Tag Archives: tattoos

Flash Fiction, Freaks

Primal Urge

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Primal-urge-image-31

I love brains!…LOVE them.  Can’t remember why I ever ate anything else…ever.  I vaguely remember being bitten, I think there were six of them.  They ripped out my stomach and organs as I turned…..then I joined in…and I tasted pretty good – but not as good as brains.

I don’t talk much any more, nobody in my group does.  It’s okay, I never was much of a conversationalist…and most folks seem too afraid of me to chat, anyway.  They run away screaming a lot or try to stab me in the head with sharp stuff… I never liked most people that much, so it doesn’t really hurt my feelings.  Their brains, though…ooooooohhh, nice!  Better than goose liver pâté and double fudge brownies.

I saw my own reflection yesterday, I’m looking pretty rugged.  I’ve really slimmed down without my guts…finally lost that extra thirty pounds.  And my skin, well…a mottled blue-ish grey with black streaks – reminds me of camouflage, my favorite color.  But oooooohh, the brains…did I tell you how good those are?  I highly recommend them.  Ooooooom!  Ughhh!!  Brains!!!  I love the brains.  Ummmmmm…I can’t remember why I ever ate anything else…ever.  I vaguely remember being bitten, I think there were six of them.  They ripped out my stomach……

***I posted this to celebrate another amazing show this past weekend…my first of 2018, at the NJ Horror Con and Film Fest.  HOORAY!!!  It would have been perfect if I made any money…and if all the vendors weren’t illegally searched (without probable cause) and harassed by the NJ Dept. of Revenue – before any of us were allowed to enter the show.  It was all an intimidation/scare tactic for a bunch of pussy tax cops who had full access to a list of prepaid vendors long before the show opening.  And it was all facilitated by the convention’s organizers/owners.  It’s really not a matter of whether I participate in future shows with those people — it’s about whether I include them in the legal action that follows.  I no longer tolerate being bullied.  -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Freaks

Tick Tick Tick

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The room was not large, just a conference room in the library where ten of us sat around a table writing.  It was a typical Saturday morning workshop and the prompt was part of the lyrics to the Star Wars theme.  The music rattled around my brain easily enough but for some reason I couldn’t recall it ever having lyrics.  I was frustrated.  I drew a blank while everyone else was scribbling away…and the music in my head became louder, incessant…persistent…..maddening!

tick-tick-02    It suddenly stopped when a new sound caught my attention.  It was coming from Keith at the other end of the table.  There was a tick, tick, ticking that quickly replaced my obsession – in perfect rhythm and beat – to those lyrics, whatever they were…tick, tick, ticka, ticka-ticka, tick, tick.  I was tapping my toe on the carpet now…ticka-ticka, tick, tick.  Louder and louder it got, tick, ticka, tick…Keith was writing intensely.  Tick, tick-ticka.  How could he not hear it?  Tick-tick, ticka-tick.   Was I the only one?  Ticka-tick-ticka, tick.  Was that smoke coming out of his ears?  Tick-tick.  Coooool!  Ticka-tick-ticka.  The ticking got faster as bright beams of light began to emerge from his skull.  Tick-ticka-ticka-ticka-tick.  It filled the room…blinding me…..ticka-ticka-ticka…BANG!!!!!

Like a mouse in a microwave, the walls, floor and ceiling were suddenly pasted with Keith juice and bits of sticky flesh and bone.

Still, nobody seemed to notice.  Everyone just kept on writing even as a slippery chunk of bowel slid down Carl’s face and a bloody ear clung to the end of Joe’s pencil.  Keith’s head and chest were gone and his fluids were squirting Susan’s cheek…but he kept on writing as well.  Susan paused to open an umbrella and brush gore off her laptop, unmoved.

Everything was quiet for a few minutes as pens scribbled on wet paper and blood dribbled and pooled in my under shorts….then the ticking started again…but this time it sounded like it was coming from Nancy…..tick, tick, tick…coooool!

***The illustration was originally published as the cover for Analog Magazine’s Jan/Feb 2012 issue, for a story by Robert J Sawyer.  The story is based on true events that go on from 10am to 12pm every Saturday morning at the Montclair, NJ Library.  All are welcome to write…to tick…and eventually explode.   -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Freaks, Sci-Fi

Goblin

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Don’t look at me like that!  I always knew he was a Goblin.  He made no secret of it.  I thought he was kinda hot…in that greenish, warty way – with his long, sharp tusks and rancid smell of rotting puppies.  Turns out we have a lot in common – HAH!!…not what you’re thinking (my tusks are neither long nor sharp).  Really though, both of us have always had terrible luck in romance with our own species.  Why, just yesterday he confided to me that despite my incredible human ugliness, I was so much better than any ogress he’d ever had (so adorable)…and I had to admit the same.  Intellectually, we’re a perfect match.  He loves my awful Clown poetry and I love when he stomps about smashing things with a fat gnarly club – while we both hate smartass intellectuals and have a kinky thing for exotic firearms…..aaaaaah, true love at last.

***This should, in no way, be construed as a true story (and you better keep your damned mouth shut Delia, you weren’t even there!).  The illustration was first used in 2013 by Surprising Stories DCWI (an online sci-fi magazine)…and HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!   -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Freaks, Sci-Fi

How Do I Look?

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Nothing actually happened for a solid fifteen minutes after Eddie drank the formula.  He turned to us (once again) with a forlorn look and asked, “Any change yet?  How do I look?”

We knew he was crazy.  He was one of those people: perpetually dissatisfied, determined to prove that he was ‘special’.  He wanted fame, popularity, success (despite being an already brilliant scientist) and he was driven…you know, crazy…AND he had full use of the company’s laboratory.  He had access to all the good stuff too;  plasma reactor, laser diffractional transmogrifier, crazy glue – not to mention ebola, thermite and flu vaccine…and I think our awkward, mild mannered (crazy) Eddie used all of it on this new batch.

By the sixteenth minute, everything changed and Eddie’s fondest wish was realized.  He began mutating wildly, spreading outward in every direction, emitting the strangest squeaking moan.  He shook, twisted and bloated.  He grew tendrils, sprouted claws and screeched Latin gibberish from three of his seven worm-haired monkey faces as horns emerged from his leathery spine.  He puffed a sweet yellow smoke, shed tufts of pink fur and dribbled buckets of gooey puss.  He was a frightful sight…but he was just sooooo excited we didn’t have the heart to terminate him.

When he finally slowed and stabilized, he turned all of his seventeen eyes-on-a-stalk to us and in a clever series of musical farts, he asked, “Okay!…How do I look now?”

***This brings me right back to my days writing side-effects disclaimers for big Pharma…and Eddie helped me come up with some doozies.  He’s still alive and well and the subject of great intrigue at a secret government laboratory in Nevada.  I think the locals refer to it as “a sighting” every time he manages to get out for a stroll.  John’s image was his very first cover for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (Jan. 2003).  This is reposted from around this time in 2016…another good old one to wear away the winter days.   -Marsha

Flash Fiction, robot, Sci-Fi

Imaginary Friend

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Castigear stood among the stones with his imaginary friend, Joe. Joe was distraught at the loss of his other i-friend, Lucy.  She broke while Castigear was playing with her.  He ‘might’ have been handling her a little too rough and…..she just broke.  He felt a little sad about her.  He didn’t want to tell Joe what he’d done, he knew it would hurt his feelings and he liked Joe.  He decided to replace Lucy with a new imaginary friend at his earliest opportunity.

These human companions were so fragile…but he was learning so much from them (evolving).  He was hooked.  It was like an addiction.  His peers thought the i-friend program was below their dignity.  Most agreed that the last of the humans should be put down but Castigear knew that most of THEM kept their own i-friends – secretly.  It would have been a shame to exterminate ALL of them  after the war.  True, they wasted a lot of resources (like the graveyard they were standing in) but they were clever and highly adaptable and he suspected they might be the key to the future of Robot kind…and either way, with proper conditioning, they made excellent servants and…..soldiers.

***I’m always amazed at the unique perspective our sentient machine friends have on humanity.  No one articulates the condition of slavery better.  John and I are working on a special project to bring more robot voices to the mainstream.  This illustration was first published in the January 2007 issue of Analog Magazine.  This piece was first posted in Feb., 2016.  Our new book, “Bludgeon the Clown” is out and available for sale by following the links above to www.sallemander.com.   -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

It’s Not About You…

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“It’s not about you…” she said in her kindest, most sincere tone, “Really.  You’re fine.  I’m really okay with it…it’s just that, I think…I’m in a different place in my life right now…”  She smiled, looking away, trying to remember some of her gentlest brush-offs as a bead of sweat  began it’s descent on the back of her neck…..even as frustration and indignation came up in her bile.  “Oh, to HELL with it!  I can’t DO this!  Listen…you seemed like a nice, normal person and all, but JESUS effin’ CHRIST!!  Your dating profile NEVER said anything about THAT!!!  I mean, come ON!”  She pulled up her boot zipper, buttoned the top button on her blue jeans and grabbed her rumpled jacket off the floor as she made for the bedroom door… “You might have warned me at some point during dinner!”  She was really hollering now.  “Seriously?  I had to wait until we both undressed to find out about…..THAT?!?”  She slammed the door, making the whole room shudder, and with one final “AAAAAUGHHH!!!!!  FRIGGIN’ FREAK SHOW!!” she stomped out.

***Jeeeezz!  If I had a nickel for every time that happened…..  -Marsha

Book Exerpt, Clowns, Freaks

Fudge the Clown

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There once was a Clown named Fudge,                                                     whose bowels refused to budge.                                                                       He’d sit and he’d sit                                                                                                         but just couldn’t shit,                                                                                                       not even a gob or a smudge.

***Fudge was the first ‘REAL’ Clown we ever interviewed (who we regard with some affection), as he exploded shortly after John sketched out this scene.  He turned out okay but destroyed a 14-store strip mall – along with 27 parked cars – and pasted us all in fudge…we laughed…..and laughed…    I’ve reposted this one, our 5th post,  from Nov., 2015, as it has finally been published in our new book “Bludgeon the Clown.”   -Marsha

Clowns, Freaks

Happy Holidays!

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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.”

 

body-oddies, Clowns

Santa Claws

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***I found this in one of John the illustrator’s discard files while looking for images to attach to my wonderful flash-stories.  I absolutely love it.  It will be perfect for this week’s post – the last week before Christmas, there’s just something a little ‘off’ about this one, though…I just can’t put my finger on it…  Oh well,  Merry Christmas everybody!!!…go to our site and buy our books.   -Marsha