Category Archives: body-oddies

Happy Holidays

December 3, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Lester the Jester threw up his supper, emerging instead as a fool named Skupper who gagged on his guts as they spilled from his gob expelling another named Bob, who horked up a loogie of phlegm and bile, appearing at last as a Jester named Lyle who stuck out his tongue and said with a leer “Happy Christmas to all and a Merry New Year.”

***This is the first in a set of 3 new snarky Christmas cards we’re posting up on our Etsy store for sale. We sell them at the book festivals and conventions for $4.99 each, but you can get the set of 3 for $12.00 at EEWbooks on Etsy (follow the www.sallemander.com link above to the Etsy link – easy!). Thanks. -Marsha

body-oddies, Book Exerpt

My Favorite Place

November 26, 2018 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

I really can’t think of a favorite place but I love the idea of flavored space, which happens to rhyme with ‘baby face’ like the horrible growth on my cheek.

I like the idea of an ‘open mic’ as long as I’m never the Mike. Exposing my guts to a crowd if you like might make some people freak.

I never accepted an open ‘Hand Shake’ though I don’t mind a hand made cake. Swallowing fingers is awful to take but easy to grasp – so to speak.

But my favorite place is up my nose where adorable ‘nose hair’ grows, which is usually better than ‘smelly toes’ ’cause its cute and fuzzy and chic.

***Lets take a little break from our holiday shopping frenzy for something adorable and wholesome. This little ditty makes John giggle like a tickled toddler every time he reads it. He’s done rough sketches of all the ‘Body-Oddies’ it mentions so far (even though we only used ‘baby face’ for this post). Even though “Body-Oddies won’t be out until next year, you can buy our 3 already published books at our EEWbooks Etsy store or by following the link above to www.sallemander.com. Thanks. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

Slack Jaw

November 12, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Father Rodriguez Domingo Emanuel Castillo stood on the dais before his congregation at Sunday mass, slack jawed and silent – as if in a trance. Everyone was (respectfully) baffled as he committed his minor, weekly spectacle. Intense prayers hissed through humid air, a mumbled chanting, eyes lolling, bodies swaying, swooning and barfing in awe as his lips and cheeks slackened and the agonizing minutes passed. A thick silence fell as his melting jaw splashed into a dribbley puddle at their feet. Nobody moved or said anything… everyone just stared, stupidly…because it must be a miracle… right?

***I love religion, such a rich source of popular entertainment, so irrational and blind. Someday, humans may become civilized enough to remember it fondly…like wearing diapers and learning to eat with a fork…if we survive the religion of Capitalism. Meanwhile, you can find our books at www.sallemander.com. Next weekend we will be at Philcon, The Philadelphia Sci-fi convention. Come find us under the EEW Books banner. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

Open Mike

October 22, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Mike stood on stage in the spotlight…..terrified. But, something about it seemed to be working for him. They probably found his trembling voice charming as he spoke sincerely about his life…his completely bizarre, absolutely strange, totally unlikely life…and the cynical way it came across. The crowd laughed at the tragic death of his wife in a mundane laundry incident. They howled at how the wind blew her ashes into everybody’s mouth at the funeral. And the five-day-old lasagna in a broken fridge, causing a vivid conversation with Lucifer, left them in stitches. Every word he spoke, every glib anecdote, felt like a hole being ripped open in his soul, allowing his demons to spill out – only to be consumed and obliterated in the laughter of the audience…and when it was over…Mike stood open and bloody and spent and…..completely relieved. It was better than therapy, better than liquor or sex or CHOCOLATE. And he walked off stage to a standing ovation feeling light as a feather.

***This post is an illustration from our ‘Body-Oddies’ book project and is available as an original art print at the Conventions and Book Fests we attend. The book is not scheduled for publication until 2019. You can, however, find our 3 current books at www.sallemander.com or search ‘EEW Books’ at Etsy.com and Amazon.com. The holidays are coming. They make a great gift. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Splitting Headache

October 15, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Hey!… Do you remember that thing? You know…that THING?? Oh, you remember. We saw it the other day when we were doing the other thing…..what’s-is face was there. Oh, you know who I mean, the one from… oh gosh…from over yonder with the thing-ummy-thing on his who’s-is-what’s-it?…And we laughed and laughed about it the whole time? But he wasn’t so amused. He took the issue up with…oh, you know who, the one at the place…..um, the place right next door to the other MAIN place? And she went totally ballistic about everything, especially that one thing…..but not the thing I’m talking about. I meant the OTHER thing. Yeah! The thing with the thing-a-ma-jig…Yes!!! You know the thing! UGH!!! I seem to forget EVERY thing…but I definitely remember THAT!

***This conversation isn’t all that unusual. It happens more often than I’d care to admit. What amazes me is how often we completely understand each other whenever we do…..whoever it is. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

It’s All Speculation

October 1, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Herbert had been prone to rashes since he was a kid. He caught them all – like a rash magnet…it was inexplicable. He had at least three rashes on any given day of his life. As a sickly nerd, he never had friends…..so how the heck did he get chicken pox? He never had sex, so where did he get crabs? Hell, he had rashes no one ever heard of. He was a spotty, itchy, miserable pariah (though he was a delight to his dermatologist).

Anyway, when the ‘Speckles’ showed up, Herbert was neither surprised nor alarmed…but when they became an infestation, weird stuff started happening. All his old rashes now had a rash of their own. The Speckles definitely did not respect other rashes’ turf. His chicken pox grew feathers and beaks, his goose bumps grew long necks and started nipping and spitting at other rashes and his scarlet fever?…WOW!… well…lets just say that when she reached puberty…things got REALLY awkward.

The Speckles went on to occupy every inch of Herbert and ousted all his other rashes – which would have been good except that each Speckle became enormous, grew a face and took on a personality of its own. They started talking amongst themselves – argued with each other constantly (about religion and politics, ugh!) and sang bawdy songs at all hours. It made things quite uncomfortable for Herbert, though not as bad as the realization that they’d become stronger, smarter and cooler than him. It wasn’t long before Herbert diminished completely into the shadow of his own brilliant speculations…

***Oh, how this reminds me of my teenage years…though my speckles were quite amiable and we were into the same music. This image comes from our “Creepy Clowns Coloring Book.” You can find all our books at www.sallemander.com -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

Constant Craving

September 24, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

“Constant gravy!?…did he say constant gravy?” but everyone was already busy writing and the professor’s response was garbled…but sure, constant gravy seemed right. I was feeling pretty woozy since I cut myself shaving earlier and couldn’t make it stop bleeding. It just gushed, thick and goopy…yeah, constant gravy…coool!

What began as a simple nick under my nose, got worse a few minutes later when blood started running down my cheek. An hour later, it was dripping copiously. In two hours it was a steady flow and by lunchtime I was squirting all over the place, soaking my clothes, the furniture and the walls and it was impossible to concentrate as the room kept spinning faster and faster…..

I must have spaced out for a while because when I woke, the stuff leaking out was no longer red. Thankfully it was just cheese wizz leaking from the push nozzle on my head. What?!…don’t you have a nozzle?…and what’s so weird about that? Best of all, the harder I pumped the thicker it flowed…aaaaah, pretty…..

I must have spaced out for a while but was relieved to see that I wasn’t bleeding any more and it was actually gravy all along…and doesn’t everybody get their gravy from a cut on their face? My gravy was really warm and rich, mmmmmmmm. It was bluish green with vermillion streaks and had delightful lumps of darkish mauve. Clear waxy bits of rice and corn changed into garbanzos and back. There were gangly chunks of chicken and potatoes with a sprinkling of cayan pepper fins, oregano claws and ground curry scales. Carrots, onions and celery swam serenely with a school of minced garlic on the aroma of steamed guacamole tails…oooooh! I love a good stew with gravy, especially when I’m feeling so limp and cold…Just the thing to pick me up…..

I must have spaced out…what was I saying?…..

***This really happened. It’s lucky that John got a good sketch of this guy at the writing workshop before things went sideways. This post is an illustration from our BODY-ODDIES book, whose publication was just bumped to next year. EEW Books decided to give John (the illustrator) more time to do a better quality job. It’s a little weird, I never worked with a company who cared about quality or had any discernable integrity… In the meantime, I am finishing up on an illustrated sci-fi/flash-fiction book, to be published first – this year. You can find all of our current books at www.sallemander.com. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Sausage Fest

September 3, 2018 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

Willy arrived at the party with his friend Willy and his other friend Willy. He was happy to be invited, he and his friends didn’t get many invites (they were kinda nerds) but it soon became apparent that this party would be another sausage fest. The prospects looked pretty gloomy when he saw that everybody there was a ‘Willy’. At least there was plenty of beer. After a while he noticed the place getting really hot and humid. There might as well have been flames licking up between the gratings in the floor…and all the Willies were getting some awkward, nasty looking tan lines – just like his – and they were drinking gallons of ice-cold beer to compensate for…

That’s when he realized…it was all a scam. This was a…..BAR-BE-QUE!!!

***Happy Labor Day! If you are a wealthy capitalist, today is a day of triumph. You’ve won the class war that most people still don’t seem to realize already happened. If you are a working person, don’t despair, sure the unions are mostly dead and your job is a shit-show, but from here there’s nowhere to go but up…HOORAY!!! This is one from our “Body-Oddies” project, a craptastic journey through the rancid mind of my artist, John Allemand. find and buy our books at www.sallemander.com. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

Old Wives’ Tail

August 20, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Last night she came in through the bathroom window…the one up on the third floor. At this point I’m too numb to be surprised. Last week, before bed, she reached up to take her glasses off and her whole head came away. She paid it no mind, just set it down on the nightstand next to her spittoon and went to sleep – I slept on the couch that night.

Three days ago she came home from a visit with her mother dragging a massive, spiked tail behind her as if nothing was amiss (talk about an old wives tail). The dogs were pretty upset. I spent the night ‘working’ in my office with a bottle of scotch and a joint.

So, the bathroom window thing last night was hardly a bother – and the mystery of how she managed the climb was solved when I noticed her folding leathery bat wings up under her coat. What those long curly tusks could possibly be used for, I cannot guess…..but I think I’ll sleep out in the car tonight.

***This is a true story. It happened to a guy I knew…well actually the next door neighbor of a second cousin, twice removed of my best friend’s cubicle mate’s mother-in-law (from her old job). It’s really sad how people drift apart but its inevitable and sometimes we just have to adapt to the new paradigm. This is another unofficial ‘red rough’ sketch from our upcoming book “Body-Oddies” which I’m forbidden to post…but what John (my illustrator) doesn’t know won’t kill him. Find our books at www.sallemander.com -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, Freaks

Handyman

August 13, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Darryl woke up with that feeling again – impossible to describe but all too familiar at this point. He kept his eyes closed for a while longer, savoring the dream he was having about his old, normal life…before all the changes…before every morning became a horror show, wondering if he would find another growth.

He did his best to soothe his anxiety, tried to make lemonade out of the lemons that seemed to be smothering him. After all, how could yet another, extra hand possibly be all that bad for a skilled craftsman who worked with his hands? Each one seemed to have all his talent and strength. His productivity tripled, he was making money hand-over-fist (no pun intended) and for the first time in his life, people found him “kinda” interesting…..

But…waking up every few days with another fully formed hand growing out of some empty patch of his flesh was really starting to effect his insanity.

***This was a tough image to pull out of John’s thick head, but with an iron skillet and a power drill I finally managed it (long story). It comes from our new book project, “Body-Oddies,” now scheduled for publication in 2019. -Marsha