Category Archives: fragment

Orbital Fracture

June 13, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

“Well, that was pretty weird…” Quinn’s dad said, as they strolled out of the hospital emergency room toward the car. Quinn nodded in solemn agreement. His brain rattled a little, still full of purple marbles and tapioca. He winced as his now full blown concussion sent steam whistling from his ears and left a trail of silly string on the asphalt.

Just a few hours earlier, Quinn, the goalkeeper for his club soccer team, came out of his box low and fast, to intercept a couple of players desperately sparring for the ball. He dove in, punching it away as one of the players aimed a kick…but instead of connecting with the ball, his foot caught Quinn in the face like a grizzly car crash (an all-too-common goalie accident).

Quinn’s jaw spun away with a funny “vip-vip-vip!” and hit a light post, exploding in a shower of sparks. His teeth peppered everyone within fifty yards…but his head flew straight up in the air at such velocity that we lost sight of it shortly before his “AAAAAAAAAAAH!” diminished into the night. What a mess!

Willy the Astronaut was a clumsy buffoon who, for the second time this month, slipped and splashed into the molding tank at the polar ice mine on the surface of Mars…as it’s contents began to freeze. His heavily insulated vac-suit protected him from harm, but he wasn’t discovered until the 60 ton cylinder of ice had already been rocket-lifted up to the orbital processing plant, where it would be transformed into liquid oxygen rocket fuel.

Willy’s coworkers labored fruitlessly for eight frustrating hours with a laser drill to free him, without luck…..until Willy noticed Quinn’s gnarly, high velocity head glance off the ice and careen away, still hollering, “Aaaaaaaaaah!” Quinn’s head must have hit a sweet spot in the ice, just so, because it fractured the cylinder neatly, allowing Willy to escape unharmed and without a costly, shattered mess for the mining company. Willy never mentioned Quinn’s head to his employers, he was a known buffoon and his credibility was already compromised.

As to Quinn; his dad managed to gather up all his bits and parts and take him to the hospital, where the clever use of duct tape and super glue had him back on his feet in a few short hours. We figure his wild story about ice mining on Mars was probably just a symptom of his concussion.

“Well, that was pretty weird…..”

***This is a totally true story which happened to John’s son, Quinn, last week, at a soccer game in Millburn, NJ on June 9th, 2017. Quinn is recovering (slowly but steadily) and has been corresponding with Willy the Astronaut on facebook. Quinn’s dad is building a rocket ship in the barn out back, so they can visit the ice mine on Mars next month. -Marsha

body-oddies, Clowns, Flash Fiction, fragment

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

June 6, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Milton was an odd fellow. Everybody thought so. He had wild ideas about everything from politics to gardening. He thought animals would be healthier if we didn’t butcher them. He thought terrorism was a bad way to fight terrorism and had, daily, heated arguments about transference with the wooden Indian outside the smoke shop….very odd.

He painted a creepy clown face with purple polka-dots on his van (even though he can’t drive). He muttered bizarre things to ladies as he passed them in the streets, like: “Have a nice day!” and “Love your head scarf!!” – it was horrifying. Last week he predicted the world would end two years ago and hung unauthorized presidential campaign posters for ‘asparagus’ and ‘enchiladas’ (even though they were probably better candidates)…and every time he ate pickled anchovy sandwiches with mayo and peanut butter, his breath still smelled like beef jerky…..Huh!

For all this and much more, Milton was the subject of intense gossip all over town. He often made the front page of the local Gazette and people got into fist fights over the consistency of his guacamole. To some, he was a nuisance, to others a local folk hero – and to others still, a tourist attraction.

Well, that was all good and fine for most folks…but for me, seeing him stroll about with three fully grown legs – one facing front and two facing back, was truly a marvel…..and wow, what a snazzy dancer!

***This is a sketch and flash piece for my “Body-Oddies” book project, which is well underway and on schedule for publication in 2018 (that is, if John can get his lazy ass in gear and finish the illustrations). The publisher is really excited with the whole project. -Marsha Mellow

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Potty Mouth

April 11, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Something in the smell wafting from the bathroom told me that things were going badly. The crap being shouted was definitely not appropriate for television. Negotiations had broken down and a strike was well underway. Worse…the strikers were in open revolt, flinging their sacred deposits all over the walls and ceiling. The trust between us was broken. Innocents were soiled, stained and who knew if the scars would ever heal…..but all that was secondary to the fact that…I really had to go. I REALLY had to go — BAD!

Shamefully, in typical corporate fashion, I snuck out to the back yard, found a tree and used it like a primitive monkey. Disgusting. Yes, I found a cheap scab replacement to the striking toilet — but I just couldn’t hold out any longer…ugh! I felt dirty.

I say, give the strikers whatever they demand before this gets any worse and we have a real shit storm on our hands…our shoes… our trousers…..

***Two weekends and two 3-day shows in a row, selling our beautiful clown books and hawking amazing (and tasteful) ‘Poop’ stickers…..boy oh boy, this is the life. If I knew this was going to be so good I’d have quit my old career 10 years ago. John wholeheartedly concurs. But, Now we have a clean stretch of uninterrupted time to finish “Bludgeon the Clown”, hopefully in early May so we can resume our show schedule. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Sausage Fest

March 14, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a 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!

***Today, in the midst of the ‘Blizzard of 2017’, all I can think of is bar-be-que and beer. This is a new one from our “Body-Oddies” project, a craptastic journey through the rancid mind of my artist, John Allemand. So glad that’s over. We have enough material to do the book but now I guess we’re just spewing out material as a compulsion. -Marsha

Clowns, fragment

Liam the Clown

March 7, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

There once was a clown named Liam, so small it was hard to see ‘im ’till I stomped him flat with a colorful splatt. Now, I wouldn’t want to be ‘im.

***We posted this one ’cause it was an easy one as we prepare our new book for publication. ‘Bludgeon the Clown’ will (hopefully) be out by May 1st and we’re working around the clock to finish it. This image is from our ‘Creepy Clown Coloring Book’…but we posted another version back on Jan. 12th 2016. I’m not a big fan of John’s work but I really like this one…it makes me hungry for seven layer nacho dip. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Foot In Mouth

February 14, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

I woke up this morning feeling disheveled. I must have tossed and turned all night and tied myself into a knot, because when I woke up I fell out of bed…tied in a knot. I didn’t know I could do that…and survive. Worse than that, when I finally got myself untangled, I realized I had a foot where my hand used to be, my tongue was attached to an elbow and my hair had migrated down my back to my buttocks. One of my hands had switched places with my wiener and one was dangling from an armpit but for the life of me, I could not find my other foot. I wasn’t in any pain but the sight of it all made me want to scream…..except, when I opened my mouth…well, that’s when I discovered where my other foot had gone…

***This exact thing never actually happened to ME…but something resembling the ‘foot in mouth’ part definitely happened to the last loser who tried to pick me up in a bar, which…come to think of it, happened a few years ago on this same minor holiday celebrating the Marquis de Sade or something…..Valentine’s, whatever! We’re too busy finishing our new book (‘Bludgeon the Clown’) to worry about it right now. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Splitting Headache

January 24, 2017 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

Flash Fiction, fragment, Sci-Fi

Ugliest Man alive

October 25, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Billy O’Banion had to be the ugliest man alive. He was monstrous to look at, an absolute fright and there was no hiding it.

Some liked to speculate that his father was a mutant clone or an alien invader. There was even a vicious rumor that his mother took a demon into her bed. Really though, the O’Banions were perfectly respectable. In fact, Billy’s birth was completely normal and he had a decent, happy childhood. He’d never succumbed to any horrible illness or accident and was never bitten by an irradiated lab rat. He simply started getting ugly at some point and kept getting uglier and uglier with each passing day. He was an inexplicable freak of nature…an awful, tragic figure…..how sad!?

The funny thing about Billy, however, is that he seemed perfectly okay with his predicament. He took it all in stride and made lemonade out of the rotten tomatoes he was dealt. He figured he was a cross between Darth Maul and a Gothic dragon…cool! See, Billy had an outrageous sense of humor that dwarfed his ugliness. He was a clever practical joker and filled his days with gigantic gobs of fun.

Nothing tickled his tendrils more than slipping quietly into a mob on the street, disguised in a hoodie…only to burst out suddenly, flashing his most charming grin, yelling “Surprise!!!” He could barely contain the giggles as they screamed, shat themselves and fainted (usually in that exact order). It never got old. He could clear a fast food joint or a movie theatre in seconds and never had trouble getting a good seat.

For a while, he made piles of money in the Mexican masked wrestling circuit but eventually retired on a generous pension provided by several New Jersey towns – “to stay the hell away!” These days, he lives quietly in a posh Hoboken penthouse where he writes creepy clown poetry and practices his banjo…but still gets a kick out of scaring the bajeebies out of solicitors, delivery boys and trick-or-treaters. He likes to leap out of the elevator and gobble them down whole. Oh, don’t worry, he craps them out onto the carpet an hour later…completely unharmed (at least physically), after all, he always was a vegetarian.

***HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!…the best holiday of the year. I wrote this in our Saturday ‘Montclair Write Group’ writing workshop with John’s image as the prompt. Its good practice, good exercise and good inspiration. John’s image was originally published in a 2010 issue of Analog Magazine. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Slack Jaw

September 13, 2016 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 while the agonizing minutes passed. A thick silence fell as his melting jaw splashed into a dribbley puddle at his feet. Nobody moved or said anything… everyone just stared, stupidly…..it must be a miracle… right?

***I love religion, so entertaining, so debilitating…but no matter how I’d love to rant on about it, I’m even more compelled to announce that we now have our ETSY shop up and running (just follow the link to www.sallemander.com and you’ll find the link to the site/shop). You can get our two books and soon, original art prints. Also, we now have both our books for sale at St. Mark’s Comics in New York City (one of our favorite places on Earth), so go there and buy our shit! -Marsha

body-oddies, fragment

Headstand

August 16, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Henry Higgenbottom had an amazing talent. Welllll, maybe not so amazing as, lets say, ‘quirky’. You see, Henry could “headstand”. Yeah, not so amazing…but since nobody else could ever do it quite like him, it kinda became his ‘thing’. And despite all practical advice. he ‘did’ the crap out of his ‘thing’. He became a minor local celebrity (oddity), got his fifteen minutes of fame on the T.V. news and bartered that into a stint on the state carnival circuit which propelled him into a pretty good gig with a circus sideshow troupe as a ‘Tumbling Contortionist’. All things considered, however, his convulsive hiccupping act usually stole the spotlight (and all the laughs) and made his ‘headstand’ gimmick look pretty dull. But Henry never gave up on it. It was his own unique gift to the world, a sacred piece of his very soul and he made sure it was part of every show he did…..until one day he accidentally mixed his hiccups with his ‘headstand’ and so disrupted his specially balanced stance that he snapped his own ridiculous neck.

***Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who has seen the image above seems to think it has some political meaning – perhaps implying the state of the nation or of the American voting public… Bollocks and drivel! It is no such thing. Read the post! Its nothing more than a tragic fragment of an ambitious loser. We don’t do politics in this blog!

John and I will have a table in Artist Alley at the Newark Comic Con on Saturday, August 20 (1100 McCarter Hwy., Newark, NJ) where we will be presenting advance copies of my new book, “Marsha Mellow’s Creepy Clown Coloring Book”, as well as original art prints and copies of three books by our good friend Joe Del Priore. -Marsha