Tag Archives: freaks

Game Face…Face Plant

“Game Face

Go sports!  Go sports!

   Rah–rah–rah!

Kick the bishop in the shorts,

   sis–boom–bah!

“Face Plant”

When she fell, face first, with a grunt and a thudd,

   the state of her health was precarious,

but staggering up, encrusted with mud,

   the look on her face was hilarious.

***Yeah, there’s a silly rhyme for BOTH of these pages…thankfully for you, we left them out of the book. I think John is the only freakish weirdo in America who still likes poetry. You’re welcome! If you want to buy the book, hit the ETSY link above or go to etsy.com and search EEWbooks. -Marsha

Constant Craving

“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

Eyes in the Back of Her HEAD

Mom always said she had eyes in the back of her head.  I always thought she was joking, but still, I never could get away with anything behind her back.  It was uncanny.  She was just really clever, right?  She KNEW me so well she could always tell what I was up to…..right?  WRONG!!

Yesterday she pulled me aside, angry that I tracked mud through her kitchen right behind her back and blamed my little sister for it.  She parted the neat bun of hair and curlers behind her ears to reveal a creepy set of eyes.  Wow! (did NOT see that coming) My knees gave out and I sat down hard in the puddle of mud on the floor.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I saw a hairy nose there too…but when a bearded mouth opened wide and berated me with the colorful expletives of a drunken sailor at the volume of a drill sergeant on parade…well, let’s just say that I suddenly had more to mop off the floor than a muddy set of footprints.  (True story.)

***Another excerpt from our latest book (our 4th book), “A Short Burst”…a collection of short, intense, flash science fiction.  Find (and buy) all our books at our Etsy shop. Follow the links at www.sallemander.com or search EEWbooks at www.etsy.com.   -Marsha 

There Must Be Some Mistake

The atmosphere in the ballroom went positively rancid the moment I walked in.  People stopped dancing mid-step.  The band struck a sour chord and shambled into silence.  Drinks spilled.  A waiter dropped a tray of dishes with a loud, lingering clatter.  A woman fainted, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

Everyone in the place turned to look at me as if I had two heads.  Something was ‘off’ about these people; I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

The groom, looking quite put out, detached himself from his bride and strolled elegantly toward me, the tails of his tuxedo brushing the onlookers as they parted to let him through.  He handed me a scrap of paper with the neatly written words: “There must be some mistake” and gestured to a banner over the dais which read: “Congratulations to Headless Charlie and Sue the Body!”

That’s when I realized that it wasn’t my two heads that disturbed them…it was that I was the only freak in the room who had any head at all.

How embarrassing!

***Our latest book – our 4th book – is, “A Short Burst” a collection of flash science fiction.  This story and image come from page 12.  Most of what you find in this blog is a light dusting of what you’ll find in our books.  Follow the links to www.sallemander.com and our Etsy shop or search EEWbooks at www.etsy.com to buy them.   -Marsha

Bear Assed

     When the bear suddenly reared up on it’s hind legs by the campfire – it’s roar piercing my very soul – I was only briefly distracted by the warm, wet sensation spreading in my trousers.  The funniest thought went through my head as I regained my senses, leapt up, and took off through the woods, howling like an injured bagpipe…I thought about the extra ten pounds I packed on last winter and what a porky, middle-aged schlubb I had become.  But then I remembered how much fatter and stupider all my camping buddies had gotten…and how much more drunk they were right now…and that I really didn’t have to outrun the BEAR…..and my desperate howl simmered down to a pathetic sobbing squeal…with an ironic snark every 5th gasp or so, which I cannot explain.

***Yet another pair that probably won’t be in the new “Body-Oddies” book, at least not the way you see them. This version of the image is good and I like it, but the original version fits the theme of the spread much better. The written bit was eliminated from the project a while ago, before it went to the publisher. I decided to save it for something else…like a blog post. And now I can share it here. We’re still waiting on a print and release date, but as the plague abates, so the publishing and selling frenzy nears. -Marsha

Tongue in Cheek

Benjamin Young almost never appeared,
though his stand-up routines were revered.
The tongue in his cheek
made him seem like a freak,
and that was a little too weird.

***Two final versions of this sketch were done for use in our new book, “Body-Oddies,” one is the cover. This one, however, is only a clean-up of the original rough sketch and was not used in the book, and the publisher won’t let us post the good ones on social media, so we’re stuck posting rough sketches and shitty rejects. Only the BEST work goes into all our books. Find our first four books at our Etsy shop. Go to www.etsy.com and search EEWbooks. -Marsha

Pimple Face

Pimple Face Pat is a bubble of puss,

throbbing and itching to burst,

trying his best not to strain and fuss,

lest somebody squeezes him first.

     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 all into the same music.  My new book, “Body-Oddies” is finally done and ready for the printer. Meanwhile, we DO have four other books for sale…find them at www.etsy.com and search EEWbooks.  -Marsha