservoir.

“Wicked,” Nina said through her respirator, “can you hear me? Tell HQ they’re going to want to send a cleanup crew out here. Holy Halloween tree … what a nightmare.”

The chamber was bigger than the hangar at Busan Corporation Special Operations Command. The reservoir took up half of it and looked like a mass grave. Bones lay scattered all over the cracked wooden bottom. Only a few were recognizably human.

The skeleton pile reminded Nina of ancient Earth civilizations that practiced ritual sacrifice. Only these victims had not died for the gods—they had died for Siren. And her partner stood inside the tree’s stomach, cooing and quoting love poetry while spines and femurs snapped under its feet. It appeared to be hallucinating, stage two of the assimilation process. If her budding theory was correct, stage three would involve poison and/or acid breakdown.

“‘I inhale the fragrance of your warm breast … ’” A voice murmured in her headset. Chuck Diesel, who recited Alfred Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” before combat drops.

Her one advantage was the creature’s proximity to the control room. With luck, she could destroy Siren’s transmitter and detoxify her partner in one shot.

“‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’” Nina cried, and woke up the crawler unit. “‘Charge for the guns!’”

Like the clusterfucked cavalry in Tennyson’s account, the Bride of the Monster charged into the valley of Death, her steel limbs launching her over her comrade and shattering bones underfoot.

This was going to make for a wild report, Nina thought, as the crawlers ascended the opposite side of the chamber. She vaulted onto a wooden walkway connecting the control room to an opening in the wall.

She withdrew the limbs. As she headed toward the control room, dozens of drones shot from holes in the walls—metallic and eight-legged, flying robot cousins to the Bride of the Monster and her partner murmuring sweet nothings in the reservoir. The drones hovered in a circle around them.

Nina stepped through the hatch into the control room, sat at the console, and laid her rifle at her feet. She looked around at the silver latticework of the enclosure. The thick, taut strands supported shelves and compartments filled with beakers, test tubes, vials, scales, metal books … like the inner sanctum of an old-timey supervillain.

Fuckin’ Martians, she thought, but despite her skepticism, she felt an aura of rage as if it had been absorbed into the relics surrounding her. Like the loneliness she had felt outside the tree and the sadness within its corridors soaked through her armor into her factory-made skin. You’re getting too keyed up, she told herself.

She checked the countdown clock: T-minus two hours and thirty-seven minutes to return to Dandelion and override its targeting system.

“‘What’s death,’” the creature cried over the commlink. “‘You’ll love me yet!’”

Time to talk to the Martian computer.

Nina pulled her icebreaker from a cargo pocket and plugged the retrobit into the backup socket behind the antique monitor. The icebreaker uploaded the translation matrix into the computer.

“Bear with me, SHART, I’m going to talk with Siren,” she said.

“‘Have you got a brook in your little heart, where bashful flowers grow?’”

Finally, a light blinked on the console.

HELLO, scrolled across the screen.

“Enable closest translation,” Nina told the icebreaker, raising her voice through the respirator. “Computer: My name is Copy Girl. Identify yourself.”

KRYLLE2

“Who was Krylle1?”

CREATOR
SORCERER
AVENGER

“Avenger? Against who?”

INVADERS

“Ah. And now you’re the avenger, right? You deploy this tree’s predation mechanisms to follow Krylle1’s orders.”

No response.

Outside the control room, the drones clicked their legs together.

“You drugged my friend,” Nina said. “He’s not an invader. Is there an antidote?”

24-36 HOURS

“I don’t have that. Did you poison him?”

NERVE CONTROL BY DROPLETS
HALLUCINATION BY FROZEN BEVERAGE
SIGIL MAGIC

“What do you mean, ‘sigil magic?’”

KRYLLE1 VISUALIZE ANCIENT TEXTS
SELF-INDUCE SEXUAL RESPONSE CYCLE
FREEZE SEMINAL EMISSION
MODIFY TO INDUCE HALLUCINATIONS
SIMULATIONS OF OLDEST STORIES

“You fed my friend cumsicles?” Nina  learned about frozen sperm drinks when the creature accidentally synced its browser data with her tablet. She unsnapped her respirator and wiped sweat from her nose and chin. “Martian cumsicles … fuck me. How long before digestion starts?”

SOONER THAN LATER

“Of course.” She laughed.

For two years, the largest corporation on Earth had sent scientists and soldiers to unravel the mystery of quadrant points 4, 51. Turned out it was an artificial intelligence serving hallucinogenic frozen sperm inside a flesh-eating tree this whole time!

Gotta love Mars.

“I have a request, Krylle2,” Nina said. “But first, tell me this: Why are you transmitting distress signals? You’re attracting non-hostile elements. Doesn’t that violate Krylle1’s programming?”

OVERRODE PROGRAM
DECLINE IN NATIVE PREY SELECTION

That made sense; waves of alien invasions had spread deadly disease through the native peoples and fauna decades ago. Krylle2 had confronted a food shortage. Still, it had evolved into a living weapon—a theme in Nina’s short existence. She picked up her rifle and stood.

“I’ve been sent to destroy you, Krylle2. But at least your host will go on living. And it’ll have more to eat once the next occupation force comes around. They’ll breed new peoples and fauna and they’ll have the guns and greed to stop future invasions. They’ll be here for a while.”

No response.

Nina looked heavenward and sighed.

“All right, Krylle2, last query: That request I mentioned. Get one of your drones out there to serve me a cumsicle, will you? Grape flavor, if you’ve got it.”

Nina didn’t recognize the flavor, but it was lush and flowery with a subtle salty finish. A hell of a way to experience the great works of Martian literature, she thought.

Operation: Boom Tree had become a typical military paradox: Taste the indigenous culture while destroying the archive.

The destruction of Krylle2 had felt like a death knell to Nina. She had taped a squib to the console and detonated it while standing on her crawlers in the reservoir. The AI’s housing burst into flames and its servants fell into the bone pile. The last vestige of an extinct race lay scattered in the grave it had used to preserve itself.

Nina finished the ice portion of her drink and took an experimental bite off the stick. Bitter, like her thoughts. But edible.

Funny … she had entered Siren eager to engage an enemy, but now she sat among the bones of her own kind lamenting a peaceful civilization’s ruin. Was Krylle1’s hallucinogen taking effect? The whole planet had a mind-altering effect, as far as she could tell. Enough. You’re lollygagging again. Focus.

Easier said than done, sitting spread-eagle on a mutant muscle pancake. J-Bam was going to wake up to an eyeful of Nina’s pelvic harness. But she needed the tactile feedback to direct her altered-state visualization to her new target area. If she couldn’t manage the drug’s effects and cross over into SHART’s hive-mindspace, they would become Siren’s last meal before Dandelion blew the tree off the map. She figured … if a Martian could preserve books in semen, she could enter her partner’s hallucination.

Nina tossed the cumsicle remnant aside, closed her eyes and laid her hands on what she assumed were the creature’s shoulders.

“Talk to me, SHART, talk to me … ”

She repeated the mantra over and over. Then she started as if wrenched from black sleep and opened her eyes to the Martian desert.

A gigantic statue lay before her.

No wonder her partner had been seized by poetic inspiration. The naked giantess looked like a pin-up girl hewn from stone to dwarf the temples in Xi City. Easily 180 meters tall, she lay sprawled on her side with her head thrown back, nose in the crook of her arm. Her hair was dark and flowing, her skin smooth and brown with yellow flecks catching the sunlight. No doubt, the painted monument depicted a sun goddess from one of Krylle1’s precious stories.

I made it, Nina thought. I broke through to SHART.

As if on cue, the creature appeared on the giantess’s hip. The speck of heads and limbs crawled down toward the mons pubis and circled around to the pudendal cleft. Then it slipped between the golden apples of the sun goddess’s labia majora. Nina shook her head. This wasn’t a scene from some epic Martian poem, it was a pornographic parody dreamed by seven horny, centuries-old men.

She looked up to see the statue raise its head.

Oh, God.

It was her face smiling toward the sky. The creature had projected her into its hallucination! Appalled, Nina watched as the mythical distortion bit its lower lip and clawed enough sand loose to bury a 100-ton Busan Breacher Vehicle. The sight would haunt her for a lifetime.

Worse yet, she faced an unthinkable task: She would have to go inside herself.

No—not herself. Nancy. The creature’s long-dead combat partner.

Feeling for the doomed British cavalrymen more than ever, Nina sprinted across the sand. Bride-of-the-Monster-walked up the giantess’s thigh and slipped between the swelling outer vulvar lips to a spot on the labia minora. The crawlers grabbed onto the slippery, engorged skin flap and closed their pincers onto the surface. Struggling as the ground heaved, she stood upright on the lower limbs, set them to full tension and surveyed the terrain. For more light, she spread the labia majora apart with the upper limbs. No sign of the creature, but plenty of indication the area was a seismic hotspot.

The urinary meatus and vaginal opening looked considerably enlarged, even for a being sixty times taller than an average human. The clitoris stood erect, swollen and deep red, pointing in her direction like a giant garden gnome’s hat. Both dead giveaways that climax was imminent, with shock waves that would shake the love cave at mega quake magnitude.

“SHART,” Nina called out, “damn it, where are you?”

Finally, something foreign to the environment moved to the left. Nine meters away, the creature crawled out from beneath the clitoral projection. Never had Nina witnessed such a spine-tingling spectacle—seven men fused into a spider-like entity nosing around a female deity’s love button like a police dog sniffing out a bomb. And yet, incredibly, perhaps disgustingly, it had started the Mega Nancy Mega Quake. Its eight extremities transferred a highly concentrated force into the nerve-rich tissues around the clitoris, causing it sensations surely beyond the capabilities of any device available in the Martian pantheon’s sex-toy arsenal.

“SHART,” Nina shouted, “you’ve got to snap out of it. You were drugged. You’re hallucinating. This isn’t real!”

But it felt terrifyingly real as the pre-orgasmic tremors intensified. To counter the forces about to strike, she withdrew one of the crawlers from the outer opening and extended it higher up the labia minora on the other side. This dimmed the light somewhat, but plenty remained to illuminate her partner stomping around and slicking itself up to the ankles—or wrists, she was never sure which—with lubricating fluids. Above it, the mighty clitoris began to contract from acute sensitivity. The creature was working the sun goddess into a frenzy. Nina cursed its magically enhanced mutations for earthquake-proofing it against the coming shock waves.

“SHART, listen to me, stop what you’re doing. The mission is complete. We need to get back—”

The first orgasmic contraction rocked the love cave like a howl of agony from the planetary core.

Nina had never experienced an earthquake. She didn’t know if the response to SHART’s footwork (or handwork) qualified as a true mega quake, but it certainly felt like the wrath of God. Or, more appropriately,  the glee of Goddess. She jolted from the forces of both the labia minora heaving against her steel limbs and the giantess quivering from head to foot.

Meanwhile, unaffected by the vibrations, the creature crawled around the erogenous zone, reveling in the seismic raptures of Mega Nancy.

“‘License my roving hands, and let them go,’” Chuck Diesel bellowed, now quoting the love poet John Donne, “‘before, behind, between, above, below!’”

Finally, the last contractions subsided and the area grew calm. Nina waited breathlessly for the aftershocks, or, God help her, for the sun goddess to squash the creature under her titanic fingertips and start more shock waves.

Instead, darkness fell as the giantess gently cupped her crotch.

“Guys,” Nina said, “can you hear me?”

“Nancy,” J-Bam said. “Is that you?”

Nina realized the creature’s enhanced eyes perceived her in the darkness.

“No. It’s me, Nina. You need to wake up. You’re dreaming. I chased you into your dream—long story. We can talk about it later. The main thing is, you guys need to come back to reality.”

“We missed you, Nancy,” Ry Guy said.

“I’m not Nancy. I’m Nina. Nina. Your attack support specialist. Try to remember.”

“You look just like her,” Kev-Lar said.

Nina sighed. “Look. Check out my mechanical limbs. Cool, right? If I was Nancy, you wouldn’t see me with these. That’s because Nancy has been dead for one hundred and fifty years.”

“Nina … ” J-Bam said. He sounded disappointed.

Nina gave the hive-minded creature a moment to let the truth sink in.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must have really loved her.”

Silence.

Then:

“She was a hard-ass,” E-elzebub said.

“But she had a nice ass,” Rob Lo said.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Mike Drop said.

“She was a good operative,” J-Bam said.

“Did you tell her?” Nina said. “How you felt about her?”

Again, silence.

“Well, if a genetically engineered copy of her has any authority in the matter, now she knows. I always thought you wanted a bride, in a way … when you asked for me to be made.”

“Not a bride,” Chuck Diesel said. “Although we are the Monster.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply that. Bad choice of words.”

“We know you don’t like us, Nina,” J-Bam said.

“That’s not true,” Nina said.

“And we’re sorry we asked the head office to give us an attack support specialist modeled after Nancy. It was a weak moment.”

“But you came for us,” Kev-Lar said.

“You didn’t have to,” Ry Guy said.

And just then, like a cosmic affirmation of Nina’s loyalty, light blazed into the love cave again; the sun goddess had withdrawn her hand. Nina stared at the seven heads blinking at her beneath the sleepy love button.

“That’s right,” she said. “But I couldn’t let Earth’s elite Special Humanoid-Arachnid Recon Team bite it in a Martian shit hole after two centuries of dropping whoop-ass behind enemy lines.”

“Please, Nina, we’re Strike Team Unconventional Defense Detail,” Mike Drop said. “We changed the name a while ago.”

Nina smiled. “I know, STUDD. So what do you say? Let’s get back to the shit hole that awaits us.”

“You made it here,” J-Bam said, “you show us the road back. We’ve got your six this time.”

“Back to the shit hole, back to the shit hole … ”

Nina repeated the mantra over and over. Then she started as if wrenched from black sleep and opened her eyes to Krylle1’s chamber of death.

Directly in front of her, J-Bam’s eyes opened and his jaw dropped.

Nina laughed. The fork of her thighs sheathed in lightweight ballistic protection couldn’t possibly compare to a clitoris large enough to provide cover for two fire teams.

“You’re really good at dream teleportation, Nina,” he said, when he had recovered himself.

“If only I could extend my synthetic life span,” she said.

“Just say ‘life span,’” Ry Guy said.

“And no, you don’t want to be able to do that,” Kev-Lar said.

“Fair enough.” Nina pulled her stiff leg over J-Bam’s head and dismounted the creature. She marched the kinks out of her hips and knees and did some toe raises.

“All right, STUDD,” she said, “let’s get back to Dandelion. Oh, crap—how much time do we have?” She checked the countdown clock. “We’re at T-minus forty-nine minutes. Wow … time flies when you’re hallucinating you’re inside a giant vulva.”

Through its bleary-eyed heads, the hive mind blushed.

Nina grabbed her helmet and strapped it on. “Seriously, guys, we’ve got to hustle. Otherwise, we’re going to get hoisted with our own petard, remember? And yeah, that’s a Shakespeare reference. Let’s get out of the pit, at least. We’re lucky it hasn’t started filling up yet.”

She picked up her rifle from behind Kev-Lar’s head, climbed out of the reservoir, and watched the creature stump after her through the bone fragments. When it had pulled itself up beside her, she snapped her respirator to her chin strap and turned toward the mouth of the cavity.

“So this is what happened to the others,” J-Bam said, gazing at the mounds of skeletal remains.

“Mars is nothing but bones and dead dreams,” Nina said, thinking of the aura in Krylle1’s control room.

“We remember being sprayed, but we don’t remember being drugged. How did it happen?”

“Um … we can talk about that on the ride home. Time’s wasting, STUDD. Lead the way and don’t breathe unless you want to end up right back here.”

“All right, boys,” J-Bam said. “You heard her.”

“Wait,” Chuck Diesel said. “I want to say a few words for the departed.”

Nina sighed.

“From Percy Bysshe Shelley. ‘Music, When Soft Voices Die … ’

Music, when soft voices die

Vibrates in the memory—

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

”‘Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;

And so thy thoughts when thou are gone

Love itself shall slumber on.’“

Chuck Diesel fell silent. The others looked down and said nothing. After a moment, the creature turned away from the bone pile.

“Let’s catch our bird,” J-Bam said. “There’s always another war to fight, right?”

“Roger that,” Nina said, and turned to go.

But then she recalled the joy she had seen on her face, Nancy’s face, in the mythical world evoked by the cumsicle.

“Huh. And now I understand why so many foreign life forms have died here,” she added. “The Martians were a peaceful people, yet war was all anyone ever brought to them. Finally, one of the natives got sick of it. He found a way to get back at the invaders, by making them taste Mars instead of ransacking it … the Mars he loved.”

JOHN SKIPP

BONERS THEY WOULDN’T LET ME SHOW ON TV

Edited by Alfred Horsecock

Reviewed by Dong Shrimp

The legendary Alfred Horsecock is, of course, best known for his masterful, hymen-breaking feature films, which violently laid the foundation for modern pornographic suspense and terror. These include the classic Torn Beef Curtain, The Man Who Fucked Too Much, Blowjobs On A Train, The Turds, To Catch A Queaf, Rear-End Window, Hornie, The 39 Staph Infections, Pork By Porkwest, The Family Twat, and (most controversially) 196O’s landmark Dycho, which features the indelible performance of Anthony Gherkins as Whore-Man Taint, who fucks Janet Laid to death after fucking his mother to death, then fucks several other people to death before getting caught fucking his dead mother while dressed as his dead mother, who he thinks he is, cuz it turns out he’s crazy. All set across the eternally-haunting backdrop of the Taint Motel. Traumatically transforming the whorror manscape forever.

But throughout the 1960’s, he also slapped his name on dozens of paperback anthologies, each with hilarious introductions that captured his inimitable voice via a series of ghost-writers who, to be frank, did a really good job. I had no idea that Horsecock didn’t actually write that shit, much less edit the books. But I thought he did! And that’s what counts.

The important thing is that these anthologies introduced readers to a wide array of the finest pulp pornographers of the day, as well as presenting age-old classics to a fresh and horny audience. As a wee lad in my pre-teens, it was a welcome gateway drug to all the drugs I would wind up taking later, and an unambiguous inspiration for all the decades of shameful masturbation to come.

The first one I read was Boners They Wouldn’t Let Me Show On Tv. And sincerely, it changed my life forever. Not only because of the extremely high quality of the fucking exhibited therein,  but also because it painfully stretched the limits of what the whorror genre could do. And made me stare at the crotch of every performer on his popular television program, Alfred Horsecock’s Mystery Shower, just in case he managed to slip one in sideways. (A favorite fetish of his.)

For starters, it includes Richard Cornhole’s much-imitated “The Most Dangerous Came,” wherein a rich man invites people to his private estate (on the mysteriously-named “Sexual Predator Island”), where he then hunts and cums inside them. But turnabout is fair play in this sphincter-gripping yarn, when the humper becomes the humped.

Then there’s “The Price of Head,” by Dom Tussell, featuring a red-headed scoundrel fleeing American justice, only to wind up on a tropical island where the headhunting natives all have Scarlet Fever. Much wet-stumped ginger skull-fucking ensues.

“Love Cums on Miss Juicy” by Q. Asslick is by far the most emotional piece of tail in the batch. It’s the heart-reaming story of a wealthy-but-drab Quaker virgin spinster who travels to Mexico on vacation, finds a beautiful ring in a curio shop, slips it on her finger, and then can’t get it off. Much like her finger, which is unable to get her off, even though she’s been masturbating compulsively for over forty-five years.

Then she meets the enigmatic Plowio, a handsome young Mexican in a perfect white suit marred only by blotches of jizz everywhere. After saving her from a slobbering hard-on, he becomes her devoted tour guide, taking her everywhere. Their mutual attraction becomes clear, though she doesn’t know why he desires her. But he can’t stop kissing her ring. And as she rubs the ring against her nub, in her lonely hotel room at night, she realizes it might just be time to finally get a little.

Plowio rows her out to Yet Another Island—Horsecock clearly has an island fetish, to go with his bottomless others—and they start to make out like crazy. Nobody’s ever felt her up like this before. She responds in kind, yanking his crank like there’s no tomorrow.

And though she fails to orgasm, he squirts in less than three minutes, all over her hand. It lubricates the ring, which he then slides easily off her finger.

“Okay. Bastante!” he says, pulling away, and looking at the ring.

“Wait, what?” says Miss Juicy, staring up from the lustful brink.

“I’m done, mamacita! I got what I want. You find your own ride back!”

But she knows he really loves her. So she cuts off his dick, leaves his dead ass to rot in the weeds, and rows back to the city. Takes a plane home. Sends the ring to Plowio’s mother—the only woman he ever plowed—as a gesture of kindness. And then jacks off with his mummified man-meat twelve times a day, every day, till she dies at the ripe old age of 87. Orgasming every single time. Talk about a happy ending!

Which brings us back to motherfucking, and DYCHO author Robert Cockbloch, whose “Nutter’s Ass” was another favorite. It’s a noir-flavored double-crossing bestiality-fest. And when he ends with, A couple hours, the rats came back, the hours of rat-into-human insertion implied by that punchline are left to linger long after the final page is turned.

And then there’s the legendary fantasist Gay Wadbury, whose classic “The Squatober Shame” brings every speck of his whimsical, lyrical prose to this whorrorific tale of what happens when little kids go into darkened basements and stick their filthy little fingers into disgusting things where they don’t belong. It’s a completely shocking and repulsive story, which I unshockingly loved with all my hard.

Other fine authors insert their sticky wits and whickets into the mix, including Roald Ballsack, M.I. Games, William Cramsome, William Dope Hogslam, Fillup McDipstick, and H.H. Manho (as Sucki). None of them fail to satisfy. It’s a book that I’ve cum back to again and again.

But this special deluxe edition from Penetration Press also features Horsecock’s untrimmed script for his (sadly-unconsummated) filmic version of Hairy Smelly’s semenal novel Wankenstein, as projectiled onto the page by Dycho screenwriter Joseph Stuffinhole.

So allow me to messily climax with this exclusive excerpt from the opening scene:

INT. DR. HUMPENSTEIN’S LABORATORY—NIGHT

A gothic CASTLE CHAMBER, where SINISTER LIGHT FLICKERS across the imposing STONE WALLS and ELABORATE SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT. It comes from a SKYLIGHT ABOVE, as LIGHTNING THUNDERS across a coal-black sky.

In the center of the room stands DR. HUMPENSTEIN (30s, handsome, deranged) in his lab smock. Swigging whiskey. Staggering drunk.

DR. HUMPENSTEIN

Fuck you, lightning! Thou hast brought me nothing but pain!

Enter EEGORE (30s, handsome, malformed), staggering through a side door. Also drunk.

EEGORE

The monster … it’s jacking off again.

DR. HUMPENSTEIN

(sighing)

Of course it is. That’s all it ever does. Why do you think all those assholes from the village are outside, waving their goddam torches again?

From outside, we hear SHOUTING VILLAGERS. Then the ROAR OF THUNDER.

DR. HUMPENSTEIN (CONT.)

They don’t care that I accomplished the ultimate miracle, defying God and death itself! They don’t give a shit how many corpses I assembled from the pieces of their loved ones, and brought back to life! “IT’S ALIIIIIVE!”, I yelled. And they went, “SOOOOO WHAAAT?”

EEGORE

(starry-eyed)

It’s so not fair. You’re like a god to me.

DR. HUMPENSTEIN

They wouldn’t even care when it wanders down into the village, except it can’t stop jacking off in public! They’re like, “Keep it in your pants, vile abomination!” And it’s just like, “Heh heh heh.”

EEGORE

You know I would never do that …

DR. HUMPENSTEIN

You know that little girl who drowned in the lake? It didn’t throw her. She jumped in, just to get away from it! Like that’s my fucking fault!

CUT TO:

EXT. HUMPENSTEIN’S CASTLE—NIGHT

A swarm of ANGRY VILLAGERS are amassed before the CASTLE GATE. Waving TORCHES. And vigorously FUCKING EACH OTHER IN RAGE.

VILLAGERS

Kill the monster! Oh, fuck yeah! Like that!

CUT TO:

INT. DR. HUMPENSTEIN’S LABORATORY—NIGHT

Into the room shambles the monstrous WANKENSTEIN (30s, handsome, undead), wanking so hard that its hand is ablur.

With a grunt, Wankenstein FIREHOSES THE ROOM WITH JIZZ. Blotting out the skylight. Killing all the machines. And soaking both Eegore and the Doctor with goo.

WANKENSTEIN

Cum gooood!

DR. HUMPENSTEIN

Aw, fuck it.

(to Eegore)

Gimme your hump, you ugly son of a whore!

Eegore turns around and offers his NAKED HUNCHBACK to the Doctor, who leaps upon it and IMPALES ITS OMINOUS BLOWHOLE with his junk.

All at once, the STONE WALLS SOMEHOW BEGIN TO BURN. Wankenstein reels about in terror, waving its hands. Which catch on fire.

WANKENSTEIN

Aaaaaaugh! When I get bride?

DR. HUMPENSTEIN

(also on fire)

In the sequel, stupid! Aaaaaaugh!

EEGORE

(also also on fire)

I love you, Master! I love you! Uhhh! Uhhh! Aaaaaaugh!

The CEILING COLLAPSES.

FADE TO BLACK.
ROLL CLOSING CREDITS.

• • •

Okay, so that’s actually the whole screenplay. But it’s a thrilling conclusion to a timeless anthology, as exciting, disturbing, and periodically casually racist as it was 60 years ago. BUY ONE TODAY!

CONTRIBUTORS

Edgar Allan Pole liked to fuck and he liked it dirty. He wrote a bunch of poems and short stories and stuff.

Danger Slater is a Wonderland Award winning book writer type guy of I Will Rot Without You, as well as other books. Although he helped curate and edit this ridiculous anthology, he still places most of the blame on Brian Asman. Please address all your complaints to him. Follow Danger on Twitter: @Danger_Slater

Ernest Lee Humpingaway is a part-time writer and full-time salesman of unworn baby shoes. His works include For Whom the Buttholes Yield, The Old Man and the Semen, and Across the Bush and Into the Pussy. They have not been translated into any other languages.

Chandler Morrison is currently tied to a radiator getting Bible verses screamed at him. He has never seen a hedgehog in real life and, honestly, questions their existence. His love language is anal and words of affirmation. Please send help.

Emily Getta Dickinson was famously reclusive. By the end of her life, she rarely left her bedroom, which was, upon her death, found to be overflowing with crinkled scraps of poetry. Some of it still quite moist.

Amy M. Vaughn writes weird little books like Freak Night at the Slee-Z Motel and Skull Nuggets. She’s also the editor of Dog Doors to Outer Space and a contributing editor at Babou 691.

Shel Silverpeen began his career as a technical writer composing instruction manuals for purple fisted dildos and knock off stereo equipment. He branched off into attempting to write poetry for children, but his unique voice was not well received by readers. He was unable to get his job back at the dildo factory and later in life resorted to prostitution while living in squalor to support his addiction to bath salts. He was found dead in Hooker’s Alley in 1997 with a journal in his pocket containing this and several other stories that comprise his final body of work. He is now included in many school curriculums, and his writing is taught in English classes around the world.

John Wayne Comunale lives in Houston Texas to prepare himself for the heat in Hell. He is the author of books such as Death Pacts and Left-Hand Paths Scummer As Seen On T.V., Sinkhole, The Cycle and more.He hosts the weekly storytelling podcast John Wayne Lied to You, fronts the punk rock disaster, johnwayneisdead, and travels around the country giving truly unique performances of the written word.John Wayne was an American actor who died in 1979.

George Whorewell left a career as England’s premier professional onanist to cover the Spankish Civil War, but the deviant horrors he witnessed there drove him to become a passionate anti-wanking activist who devoted his life to sabotaging horny readers’ erectile abuse. His other celebrated works include Animal Fap, Homage To Coprophilia and Coming In Your Hair.

Cody Goodfellow has written eight novels and five collections of short stories. His collections Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action both received the Wonderland Book Award. He wrote, co-produced and scored the notorious Lovecraftian hygiene film Stay At Home Dad, which can be viewed on YouTube, and presides over several Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts each year. He “lives” in Portland, Oregon.

Breast Eatin’ Ellis is a proud American author and really nice guy if you’d just give him a chance, bitch. This is his first publication.

Jessica McHugh is a novelist, poet, and internationally-produced playwright running amok in the fields of horror, sci-fi, young adult, and wherever else her peculiar mind leads. She’s had twenty-four books published in twelve years, including her bizarro romp, The Green Kangaroos, her YA series, The Darla Decker Diaries, and her blackout poetry collection, A Complex Accident of Life. Please visit JessicaMcHughBooks.com for more samples of the McHughniverse.

John Milfton is a cranky but cultured recovering edge lord and probably not a MILF.

Lucas Mangum is the author of several books, including the Splatterpunk Award-nominated Saint Sadist, Mania, and the forthcoming Pandemonium (with Ryan Harding). He lives in Texas and hates social media, but feel free to contact him at lucasmangum.com/contact.

Clark Z. Analewski, a lifelong devotee of The Church of Scientology, is the author of the experimental novel Thanks for the Ham Sandwich, Marge (soon to be a major motion picture), as well as the critically acclaimed nonfiction series Real Life Tales of Encounters with Millipedes. Analewski is a Florida native, where he manages a kumquat grove in his spare time.

Chad Stroup is the author of the novels Secrets of the Weird (Grey Matter Press) and Sexy Leper (Bizarro Pulp Press) and the comic series Hag (American Gothic Press). He has published several short stories in magazines and anthologies such as Shock Totem,Worst Laid Plans, Forbidden Futures, Chiral Mad 4, Lost Films, and Splatterlands, and his dark poetry has appeared in all volumes of the HWA Poetry Showcase. Stroup received his MFA in Fiction from San Diego State University. Follow him on Instagram or Twitter @chadxstroup.

Even as a young man, Alexhandjob Dumas had such a total boner for the Musketeers (maybe it was the big plumed hats) he was left with no recourse but to write blatant Mary Sue fics achieving levels of self-insertion not to be rivaled until Clive Cussler came along. He died a desperate, drunken rent-boy best known for his bargain price-saver motto: all for one, one for all.

Christine Morgan is a demure and proper lady who would be scandalized to find her name even associated with—ah, hell, who are we kidding? Soon as she heard about this project, she was all in. How could she not? As the author of works such as Spermjackers From Hell, it’d have been professionally embarrassing to miss out on this one.

Stephen Kink is a filmmaker and fucks anything that moves. His favorite band is Trapt.

Max Booth III is the Editor-in-Chief of Perpetual Motion Machine, the Managing Editor of Dark Moon Digest, and the host of two podcasts: Ghoulish and Castle Rock Radio. He’s the author of Touch the Night, Carnivorous Lunar Activities, and several other novels. Bylines include LitReactor, CrimeReads, the San Antonio Current, Fangoria, and Film 14. Follow him on Twitter @GiveMeYourTeeth or visit him at www.TalesFromTheBooth.com. He lives in Texas.

Often called “the Crown Prince of the American Cornhole,” Charles Buttkowski was a writer, poet, and amateur proctologist. Born in Vernon, California—widely considered the taint of Los Angeles—Buttkowski wrote his first poem at the tender age of five (the highly experimental and universally praised “Balloon Animal/Knot”). Over his career, Buttkowski published seventy short stories, nearly two hundred poems, several novels including Notes from the Rusty Wagonwheel, and was admitted to the emergency room with foreign objects lodged in his rectum too many times to count. He died in 1994.

Brian Asman is a writer and editor from San Diego, CA. He’s the author of I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today from Eraserhead Press and the forthcoming novella Jailbroke and has recently published short stories in the anthologies Breaking Bizarro, Welcome to the Splatter Club and Lost Films, and comics in Tales of Horrorgasm. He holds an MFA from UCR-Palm Desert. He’s represented by Dunham Literary, Inc. Max Booth III is his hype man. Find him on Instagram (@thebrianasman), Twitter (@brian_asman), Facebook (brian.asman.14), or his website www.brianasmanbooks.com.

Cocko Cuckoldi has a passion for wood and isn’t afraid to get messy to get what he needs.

Betty Rocksteady writes cosmic sex horror, cat mythos, and surreal, claustrophobic nightmares. Her illustrated novella The Writhing Skies was voted Novella of the Year by This Is Horror Awards 2018. Her collection In Dreams We Rot blends surrealism and horror, tearing apart tropes as words bleed and transform down unexpected avenues of nightmare logic. Find out more at www.bettyrocksteady.com

Sapphia Plath is the author of the award-winning book of poetry, Areola. She lives on an ethereal plane of existence between the lesbian bars Girl Swirl and Somewhere Else, and remains highly suspicious of all technology, preferring the bicycle and the pen.

Gina Ranalli is the Wonderland Award winning author of nearly twenty novels and novellas in the horror and bizarro fiction genres. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her best friend, Lou Diamond Philips, a walnut turtle. You can connect with her on twitter at http://twitter.com/GinaRanalli.

Antitty Pervness once punched an orangutan in a bar-fight, who he somehow confused for actor Malcolm McDowell. The orangutan bit his arms off, and from then on, Antitty had to write all his books using only his feet and a pen dipped in a bottle of his own blood. Pervness was also a composer, specializing in sonatas written for the Croatian sea organ, all of which were terrible.

Michael Allen Rose is a writer, musician, editor and performance artist based in Chicago, Illinois. His stories have been published in such periodicals and anthologies as the Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, Heavy Feather Review, and Tales From The Crust. He has published several books including Embry: Hard Boiled (Eraserhead Press), Rock and Roll Death Patrol (Rooster Republic Press), The Indifference of Heaven (Omnium Gatherum) and more. In Spring of 2021, Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing will release Michael’s newest book, Jurassichrist. He is the host of the annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown at Bizarro Con in Portland, OR. Michael also releases industrial music under the name Flood Damage and writes for the online surrealist magazine Babou 691. He lives with an awesome cat, helps his girlfriend make internet porn, and enjoys good tea.

Dear readers, this is Louisa. You can read my bio on that Wiccanpedophile thing if you care to, but my friend Zelda Marchante is channeling a more pressing matter from me via a spirit board from her parlor. I need the world to know that my most famous tale suffered an egregious edit, by my own hand, at the behest of my publisher, Mr. Thomas Niles. He coerced me into castrating my own beautiful short story, “Not-So-Little Women”, about four deliciously insatiable sluts, and published it as the puritanical, saccharine, muck that the world knows as Little Women. This is the greatest regret of my life—aside from losing my grandmother’s engagement ring while masturbating in the Sweeny’s water well. At any rate, my sweet Zelda has transcribed the story for you in its original form, presented here in this lovely volume for the first time. Please spread the word—and your legs. Vive le Sexe! LMA

Whit Slorp is the author of several critically acclaimed adult works including the novellas Peenochio and the Wooden Circus Plot (a Pardy Boys Gay Adventure Series™ title) and The Hidden Valley Ranch of Studs Mystery (a Nancy Screw Gay Adventure Series™ title). Also by Whit, the short stories “Are You There, God? I Thought I Heard Jessica Masturbating, but it Was Just Her Grandmother Stirring a Pot of Shells and Cheese,”and theSelect Your Own Experience story “My A-Hole Fell Into a K-Hole”.

Shirley Jacksoff is the proud mother of four spawn (children) and seven children (cats). She is the author of such luminary works as The Humping in Hell House and We Have Always Jizzed in the (Neighbor’s) Courtyard. She has over 1000 subscribers on her knitting tutorial Youtube account. She is just doing this writer thing to pay the bills until her macrame business hits it off.

Autumn Christian is the author of several books, Girl Like a Bomb, The Crooked God Machine, and We are Wormwood. She has written for several video-games, including Battle Nations and State of Decay 2. When not writing, she is usually practicing her side kicks and running with dogs.

After more than 50 books, a cable television series, articles, and even a hentai video game, Ray Fatberries is still stroking the keys. Both his short-story collection The October Cum Tree and his novel Fahrenheit 4 Titties won the Bram Stroke Her Award. For autographs, interviews, custom videos, or sexy pics, inquire through his agent, Charles Austin Muir.

Charles Austin Muir—a former obituary writer, humor columnist, and freelancer, has been boinking the written word for most of his 49 years. He is the author of the Splatterpunk Award-nominated This Is a Horror Book and Slippery When Metastasized, a bizarro short story-collection inspired by his wife’s struggle to overcome cancer, and his horror fiction has appeared in Peel Back the Skin, 18 Wheels of Horror, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 1, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, and many other anthologies and magazines. He lives in a pants-free zone in his home in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, pugs, and pit lab.

Alfred Horsecock was best known for his hilarious speaking voice and ginormous fucking belly, into which at least one icy Hollywood blonde at a time was perpetually stuffed, tied up and screaming. He was rarely seen from the waist down, due to his rancid wheelbarrow-sized ballsack. He also directed 8 trillion films. Notable inventions include the “camera” and the “glory hole”.

John Skipp is the only New York Times bestselling author ever to win two AVN Awards (also known as the “Nekkid Oscars”), for his screenplay and soundtrack to 2004’s Misty Beethoven: The Musical! He spent most of the 80s and early 90s fucking almost constantly, but retired from the game in the 21st century. That said, he plans to reverse this trend by totally banging everybody who reads this book.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- 1. The Craven by Edgar Allan Pole

- 2. My Cock Also Rises by Ernest Lee Humpingaway

- 3. A Bird Came Up My Walk and I Put It in My Vagina by Emily Getta Dickinson

- 4. The Receiving Tree by Shel Silverpeen
- 5. Nineteen Eighty-Fuck by George Whorewell
- 6. American Sly-Ho by Breast Eatin’ Ellis
- 7. Paradise Lust by John Milfton

- 8. Whorehouse of Skeeves by Clark Z. Analewski

- 9. The Man in the Iron Gimp Mask by Alexhandjob Dumas

- 10. TIT by Stephen Kink

- 11. Post Orifice by Charles Buttkowski

- 12. Pinocchio’s Big Dick Energy by Cocko Cuckoldi

- 13. The Bush Jar by Sapphia Plath

- 14. A Cockwork Whoreange by Antitty Pervness

- 15. Not-So-Little Women by Louise May Alcock

- 16. The Thottery by Shirley Jacksoff

- 17. The Martian Cumsicles by Ray Fatberries

- 18. Boners They Wouldn’t Let Me Show on TV Edited by Alfred Horsecock

- Contributors