Tag Archives: flash fiction

Horst, God of Whimsy

August 27, 2018 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

I spotted the airship coming in over the treetops about a half mile out. I met them on the roof of my marine supply shop, securing the anchor line, as Vanessa slid down to collect their order. Horst stood at the rudder. He almost never set foot on solid ground anymore, but he smiled down to me with cheerful eyes and raised a hand in friendship. Vanessa, his young protégé handled everything, as usual. Together, we hoisted a bolt of sailcloth, 6 tackle blocks and 200 yards of hemp rigging into the gondola. When I offered to help him refit, she laughed and asked, “What kind of God would he be if he couldn’t handle his own repairs?”

I had never met a God before. I saw one once, from a distance, when I was a kid. It was Dolores the Forlorn, Goddess of the sad and disenfranchised. She was in the street, amid throngs of the poor and homeless…not to be worshipped, NO!. She was a REAL God, a working God, teaching them to bathe and cook and forage for food, encouraging them to rob and murder rich fascists.

Real Gods had no need for blind believers. Their job was to inspire us to be better…or whatever. But their existence had been obscured for eons by the big, fake God, who seemed only able to inspire homophobia, racism and war. It’s funny, now, to recall how he was destroyed by the pedophiles infesting his own deranged priesthood. When his followers found out the truth, they gathered on mountaintops by the thousands, drank poisoned cool-aid…and sent themselves to heaven.

The Muslims, the Jews, the Capitalists…all the other false religions fell like dominos after that. You know…I never wanted to go to heaven. I figured it must be an awful, pungent place. It took years for the stench of 3 billion of the stupidest people on Earth to wash away. I remember that smell as a kid, too.

But soon the real Gods began dying off as well. Without cognitive dissonance to hold us back, the human race began to evolve again. We were growing up, shedding childish things. There was no need for Gods any more.

The first to go was Bradley, God of Greed. Rabid fanatics ran him down, along with his friends, Dieter the Angry and Brutus the Incontinent, God of Fear…they burned them like witches and ate them, bones and all…before offing themselves. It’s not as if mankind had suddenly overcome greed and anger and fear, it’s just that we were already good at being horrible and certainly didn’t need help from any God for that.

I remember George the Smarmy, God of Conmen and Corporations. He was ripped apart in a category 7 hurricane, caused by the same global warming he and his followers refused to “believe” in. Then there was Milton the Mediocre, God of Bureaucrats….who sat on a park bench one windy day and blew away, page by page, like a loose stack of photocopies. These Gods and many more like them were never missed or mourned. As the corporate world collapsed under it’s own incompetence, the environment rebounded and people got busy, recovering. They grew food, formed communities…and slowed down.

The Gods who lingered a while longer, were the ones who needed to teach us love and patience…how to be kind and generous again. We needed to recover our civility and common courtesy, which centuries of intolerance seems to have squeezed from our souls. When those Gods finally left the world, they went quietly, in peace and dignity.

But the last one (and in my opinion), the greatest…was Horst, God of Whimsy. He was the God of clowns and tricksters, of bawdy songs and practical jokes. He reminded us to laugh and be happy. It is because of him that I throw away my umbrella every time it rains and splash in the mud-puddles, like an 8 year old kid.

I handed Vanessa the parachute, the last item on his list. He watched us from the rail above. “What’s this…?” she asked absently. I didn’t answer as I stepped away to release the anchor line. She knew…we both knew that this would be his last journey…and she need not go with him. I saw understanding creep into her eyes as she thanked me and climbed aboard. Horst waved his final farewell as the airship lifted away into the rising sun.

I saw Vanessa again a few years later. When the world was already a brighter place. I spotted her from the docks, teaching children to sail. I smiled, glad she had not flown into the sun with God…..she saw me too and smiled back.

***I wrote the short story for this post quite recently and thought it well suited to certain current events, even though it’s slated for a new science fiction short-story, sci-fi book project. The illustration was first commissioned for the April, 2006 issue of Analog Magazine. It was meant to be re-published in my latest book (Bludgeon the Clown), but it didn’t make the cut. We had 200 pages of stuff to try to cram into a 100 page book. More recently John loaned it (with permission) to our friends at Monsterz Tea Party, in France, for the posters and adverts for their upcoming art and music exposition on September 15th (Check it out: monsterzteaparty.com), go there if you can, they are the best. -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

Clowns, Flash Fiction

Worse Day of My Life

June 4, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

“Worse day of my life…” began the stranger at the bar, “…the day I lost my HEAD!” He stared at me oddly, chuckling. His words hung in the air for a while as I wondered who the heck this guy was and why he was chatting me up. He sounded absurd! “What?!” I asked, a little annoyed. “Yeah!” he continued, “It just tumbled off and rolled away. I couldn’t find it for a YEAR!” ‘How ridiculous’ I thought – but then, I remembered hearing about that sort of thing happening more and more these days. “I found it conjoined with some other dude’s left hand like a circus freak-show exhibit …awkward!”

I reached for my beer glass but knocked it over with the empty stump of my wrist. The stranger grinned at me and chuckled again knowingly. It seems that both my hands had quietly popped off and were crawling down the bar toward the attractive woman in the breasty, low cut blouse at the end…the one I was too shy to approach earlier. I didn’t know what they planned but I could just imagine what MY brainless hands might like to do with HER. That’s when I noticed the stranger’s collar – bolted tightly ‘round his neck. It looked positively medieval but locked his wayward head soundly to his torso. ‘How clever?!’ I thought.

The barkeep wiped up my spilled beer with a lovely pair of shapely, ladies arms –which did NOT match the rest of his otherwise burly, tattooed frame. He caught me staring but shrugged and nodded me in the direction of my hands as they broke into a run…..while the woman’s breasts leapt out of her blouse and took off in opposite directions.

***This image is featured in our new book, “Bludgeon the Clown” which is available now, just follow the link above to www.sallemander.com. -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Freaks, Sci-Fi

Ugliest Man Alive

May 28, 2018 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 in his twenties, 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 was 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 which 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 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.

***I wrote this in our weekly, Saturday morning ‘Montclair Write Group’ free-write workshop with John’s horrible self portrait as the prompt. It’s good practice, good exercise and good inspiration. John’s image was originally published in a 2010 issue of Analog Magazine. We have 3 books available for sale, you can find them by following the link above to: www.sallemander.com -Marsha

Clowns, Flash Fiction, Freaks

Book Festival

May 21, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Paranoia Smith was the most exhausting, obnoxious, insufferable, skate-punk, tattooed, cross dressing poseur I ever met at a book festival. Within a minute in this lunatic’s presence I wanted to rip off his head and crap down his neck. He babbled incessantly (when he wasn’t ‘rapping’ or screeching heavy metal lyrics) and his fake blonde goatee and dreadlocks smelled like a port-a-potty. He was one of those touchy-feely dudes who never let up. He had a finger puppet named Yak Feces who insisted on probing all of my facial orifices. And he simply could not convey any of his incomplete ‘ideas’ from a distance further than an inch from my nose with breath like the putrid steam at the edge of a volcano. He was a wild eyed maniac with no self control….actually dribbled chaw juice on my shoe, then apologized as he hosed it off with urine…..BUT, he just bought a copy of my ridiculous new book, “Bludgeon the Clown” and I love him for it. I think we could be brothers.

Oh no! Next in line was Lisa, an enormous middle aged woman in a teeny-tiny Sailor Moon costume with bits bulging from under her adorable skirt that I didn’t know women even had. I think her blue hair was her REAL hair. “Could you sign mine?” she croaked like Jabba the Hut…and I was grinning (as she pulled out exact change) too horrified to look away from…this beautiful, elegant creature who loves my book. I could have married her on the spot.

Next in line is…oh, sweet Jesus…..

***John and I brought our new book out to sell at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland last weekend. It rained…but it was brilliant. We met so many talented, decent, cool people – and artists – and vendors…What a great time – and you would not believe how many books we sold (my mother told me we should have brought more…). Wish you were there. -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Sci-Fi

Search Me…

May 14, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

They were big and beefy and incredibly strong. They were aggressive, poking their weapons everywhere and they smelled like belligerent fear as they shouted and snarled. They had plate armor like insects but were pasty and bony underneath with beady eyes and a ridiculous tuft of hair on their tiny heads – like hand puppets. They were most definitely …ALIEN!

When they landed their starship in my back yard and demanded; “Take me to your leader!” I was so stunned – so baffled that I froze and just blinked at them. Their exasperated captain tried again; “Where are your leaders?!” sneering with contempt, as if I was a child. I simply shrugged and said, “Search me…”

Now…I don’t know if they misunderstood me or just had a REALLY strange sense of humor…..but being held down in a medical lab with a gnarly probe approaching my buttocks is taking things waaaaaay too literally. These humans area nasty bunch.

***This story reminds me of my last colonoscopy…And can anybody explain what the deal is with Aliens and anal probes? They’re almost as bad as the CIA (at least Aliens ask intelligent questions). This was the (lucky) 13th cover John did for the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of Analog Magazine. You won’t find this image in any of our 3 current books but you can find our books by following the links to www.sallemander.com and our Etsy shop. -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Sci-Fi

Peek-A-Boo

March 12, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

I had a good breath diving under…good for at least 3 minutes. Fifty yards out from the dock, I angled down deep for about 35 feet. It was exhilarating. The fish were strange today. They weren’t acting right. It was just my instinct but…they seemed to crowd me instead of scattering at my approach. Pensive.

Weeds were thick but I liked swimming through them, like parting curtains…..until I saw the eyes – big eyes – cunning eyes. I stopped, dead. Froze. They were staring at me with unnerving intelligence and all the little fish began darting about frantically – and I nearly lost my breath.

Through the gloom, I began to make out the long, hulking form behind the eyes; Strange limbs, sharp fins, long feelers, fleshy lips with menacing barbs, monstrous teeth…..smiling at me?

Now I was afraid! In one swift motion my hand swept down to draw my knife from it’s ankle sheath – but lightning fast, the creature’s arm shot out from between the weeds and wrapped its long scaly fingers around my throat – my jaw – my entire skull.

I lost my air…and then, lost consciousness.

I woke up…breathing. I started to remember…..swimming through weeds – fish acting oddly – then the eyes…and a massive claw, engulfing my head. And as it all went dark I thought I heard a sinister, gurgling “Peek-a-boo!”

I was inside now. It was stifling and smelled like cat food mixed with burning tires. I sat up in a lumpy soup of viscous bile and big bloody chunks of meat. My hands and face burned but my wet suit protected the rest of my skin. A sphincter opened behind me and sucked me out, like a dumpling in a steaming meat-soup, down a tube whose bulbous nodules bathed us in a spray of acid. It stripped the fur and skin from the meat and dissolved my hair along with a painful layer of exposed skin.

I dropped into a bony chamber in which long, razor sharp blades shredded the meat into hamburger (along with most of my wetsuit). I was quickly evacuated into another chamber which flooded with thousands of tiny, finger sized worms (with very sharp teeth), who consumed every speck of the remaining meat sludge before I alone, the squirming, inedible lump, was expelled once more, through slimy bowels, into a vat of solid waste.

This wondrous fleshy sack looked and smelled like the inside of a rotting, bloated elephant carcass. Minutes passed, possibly hours, while a steady stream of sticky, gloppy gunk filled the space, until there was no more room. I thought this must be the end. With goop filling my ears and covering my mouth, I took my last full breath of air (a three minute breath?) before black sludge covered and consumed me. One minute…two minutes…nearly three minutes passed before I felt a great shuddering shift, followed by a resounding (satisfied) grunt….and I was suddenly shot, like a torpedo, out into clean, cool lake water.

I surfaced near the shoreline, gasping for air. Although I emerged from the lake a raw, tattered and thoroughly disgruntled piece of fish poop…I was alive. It was, perhaps, not my greatest adventure but surely a ‘fantastic journey.’

***The only thing better than a giant fish swallowing a dude and crapping him back out is doing the same thing to a great old Asimov concept (like I just did here). Aaaaah, fish poop!…one of the great mysteries of life. The image was originally a cover John did for the May, 2011 issue of Analog Mag. -Marsha

Flash Fiction, Freaks

Primal Urge

March 5, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

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

February 19, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

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!

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

How Do I Look?

January 29, 2018 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

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