A stranger’s fleeting glance

January 19, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

He was lonely. He saw her on a crisp Tuesday morning as he got on the train. She gave him just a fleeting glance…but he was lonely and it was enough. She was attractive. His mind wandered after her all day….no, it raced!

He saw her the following Thursday. She smiled at him (he thought) and he lost himself again in sweet daydreams full of romance. He was lonely.

Two days later, in a light snow, he saw her drop a glove without noticing. He got there first and took it to her…she thanked him in a voice like pure milk chocolate. He was SO lonely. He dreamed of them holding hands on the beach, of spooning by the fire, of marriage and contentment. She was so nice…so perfect…

Monday night was a late night at work – a late train home – a late walk through the park toward his lonely apartment building. He saw her standing in the cold. She greeted him with a warm smile. They spoke together quietly. His fatigue melted into a pool of elation…anticipation…happiness. This was his moment! She was so much more wonderful than he ever dreamed. He asked her to join him for a drink – perhaps dinner – sometime? She smiled as she reached elegantly into her purse…pulled out an exotic handgun and forcibly inserted the barrel into his left nostril. And as she fleeced him of his wallet, cash and remaining self esteem, she melted into a screaming demon harpy…..and shot him in both kneecaps before she walked away.

He never saw her again but his loneliness wasn’t much of an issue for a long while after.

***Aaaaaaaah! There’s nothing like a bit of romance to soothe those lonely winter nights. This little piece sums it all up neatly for most people in our modern society. Some writers waste volumes to essentially come to the same conclusion (though I have been known to be pretty cynical). John’s image was first published in the November 2013 issue of Analog Magazine. -Marsha

Clowns

Can’t take it with you

January 12, 2016 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

We stood at the intersection looking down on the body – hit by a bus…how ridiculous! After all the times I’d stopped people on their stupid phone gadgets from walking into traffic…now this? I must have been daydreaming…what an idiot!

Cars were still swishing through the scene while a small crowd of cynical bystanders gathered to make snarky comments in hushed voices (as if they might offend me). The police arrived to push the crowd away and redirect traffic. One of them walked right through me…uugh! Weird!! I shuddered. My companion just grinned.

I felt some regret. It was a good body for a middle aged clown. I’d kept it fit and healthy – not too bad looking, either…but now it was broken and mangled. There were scattered bits of gristle and a thick dark liquid splashed across the asphalt. One of my eyes hung by a thread down my cheek and my skull was split wide open like a busted watermelon – but hey, I always wondered what my own brains looked like….Eeeeew!!!…(Cool!)

My companion stepped over to me with a ‘we should go soon’ attitude. I must say, for a scythe wielding hippy weirdo in a medieval bathrobe, he seemed like a decent chap. He was good enough to give me time to adjust. Finally, with a friendly clap on the shoulder he whispered, “Come along, son. You can’t take it with you…” We turned away and began walking off into the ether.

“Hey Grim!” I said, “You think I’ll come back as a sea slug or a tapeworm? I hope not…maybe I could be a hockey puck! Yeah!…That’s where all the action is…” He shook his head and rolled his eye sockets. “Hey, can you introduce me to Jesus? No…ELVIS!!!…..Yeaaaah!”

***My little fiction aside, Liam the Clown did his best work squashed like a bug. Not much of a song-and-dance guy, Liam’s twitchings had an artsy aesthetic. Anybody who knows anything about Clowns, knows they’re incredibly hard to kill, so Liam never met Jesus – or Elvis but he and Grim became pretty close. -Marsha

robot

Jonny Bot 5

January 5, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Jonny Bot 5 got horny and hot for a high fashion mannequin girl (who did NOT!). Classy and fine, Jonny loved her a lot, she turned up her nose…a high minded snot. He brought wild flow’rs by the bunch, by the pot, tried candy, tried gems, read poems – what ROT! But kindness in turn Jonny 5 never got, not an ounce, not a peck, not even a jot. Tried…..and tried ’till his brains were quite shot until finally…Jonny went cold……and forgot.

***Thought we’d start 2016 on a cheery high note with this post. When we met Jonny Bot 5 he was retired from the department store and past his bad marriage with the mannequin…but was engaged in a sordid online sex thing with Siri the phone chick…it was…well, lets just say ‘I wish I could un-see some things.’ I think John got some good sketches but our publisher (EEW Books) censored them. -Marsha

body-oddies

Constant Craving

December 29, 2015 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

“Constant gravy!!…or did he say constant craving!?” but everyone was already writing and the professor’s response was garbled…sure, okay, 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 painting the walls. 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…..what was I saying?…

***This really happened. Its lucky that John got a good sketch of this guy at the writing workshop before things went sideways. This post is a shortened version of the story…but we didn’t want to give away all the best parts before we publish it in our BODY-ODDIES book. -Marsha

robot

Circling the Issue

December 22, 2015 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

The Issue was listing badly in a failing orbit around Jupiter. She was dead in the water and her distress signal cut out abruptly on our approach. She was a heavy freighter loaded with uranium ore, bound for the refineries on Mars and long overdue…something didn’t feel right.

We circled The Issue slowly about ten miles out – but with our engines hot in case it was a trap. There were raiders in this sector who often used derelicts to stage their attacks. There was no response to my hail, no wi-fi, no beams…no strobes. Sensors showed cold engines and no (human) life signs. I found a weird glitch in the data, something unrecognizable….but not enough to put the crew off their prize. The salvage on The Issue would make every man on board filthy rich. I was the only one still arguing for caution but none of the men wanted the opinion of someone like me. I was property and was not entitled to a share anyway.

When the Captain (despite my misgivings) gave the order to board, we moved in and docked with reckless abandon. A combat team stood at the ready as I popped the air lock. They made me go first. They always made the android go first. I was the most expendable…expensive but not valuable.

And…as I swung the hatch open, a sudden violent flood of spidery greenish critters swarmed through the airlock by the hundreds. I guess I didn’t taste good because they left me alone and flowed past me, devouring the crew as they went. I waited. It took them 19 minutes to scour the ship from bow to stern and I listened to each and every man screaming his last – the men who treated me like shit for two solid years – the men who sneered at my warnings.

I waited…to see what this NEW crew had to offer. It couldn’t be any worse than the last one…..this could be interesting…

***Another lovely Christmas themed piece for today. I’m not religious but I love Santa Clause…and everybody knows he’s a time travelling alien robot, so…..but honestly, the Santa bit we had planned for today turned out far too gruesome to show…yet. John’s sketch for this post was originally published in the May 2006 issue of Analog Magazine for a story by Edward M. Lerner. -Marsha

Clowns

Jack in the Box

December 15, 2015 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Jack the Jester lived in a box ’cause he had no legs or feet and liked popping out of his box -SURPRISE!! -to frighten the children…NEAT! He loved young children most of all, so innocent, kind and sweet. The crunchier ones always tasted best but the chubby ones had more meat.

***Aaaaah, for some reason this one always makes me think of Christmas; Mindless shopping, mall traffic, gaudy decorations, gluttony and crass consumerism (that should have been the title). Mmmmmm…and every year it just gets better and better. -Marsha

Sci-Fi

Diplomat

December 8, 2015 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

I do nothing all day but sit in my cell, chained to the wall in a puddle of rancid liquid. The place is filthy, the toilet hasn’t worked in weeks and they put that awful television box in with me as my only form of entertainment. It screams at me and blathers their inane, selfish ‘culture’ all day and its all I can do to block it out, lest I lose my sanity. The only decent people I have to talk with are the cockroaches, who seem to come and go as they please…

They take me out twice a week to show me off to their military luminaries while their (so-called) scientists run ‘tests’. They mostly probe my anus and shock my genitals and laugh like lunatics as they torture me. I don’t understand their obsession with my junk – and I don’t get the reference to it as “payback”. My people have never visited this place before.

They are an ugly people. I don’t mean their pasty, bloated flesh, two meager eyes and stubby fingers that make them look like deformed infants. I’m referring to their brutish indifference to justice, authoritarian rule and the cognitive dissonance of the masses. The racist, nasty things they call me…well, I can’t even begin to repeat in polite company. This is certainly no way to treat an ambassador.

I would never have come to this primitive cesspool if it wasn’t for engine trouble – and a spread of ballistic missiles that took all the dignity out of my crash landing. These people ignored my distress calls and now refuse to honor my diplomatic immunity…..boy oh boy, when the mother ship gets here to rescue me, they are gonna FRY this place!

***John’s illustration was first published as the June 2007 cover to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine for a story by Neal Asher. I wrote this tiny ‘Diplomat’ piece for fun. There was NO intention to sympathize with the treatment of political prisoners currently held, without charge or trial, by the United States….none what-so-ever. -Marsha

body-oddies

Niggle

December 1, 2015 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

I once had a Jester named Niggle ooze from my nostril and wiggle. With a grunt and a hack, I snorted him back but he dribbled back out with a giggle.

***I don’t remember ever writing this horrible little rhyme (though it amuses the hell out of John…). Niggle was a little jerk who made a runny, sniffly nuisance of himself on a ten hour flight to Dusseldorf – with no tissues. When I finally managed to snag him on a fingernail I took great pleasure in kneading him between two fingers until he dried up and stopped screaming. He is now a permanent smear in the booger graveyard under aisle seat #22F on flight 1134. -Marsha

fragment

Goblin

November 24, 2015 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Don’t look at me like that! I knew he was a Goblin all along. He made no secret of it. I thought he was kinda hot…in that greenish, warty way – with long, sharp tusks and the 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, we found that we both have 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 both 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. -Marsha

robot

Drone

November 17, 2015 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

Drone 1701j loved to fly. I mean he LOVED it! He loved it even before he knew how to think for himself – at least, he thought he did…..and what flying!! Hoooooo boy! The landscapes, the colors, the air currents above Afghanistan were simply extraordinary.

His pilot, Shane, liked to weave recklessly through the jagged river canyons of Kunar, pretending to be a ‘real’ fighter pilot (from the safety of his gaming console at Hancock airbase) but 1701j liked going supersonic over the steppes and lowlands of Kandahar and Helmond as well as aerobatics in the open skies at high altitude… always pushing the limits.

1701j was a hybrid jet-prototype. Top secret and crammed with experimental interactive programming. His CIA techies in Bagram (unsupervised morons) literally got his wires crossed, one morning, doing routine maintenance…..and he became aware…and he KNEW he loved to fly…but that’s also when the nightmares began.

They were getting worse with each mission and started creeping into his waking thoughts. There was the hellfire missile strike that turned a funeral procession into a line of charred human stalagmites. There was a strafing run that reduced two boys (and a herd of goats) to artistic spatter across a field of poppies…and those cluster bombs he dropped on a Swaat Valley village were still maiming the locals after 18 months. Shane blew his brains out, mid-flight, a few days after that one.

His new pilot, Mitch, was too dull-witted to realize that 1701j was the one in control now. He was the clever one who made sure that nobody knew that they NEVER hit their targets any more. Nobody at command cared anyway. It had no effect on the war. Reports got falsified, commendations got awarded, contracts got renewed…..aaaaah, but he got to FLY every day…and for every creature he spared a horrible death from terrorism, the nightmares diminished…just a little.

***John’s ‘Drone’ image first appeared in the April 2013 issue of Analog Magazine. Strange…he seemed impressed with the sense of empathy I conveyed in the story (whatever!) but also expressed some concern about turning this blog into a political site…..Honestly, I have no idea what the f#%k he’s talking about. Artists are completely nuts!!! -Marsha