John frequently writes about his time in the Army, although it’s more of a Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried approach than a Full Metal Jacket sort of war glory trip. This is the story of a guy named Joe, a soldier, but it starts after Iraq, after he got wounded and discharged, and has more to do with starting over, finding your duty in life after your duty in the armed forces has abruptly ended.  He’s got a mom with cancer and a brother that’s schizophrenic, and instead of immersing himself in that drama, he thumbs his way to the midwest, finds a room in an eclectic boarding house filled with lost souls, and stumbles into the only career for which his service trained him: stocking crates of junk merchandise at the local big-box store.

The book is a great black-humored capture of the culture of the mid-00s, a midwest full of oversized SUVs with yellow ribbon magnets on the back, with owners racking up credit card debt to keep the biggest TVs in every room of their house. It’s a great story set in that world, about becoming lost and then found, and very awesome writing.

For more info, check out the book’s page at Alpha Mike Foxtrot. It’s available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.

More details in a bit… stay tuned!

Mona is twenty three. Her dry hair blows backwards, slapping the seat. She pulls out the first cigarette of her last pack, anticipating its comfort like expecting rain.

Kevin McTeirson, so many years ago, had taught her what it was like to lose breath forever. After fourteen years of heavy inhaling he managed to seize her wrist. In her resistant palm he dropped her first bad habit. She’d taken it, every day. Back then, her lips shook, and the cigarette felt bulky. But it’s steady now, and she’s grown. Kevin works with his father selling car parts to all the tourists in the small Arizona town, and she’s leaving for the city. But as the sun begins to fall into itself on the other edge of the universe, she remembers the going away present he had left her with a grimace. It shakes its tiny fists, beating on the side of the car seat.

Arizona smelled.

The air clears her senses. For miles, there are just trees and livestock and trees and trees, with the occasional livestock or passing pick-up that rattles away.

In her mind, she resists her new mantra that moving to the city will help her escape this hole. She knows not to think this because every time she does, McTeirson comes back and twists her wrist again. The road ahead stays curved and she thinks about new debts to make and the time to buy. She thinks about jumping from one friend’s house to the next, and then the thin lace underwear that tore a little when she packed it.

After a while, shade becomes dark, and then night.  Mona finds a gas station and fills up her grateful car, and lets the baby sleep. The fluorescent lights on the gas station sign isn’t on, but the lights inside eerily flicker in the refrigerated section and over the counter. The man who takes her money looks old and disinterested, but even his few mumbled responses feed her. She smiles at him, a -big, goofy grin, and even uncharacteristically buys a scratch-off ticket. She doesn’t win anything, and discards it in the waste basket next to the pump.  She also purchases a map.

“Ain’t nobody needs maps ‘round these parts. The road’s a straight line, you goin’ noth or south,” he scratches his chin, leaning towards her against the counter.

“It takes so long to find an exit that I’m sometimes afraid I’ve dosed off and missed one,” she confesses with a small smirk.

If he hears the joke, he doesn’t understand it. “We ain’t needin’ them maps, cause we know where we supposed ta be.” But he turns around and finds one anyway, handing it to her while looking at her eyes.

It takes strength to get back on that lonely road.

“Just miles and miles,” she says and nibbles on some gas station beef jerky, letting the incense-like smoke of the cigarette calm her from the ashtray. Eyes glow on the forest’s edge, and she locks the door. The baby screams and she jumps, and then it laughs.

“All the city lights. That’s where we’re headed– the city. Where the lights are always on.”

Her stomach suddenly leaps into her throat. For a moment she battles it, but loses.

Mona pulls her car to a thin ditch near a cow field. The baby tries to speak but shakes in frustration as its mother almost rolls out of the car. One bovine looks up jadedly and then, feeling no threat, continues to eat.

“Don’t look,” she says, and suddenly leans over and heaves. It lasts for at least a minute. Her trembling hand falters slightly off the car’s hood, and for a frightened moment she prepares to fall face-first into what she’s just retched out of her system. Shudder. Spit. Shudder.

Pine needles fall. Cows call out in the distance. The car begins to stall, and then blasts rebelliously into full life. Gnats buzz around her head.

She leans up, then back before she climbs back into the old fighter, making sure to chuck the gas station snack out of the car door.

In the back seat the baby continues to spit nonsensical noises. Her eyes are closed, and they become tighter and tighter shut. Then she yells.

“We’re almost there Kevin!”

After a pause she drives on as the baby watches Arizona get farther away and cries.

Mona once loved her family’s attic. She ran barefoot on the creaking wood floor, and her spring dress would dance around her thighs. Dust would fly up in the air and bother her nose. She spun with her arms outstretched, viewing the world in haze and shadows. But she knocked a mirror off the wall, twice her height, by simply trying to reach too far. It fell down a whole foot and stood vertically for a moment before crashing to the ground like a deer that’s been shot. The glass rippled and scattered, and for a minute, Mona was mute and stiff in terror. One of the shards dug a shallow cut into her ankle. The glass glistened in the light given off by the only window. Her only thought was “I’ll be here forever,” and she’d screamed then, loud, guttural screams.

Mona wants to stop thinking about Arizona.

There. There is something there. Her mind begins to panic. In the fuzzy, dark distance, she can see a large- thing. It’s huge, and it’s in the way. Even though it isn’t moving, she begins to slow down and curb to the right.

The nerves are shocked. She puts out the cigarette. Rolls up the window. Subconsciously ducks forward behind the wheel, still rolling at forty-five, but slowing down.

She holds her breath, feeling that young terror like broken glass cut her stomach.

Now she can tell that this thing is white, but a big black hole like a yawning mouth hangs open at her.

Thirty-five. Thirty.

She is close to tears,-

If I don’t move it can’t hurt-

only one hundred feet away.  And finally she inhales. The fuzz of fear has cleared from her eyes long enough for her to recognize the mighty slumbering beast as a mobile home. Dead stop.

She is surprised at the caution that strikes her before exiting her car. As a final precaution, she snatches a flashlight out of the glove compartment. Then she crawls out into the night, leaving her headlights aimed slightly left of the slumbering beast, and the baby groping for her mother.

Before she goes towards it, she aims her flashlight into the forest for the eyes- the glistening glass. For a minute, she stands there, and then takes a few steps forward, still hypnotized by the forest’s animosity.

She finally looks at the mobile home and her heart skips and then races. Then tin metal sides are dented all around, like it’s been rolled on its side until it resembled someone sucking in their stomach. It leans lazily on three slashed tires. The front door hangs open. It is too dark to see the interior, but in the daytime she would have found it completely naked.

And the writing. The writing.  Her feet are blocks. She cannot turn again. Her jaw falls as she thinks “I’ll be here forever,” over and over.

The writing reads, in dark red paint along the metal sidings: “YOU GO WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.” Under that, on a broken sign hanging limp, reads “Welcome to our happy home!” probably abandoned by the last owners.

A cloth closes over her gaping mouth. Her arms and legs suddenly dispel any energy. Muffled screams, and suddenly she is that little girl trapped in her basement, and that young woman about to inhale her first cigarette, cough it out, and try again. She does not cough it out, and the world goes black, and then blindingly white.

City lights.

—

Kelsi Graham is a writing student. She is inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski, and hopes to become successful in freelance short fiction.

The boy often tried to imagine what it looked like when the barrel was eating. He could see it from the window of his bedroom, could just see what he thought must be its black gaping hole of a mouth. Did a long, pink, sticky tongue come out and delicately lap food off the plate? Did some sort of hose protrude at mealtimes to suck the food off the porcelain surface of the plate, like a vacuum cleaner extension, or the way mouths of the tiny tank snails worked in the fish tank at the doctor’s office? He could only imagine the answer, because whenever it was time to feed the barrel, he was already seated quietly at the table, waiting for his own food to be served. He didn’t dare ask his father if he could come out and feed the barrel with him. He didn’t dare ask his father anything.

Sometimes, when the boy was outside playing, he’d think about the barrel. The barrel was in the back yard, and the boy was only allowed in the front. A giant wooden fence surrounded the back yard. The only way into it or out of it was through the back door of the house. The boy’s father was the only one with a key. “Stay out of the back yard,” he’d say to the boy, any time he saw the boy looking at the big, locked door.

Once, the boy woke up in the middle of the night to noises in the back yard. He got out of bed and went to the window. His father was in the back yard, kneeling beside the barrel. He was saying something, but he was speaking so quietly that the boy couldn’t understand the words. He thought he could hear noises coming back to the man from the barrel, sounds that sounded like crying. After a while, his father stood up. He patted the barrel awkwardly before marching briskly back to the house.

The boy would often spend the long, empty hours of the day wondering about the barrel. He drew pictures and wrote stories of the backs of scratch paper about going to the back yard and making friends with the barrel. He was too little to go to school, and had no other children to play with, so his imaginary friendship with the barrel became his only friendship.

One day, his father caught him drawing pictures of himself and the barrel playing together. In the picture, the little boy was pushing the old wooden barrel on the rusty swing in the front yard. The boy’s father’s face grew red and angry as he looked at the picture. The little boy shrank into his chair, confused and frightened. His father was often angry, and the little boy had learned early on to stay out of his way. He did not understand why the picture made his father so angry.

“Stay away from that barrel!” his father finally shouted, crumpling up the picture and throwing it in the garbage. “Don’t even think about the barrel!”

After that, the barrel was all the little boy could think about. He would lie awake in bed long after his father put him in his room for the night, waiting for the house to go quiet. As soon as he was sure his father had gone to sleep, the little boy would creep across the room to look out his tiny window at the old wooden barrel in the back yard. If he put his ear to the window, he was sure he could hear the barrel singing, or crying, or making wet, blubbery, nonsense noises to itself. Every once in a while, the barrel would suddenly jerk, just a little, as though trying to roll away.

During the day, the little boy tried his best to not think about the barrel. He tried to make up new imaginary friends to play with in the front yard, mostly other children like himself, sometimes fanciful talking animals. He’d give them all conspicuously manly names like “Tom,” and “Peter,” and “Randall,” as his father seemed especially pleased with him when his imaginary friends had boy names. When he drew pictures of his imaginary friends, he made them all little boys like him, although, not having seen many other children, he often drew them with purple skin and green or pink hair. His father would frown slightly at these pictures, but since he didn’t actually say anything, the boy went on drawing his imaginary friends in rainbow hues.

The night alone was dedicated to imaginings about the barrel. In his dreams, the barrel sprouted legs and arms and could run about the yard like a person, or on all fours like a dog. When it was on all fours, it sprouted a long, wet tongue like a dog, and panted, and drooled, and barked. When it was on two legs, it laughed, and shouted, and said nice things to the boy, like, “You’re my best friend,” or “Do you want to run away with me?”

The dreams were so alluring to the boy the he began to think of ways to make them come true. The little window in his room had been nailed shut long before, but he began to see how easy it would be to take the nails out. He carefully dug at the soft pine windowsill in his room with the tines of a fork, and slowly, over the course of many nights, the nails began to come out. He was so careful not to make any noise. He was careful not to scratch the glass. He was careful not to scratch the wood too much with the fork so that if his father happened to look at the window, he wouldn’t see splinters and scratches on the frame. Unless he counted the nails left in the window sill, he would never know what the boy had been doing.

When all the nails were finally out, the little boy scarcely dared to push the window upwards. When he finally did, the wood screeched so dreadfully his heart stopped. He carefully, quietly, pulled the window shut again and jumped into bed, waiting for the sound of his father’s footsteps. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the door to his room opened and his father’s silhouette filled the doorway. “Was that you?” the man asked, quietly. The boy kept silent, eyes tightly closed, unmoving in his bed. After a few seconds, the man turned away and shut the door behind him.

As soon as he was gone, the little boy quietly crept out of bed and went back to the window. This time, the pane slid up easily, silently. The window gaped open to the back yard. The barrel loomed in its corner of the yard, its dark mouth open in a frozen  scream.

The little boy squeezed out the window and tiptoed across the yard. He could see his father sitting at the kitchen table through the small window in the back door, an open beer bottle in one hand, his attention focused on the newspaper spread out on the table before him. The boy held his breath and ran as fast as he could to the barrel. Any minute, his father would turn around and see him. He would reach the barrel before his father turned around.

“Hello?” he whispered, dropping to his knees and peering inside the dark of the barrel. It was much larger up close than it had appeared from inside the kitchen, almost as big around as he was tall. He could see something moving inside, something way in back. He crept closer, until his head was almost inside the barrel. “Hello?”

Long, thin arms reached out and grabbed the boy. He squeaked and squirmed and tried to get away as the arms pulled him completely into the barrel. Pendulous breasts and long, matted hair brushed his skin. Thin arms pulled him close to a body that smelled horrible yet familiar.

“Shhh,” whispered a voice near his ear. “Shhh, baby. Shhh.”

“Let me go!” he managed to get out before a hand clapped over his mouth.

“Mine, mine, all mine,” the voice began to softly sing. The body rocked back and forth, clutching the boy tightly, rocking him, too. “Mine, mine, all mine.”

The little boy began to cry. He wanted out. He wanted back in his bed, the safety of his room. He wanted his father to come and get him, to rescue him from the stinky darkness of the barrel.

“Don’t cry, little one,” cooed the voice, still rocking, one hand still over his mouth. Finger combed through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead. “Don’t cry. Someone will feed us soon.”

The butcher knife in Franklin’s hand was dripping the blood of the dude he’d just stabbed to death. The first attack, a puncture wound in the throat with the tip of the blade exiting out through the back of the neck, had been enough to kill that motherfucker. He’d stabbed him about twenty more times in blind rage, picking the body up and tossing it all around the room, laughing at the blood splattering the walls as the corpse hit with a thud, bouncing off and falling in a heap on the floor.

He’d come to his senses after about five minutes of that shit, realizing that the Candy Man, a nickname he’d attached to this motherfucker, might have been roused by the ruckus. He had to be quiet. He wondered who the motherfucker was he killed. It didn’t really matter.

Before entering the small brick house and killing the man sitting on the couch eating a Doritos Loco Taco (he could tell by the smell), Franklin had taken his clothes off and neatly folded them, placing them on the front porch. He didn’t need to get them dirty before work.

Tracking down the Candy Man had been difficult. Not too many people took the time to smell the slice of Swiss cheese he carried on him.

They thought him a nut–

A lunatic–

A freak.

Franklin sighed as he made it out of the living room to the hallway, gliding down the hall like a phantom to the first door on the right. Gently he opened the door.

“CREEEAK” went the hinge.

Nothing but an empty bathroom with a turd floating in the toilet bowl.

He’d found a waitress in a Waffle House down the road willing to tell him about the man that reeked of Swiss cheese. She didn’t even need to smell the cheese slice. Franklin had asked her if she’d smelled anyone like this before, pulling out the Swiss, and she’d nodded her head.

“How can I forget someone that smells like that?” she’d said. “The name on his debit card is Freddy Jones, and he’s a creep. He creeps me out.”

Franklin nodded his head, finished his waffle and thanked her with a two dollar tip. He walked outside, thumbed through a phone book hanging from a phone booth and spotted a Freddy Jones who lived less than half a mile down the road.

Franklin crept down the hallway to the next door and gently pushed it open with his swollen foot, glancing around the empty bedroom. He saw a Taco Bell bag on the bed and figured this was where the dead man slept. The room smelled of nacho cheese and Vaseline.

That left only one more place. He crept to the end of the hallway and gently turned the doorknob. His eye peered into the crack.

He could see the Candy Man on the bed, eating his Candy.

Franklin stepped inside.

“What THE FUCK YOU DOIN, MOTHERFUCKER!” Franklin screeched.

The Candy Man looked up from between Candy’s legs. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, his lips glistening.

“Franklin!” Candy screamed, sitting up, covering her beautiful breasts (BBs) with an arm.

“I been tracking down the man who been eating my Candy!” Franklin roared, raising the knife. “You bout to die!”

“Look, pal,” the Candy Man said, “it’s a free country. Maybe if you ate Candy more often, she wouldn’t come to me.”

Franklin reared back the knife and charged.

—

Jimmy M.F. Pudge was born and abandoned in the state of Georgia. He’s a lover and a business man of life. If any fine ass women looking for a big teddy bear, hit Jimmy James up at jimmypudge@gmail.com.

Jimmy published some crazy ass books on Amazon, including “Bad Billy,” “Ice Cream Man,” and “Yo A$$ is GRA$$: Tales From a Rednek Gangsta.” He got some good reviews and some bad reviews, but it all good.

But she span through the air, her fly legs swaying, dancing through the atmosphere. Not all were having a bad time. She’d found her way into that kitchen through an open door and had been having a great time ever since. It had been a productive day, so far – she’d gotten there early enough to pace the chopping board a couple of times, before regurgitating on a block of cheese that had been left on the side.

She then flew and landed on a plant, with a certain magnetism to her landing. Maybe it had been the excitement of everything else, but there had seemed something so appealing about the plant. It was something short lived and like some femme fatale, it had seemed unthreatening, even inviting. The sides closed in, like jaws, everything tightening… Fading light… Ingestion…

Above, the hands on the clock on the wall continued to tick. It had been a while since Patricia had consumed a fly. As the latest pride to enter that house, Patricia stood tall on the windowsill – the city behind like some open cesspool. People sounded their horns at one another, sirens went off in the distance, as a plane drifted through the sky above. There would be more to come, Patricia would be waiting. It was only nature after all.

—

Gwil is a writer of short stories, essays and a novel titled Captains of Sinking Ships. His work has appeared in Mungbeing, Horror Sleaze Trash, Fiction 365, Blue Tattoo Magazine, and More Noize: The Worst Fanzine in The World. He currently lives in Brighton, England and is working on a second novel. Any questions, hate mail, etcetera can be emailed to measureofdesperation@gmail.com

One day during the height of the tourist season a strange thing happened. A young child was about to make its maiden complaint in the local city hall for the tourists. The complaints have been coming thick and fast and some quite emotional. Public complaining is an intense affair at times and even sombre tourists find it hard going. The mayor thought the audience needed some light relief. The debutant child was therefore coached to complain about the water being too wet to drink. It’s not an uncommon complaint in the town, but this was going to be the first public witnessing of it. However, it wasn’t the real issue. The real issue is the heavy fluoridation of the water, and a child was needed to highlight the problem in a simple way. The parents, at the prompting of the mayor, who rarely smiled because of his chalky teeth, felt they couldn’t directly complain about the fluoride; instead one could rightly ask how wet is too wet. This is the gentle path to reform. There was a risk, however, that the audience might find this complaint over the top and in a way mocking the whole seriousness of complaining.
The child got up and forthrightly walked to the lowered microphone, took a deep breath and said a funny thing. “I don’t like eating grass”. There was a stony silence. The smiling mayor left his chair and came over to the child, said a few words in the child’s ear and went back. “I don’t like eating grass” the child said again. This time the child’s parents got up from their chairs and ushered him from the stage and out a side entrance. Meanwhile the mayor was at the microphone and began to speak. However he couldn’t be heard amid the sudden uproar of shouting and laughter amongst the audience. It was a scandal. The tourists left Grovel amidst words of disgust and derision. What is it with this place that a child would be eating grass? This is outrageous. This is tantamount to child abuse. Who else ate grass? A murmuring fear took hold in the community. There would be serious economic and social consequences once the world knew what is happening here.

A public enquiry began, headed by a panel of independent commissioners from a neutral town called Ewes. The debutant child was the first witness and he stuck with his complaint of not liking eating grass. The parents were called in. Yes it’s true. They themselves eat grass. And gradually the local people came forward and said they eat grass too. As the enquiry continued it was found that those who complained were also grass eaters. In comers said they have never eaten grass and couldn’t understand it. As a result of this enquiry a new administration was appointed, with a mandate to rid the town of its image and to start afresh, and to find the reasons for all this grass eating and put a stop to the practice.

It appears a strange tradition had been exposed. At midnight when the full moon is its brightest in a clear sky, and when the frogs sing of this enchantment, the locals eat grass in a paddock on the outskirts of town, hidden by trees and protected by hawthorn bushes. They are all completely naked. Children under five are exempt, and are looked after by their grandparents who are also exempt. This has been a tradition since the founding of the town of Grovel. The first settlers discovered the local conditions were intolerable. The beauty of the place belied hostility and stark isolation. With the right and might of God on their side the settlers decided to stick it out, even if it meant eating grass to survive, which they eventually did. It was done stark naked to establish equality, and to create community bonding. They survived and a tradition was born, and it’s been kept ever since. Over time some local people began to complain. By this time the tradition became law. The complaints continued but the law remained firm. Like the law enabling free speech, eating grass was a fundamental ritual before God. In frustration the local people began to complain about other things like the climate and the tyranny of distance. And the sky was too blue and the rain too wet. When the complaints went from being a private town affair to a national one, the media got hold of it. And when Grovel began to appear in travel guides the international legend of Grovel, the little complaining town down under, had been born.

—
B F Moloney lives in Tasmania Australia where he manages a second hand bookshop. Born into the mad and imaginative world of Catholicism, he’s long escaped it with his imagination suitably perverted by the experience. Loony Tunes and David Lynch have helped him see an absurder light, and he hopes to write a little more.

Dougie’s parents had a hell of a time finding the poor bastard any school clothes. Most of your typical Toughskins/Garanimals gear came in standard children’s sizes, which didn’t work out for him; a 6X with a chest size of 25 1/2 inches didn’t fit a large crustacean shell that measured two yards around. His mom, a tragic Hell’s Angels widow with a chronic gambling addiction, shoplifted Dickies work clothes at the Farm and Fleet and kit-bashed in pieces of army-surplus tents and wool blankets to construct something that resembled a costume from a low-budget Italian goblin monster movie. Our classmates in grade school would beat him accordingly, throwing sticks of butter at the alleged lobster boy while wearing plastic restaurant bibs from Captain Jack’s, the local seafood restaurant.

I had my own social problems as a child, stemming from my mom’s insistence that I was allergic to gluten, lactose, latex, and crayon wax. I spent the first three years of school quarantined in the library, cutting chunks out of old illustrated Leo Tolstoy comic books, pasting together a Spiderman versus Ivan Ilyich fanzine, where Peter Ivanovich was really the Green Goblin, and New York bore a strange similarity to a late 19^th-century St. Petersburg. This was long before Marvel started their new business model of selling out en masse to Hollywood, when any idiot could make a couple of bucks writing a hack a script based on an obscure Marvel comic. (Seriously, who was really going to see that Peter Porker movie last summer?) Fortunately, grade schools hadn’t switched to the non-toxic variety of rubber cement, so my little scrapbooking project got me crazy high on the fumes.

In high school, I transferred all of my antagonism on to the Berger kid, spending fourth-hour social studies class in my freshman year trying to damage the shell around his neckline by smacking it with a nutcracker set I stole from home. Our Jesus freak vice-principal thought that all edible legumes and seeds were Satanic and/or Communistic and regularly swept everyone’s lockers with special kernel-sniffing dogs. He seized my shell-splitting tools and Butthole Surfers albums, and forced me to spend six Saturdays with a bunch of truants, stoners, and metalheads, digging slit latrines for his illegal backwater Jesus camp just outside of town.

(Legume originates from the Latin word legumen, which comes from the verb legere, which means “to gather,” and a gathering is synonymous with a salon, a collection of people meeting for intellectual enlightenment, which in the eyes of vice-principal Shitbag surely meant some kind of Socialist or anti-church fifth-column subversive activity.)

I forgot about crab boy completely, until twenty years later. My medical tech writing career fell apart (I got fired for accidentally sending pictures of my penis to a Cooking Lite email distribution list — who the hell sets their mailing list to “reply to everyone” in the 21^st century anyway?) I couldn’t make it selling fiction about sex with vomit anymore, and wrote crap news articles for this pay-per-word SEO content mill. My article trawling led me to start researching the Navy’s trained arthropod/human hybrid squads used to defuse smart mines off the Iranian coast. (There are more mutants around than you’d think, mostly from that depleted uranium cock ring fad in the mid-90s.) Turns out Berger was in charge of some Krill Underwater Demolition Team, so I filled out the paperwork on the DoD web site to request an interview, expecting the usual form letter saying they wouldn’t help someone who graduated from an abortion technician vocational school.

After sending the request, I went for a two-hour lunch at the cattle mutilation-themed restaurant on the edge of town, a place where waiters dressed up as grey aliens and carved sides of beef with industrial lasers. The food’s not much better than Sizzler, but sometimes during the week, a chick with three tits like the one in Total Recall works there, and she tends to bend over a lot. It’s a good place to avoid work, enjoy a ten-drink lunch, and reflect on why your life has fallen apart. Given the state of the world, they do swift business these days during the lunch shift.

When I returned to the office, I got a call from Berger. “I’ll talk,” he said, “if you can tell me what really happened to my Six Million Dollar Man action figure back in the second grade.”

“Shit man, you still obsessed with that doll? I wasn’t there, but I heard Shawn Hill stole it out of your locker and smashed it with a sledgehammer.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “What happened to that glue-sniffing little fuck?”

“His dad was a DEA informant. Some paroled meth addicts found out, blew up his house in junior high,” I said. “Look Doug, I’m trying to write this article about the K-UDT teams. Can you tell me anything about Iran?”

“They eat yogurt with every meal,” he said. “I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t exactly tell reporters we’re sneaking nukes onto foreign soil with giant krill soldiers, and I’m pretty pissed about this bionic man thing. It had the karate chop arm and everything. Look, can I call you back?”

“Sure, whatever.” I hung up. “Douche.”

GIANT SHRIMP ARMS TRAFFICKING? I typed, the headline for my piece. I don’t give a fuck if I start a world war, I thought. I’m getting paid by the word here.

—
Jon Konrath writes absurdist/bizarro fiction and runs Paragraph Line. This is an excerpt from his latest book, Sleep Has No Master. He is obsessed with time travel, Star Wars pornography, and medical press releases. Go to rumored.com to find out more.

WARNING! Women should not consume a Vitroworm before the Second Trimester. If a Vitroworm is ingested before this period, Link your Physician immediately.

• Individuals consuming a Vitroworm without a Physician-approved prescription will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, as per the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract.
• Your Vitroworm must be consumed within twenty-four (24) hours of purchase. Do not consume your Vitroworm if more than twenty-four (24) hours have passed. Link your Physician for further details.
• Never consume a Vitroworm except for the reasons prescribed. Consumption of a Vitroworm in an uncontrolled recreational situation may result in a Vitroworm infestation, and is punishable to the fullest extent of the law, as per the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract.

STEP 1

• Remove the softgel Vitroworm capsule from its insulated packaging.
• Swallow with warm water.

STEP 2

• Eat only your Physician-prescribed diet for the next seventy-two (72) hours. Any food or beverage not prescribed by your Physician may affect the performance of your Vitroworm.
• Your Vitroworm Solution must be consumed with every meal, as scheduled by your Physician.
• Avoid strenuous activity for seventy-two (72) hours.

STEP 3

• After twelve (12) hours, the Vitroworm will have made its way into Subject’s bloodstream. Subject will begin to feel a warming sensation in the abdominal region.
• If you do not feel a warming sensation after twelve (12) hours, Link your Physician.

STEP 4

• After twenty-four (24) hours, the Vitroworm will have made its way into your womb. The warming sensation will dissipate, followed by a period of numbness.
• If the burning sensation does not dissipate, Link your Physician.

STEP 5

• After forty-eight (48) hours, Link your Physician and update him/her on your progress.
• After forty-eight (48) hours, consumption of Vitroworm Solution is unnecessary, unless otherwise instructed by your Physician.

WARNING! Beyond this point, it is possible for Subject to feel suggestions of doubt, nausea, or depression. Use a Feed Unit to Link your Physician if ANY of these symptoms occur. If Subject is experiencing depression, it is permissible to Link your Psychiatrist.

STEP 6

• After sixty (60) hours, the Vitroworm has entered the fetus’s bloodstream. Subject may feel minor physical discomfort. Do not consume any pain inhibitors, as they will interfere with the Vitroworm’s metabolism.
• Link your Physician. Unless instructed otherwise, proceed to your Lavatory. No food or beverage is to be consumed for the duration of the Birthing procedure.
• Subject is to straddle the Commode with legs splayed. Set up your Birthing Receiver Unit given to you by your Physician. Failure to properly set up your Birthing Receiver Unit may result in accidental spilling that neither your Physician nor UHealth MultiCorp is responsible for.
• Severe pain may be experienced shortly before ejaculation of the Vitroworm and undigested fetal material. Do not consume any pain inhibitors.
• Ejaculation may take as long as thirty (30) minutes. Wait at least forty-five (45) minutes after initial ejaculation before removing yourself from the Commode. Failure to wait at least forty-five (45) minutes may result in accidental spilling that neither your Physician nor UHealth MultiCorp is responsible for.

STEP 7

• Flush Vitroworm and fetal material. Repeated flushings may be required.
• Thoroughly cleanse your Commode and Birthing Receiver Unit with the Disinfectant provided to you by your Physician. If accidental spilling has occurred, thoroughly sanitize all surfaces of your Lavatory.

STEP 8

• Once cleanup has been completed, Link your Physician. Follow the relaxation and dieting instructions given to you.
• Do not consume any non-Physician prescribed food or drink before seventy-two (72) hours after original consumption of the Vitroworm.
• Wait at least six (6) months before consuming another Vitroworm.

YOUR VITROWORM AND YOU!
A FRIENDLY GUIDE TO VITROWORM CONSUMPTION

For beginners, Vitroworm consumption can be a frightening process. What exactly does my Vitroworm do? What can I expect while my Vitroworm is inside of me? Are there any lasting side effects? We at UHealth MultiCorp have created this pamphlet to answer your important questions, and to help bring you the fullest enjoyment possible from your Vitroworm experience!

Q: Is my Vitroworm dangerous to my overall health?

A: As long as the guidelines and safety regulations established in the Vitroworm Consumer Instructions are followed fully and accurately, potential danger to the Subject is kept to a minimum. All guidelines and regulations have been approved by the Philadelphia Physician Institute. (UHealth MultiCorp is bound by the restrictions and regulations of the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract.)

Q: How much pain will I experience after consuming my Vitroworm?

A: Unfortunately, the Vitroworm consumption process may result in unintentional discomfort. UHealth Multicorp has closely consulted with the Philadelphia Physician Institute to ensure that the process is as painless as possible. Your Physician may provide additional UHealth-approved instructions to ease possible discomfort.

Q: What will happen if I do not rigidly follow the Vitroworm Consumer Instructions conveniently supplied to me?

A: Failure to comply explicitly with the Vitroworm Consumer Instructions is not only illegal, and punishable under the guidelines established in the Philadelphia Prenatal Contract, but can also result in unintentional side-effects, such as: incomplete digestion of the fetal material, or the total failure thereof; internal bleeding; environmental contamination; fatigue; accidental spilling; and personal harm. (This list is not intended to be full or complete. Consult your Physician or nearest UHealth Multicorp representative if you have further questions.)

Q: Are there any lingering side effects from Vitroworm consumption?

A: In certain cases, Subjects have experienced the following side effects days, weeks, or months after Vitroworm consumption: pain of the abdominal or inguinal regions; fatigue; depression; thoughts of suicide; restlessness; and insomnia. (This list is not intended to be full or complete. Should any side effects occur, consult your Physician or Psychiatrist immediately.)

Q: Where can I go if I have further questions concerning my Vitroworm experience?

A: If you have questions at any stage in the process, you can simply Link your Physician. All Physicians are UHealth-certified, and are expertly trained to handle every situation that may arise.

Thank you for choosing UHealth Multicorp! We hope that your Vitroworm consumption experience will be everything that you have expected—and more!

—
Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. He is the Nonfiction Editor for The Prompt Literary Magazine. You can follow him at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com, or on Facebook.

Fig 1: 5-A and 5-B

Deep in the Horseshoe Nebula, there were two more or less livable planets circling a Class G star called Rednod 5. These planets were typically referred to as Rednod 5-A and Rednod 5-B. 5-A was a desert planet with only one sizeable ocean. 5-B’s surface rippled with the glinting waves of its enormous, planetary sea. Even from seventy thousand light years away, it was easy to tell them apart.

Fig 2: A Klunod girl

In the course of its three billion year existence, 5-A had developed some relatively intelligent life, the Klunods. The Klunods weren’t particularly competent—they hadn’t attempted space flight and their experiments with nuclear energy all ended catastrophically—but on the other hand they were a relatively peaceful race. When they fought, it was usually just over females and their wars tended to be over within a couple of weeks. Once peace returned, the Klunods re-committed themselves to the drudgery of work in the day and composing free verse poetry at night. Some of the poems were actually quite good, if a bit florid.

Life on 5-B was quite different. The Blovats, who were amphibious, lived on the one relatively small continent in the middle of the planet’s global ocean. This island teemed with all sorts of life—Furmers, Buglemouthed Gits, Giant Poisonous Shrims, and so on. But even among all the vernal weirdness of the island, the Blovats stood out with their long blue tentacles, fishlike heads and monumental egos.

Fig 3: Blovat street performer

The Blovats were a precocious species. They’d brought everything worth ruling on 5-B to heel in relatively short order. For example, they had zoos and kelp farms and computers and derivative markets and an extensive cosmetics industry. Their favorite form of performance art involved polychromatic skin displays, where Blovat artists manipulated their natural camouflaging mechanisms to spectacular, almost pyrotechnic effect. In some of the larger cities, there was a skin performer on virtually every street corner.

Ultimately, the Blovats learned of the Klunods, and here is how it happened: Blovat scientists created a powerful telescope and aimed it toward their sister planet. Through this lens, the Blovats watched as the endless plains of 5-A rippled with windblown mossballs and stoic Klunod cowboys wrangled herds of triangular flooglits and Klunod businessmen commuted from their low-slung pyramidal houses in the suburbs to their low-slung pyramidal offices in the cities.

The Blovats thought the Klunods’ existence to be rustic and somewhat pointless. However, once they’d learned of the Klunods, the newly-discovered species became a sort of planet-wide obsession. Virtually every front page of virtually every waxy Blovat

Fig 4: The Daily Blovat

newspaper contained at least one story concerning the Klunods. The Blovats were especially fond of comparing Klunod society unfavorably with their own. Blovat articles often concerned subjects such as Klunod governmental dysfunction, Klunod wastefulness and profligacy and the Klunod practice of culling their litters with rubber mallets.

After a while, the Blovat polity became divided in two factions. The first group wanted to visit 5-A in the name of science. Another group, now bored with Klunods, adopted the slogan, “Really, I’m Just Not That Interested.” These two

Fig 95 Apathetic Blovat

Blovat factions and their elected representatives clashed for a while. Ultimately, they reached a compromise: Instead of building a dozen giant space ships capable of taking twenty Blovats to 5-A and bringing forty Klunods back to 5-B, the Blovats built a single robotic space pod, which they loaded with recorded messages concerning the origins of the cosmos and the virtues of free capital markets. They also threw in a few choice videos of their polychromatic skin displays. Then they launched it into space.

Fig 6: The Blovat ship reaches 5-A

Now, 5-A had no flying life aside from winged, tick-like parasites called orsurgrumblers. Consequently, in the cosmology of the Klunods, the sky was menacing and inhospitable. It held no gods. Instead, the Klunods believed that beyond the clouds there was an endless void filled with the wailing souls of the slothful. (They had a corresponding belief that Paradise was at the center of 5-A, where dutiful souls lived out an eternal, languorous retirement.) So, when the Blovats’ robotic spaceship burst through 5-A’s atmosphere in a ball of flames, the Klunods fell into a blind panic. Those closest to the landing site actually squirmed all over each other to get away, giving off a big blast of their defensive goo. The whole place became a slippery mess.

Fig 7: Misunderstood probe

Many of the Blovats pretended to be horrified by what they’d done. Maybe they hadn’t thought things through as thoroughly as they could have, they said. Perhaps they could have foreseen the Klunods’ unsophisticated reaction to the space ship. Perhaps, being the technologically superior species, they should have introduced the Klunods to the idea of alien life more gently, over time. But the truth was that, deep down, the Blovats found the sight of the Klunods oozing all over each other to be pretty amusing. They really couldn’t help but secretly laugh. Honestly, how could they blame themselves for frightening the Klunods with something as simple as a robot droid filled with a message of technological progress and enlightenment?

For their part, the Klunods might not have been the brightest species in the universe, but they were nothing if not resilient. So, a couple of days after the probe arrived, the Klunod leaders—a deliberative body called the Dunglebuss which met in a huge, transparent petri-dish-like building—made a plan. Or rather they made two plans. First, they ordered the construction of the largest magnifying glass in Klunod history, some thirty gnobinks across, in order to peer into the sky and see what else was out there. And second, they covertly sent a team of Klunod commandoes to sneak up on the Blovat droid and destroy it.

Fig 8: Klunod attack spatula

The Klunod special forces attacked the probe with their favorite weapon, which looked like a spatula but shot out a moderately powerful electrical jolt. These commandoes swarmed the droid, hacking off its tentacles with their spatulas until finally one of them accidentally whacked off the antenna, rendering the whole droid lifeless. Then a Klunod mob fell on the defenseless robot and tore it to scrap. All the bits and pieces were taken home as souvenirs.

Imagine the Blovats’ surprise when, looking through their giant telescopes, they saw their gift of cosmogonical knowledge and mercantilism ripped to shreds. They were flabbergasted. Appalled. More than ever, they considered the Klunods to be an inferior and, dare they say it, intellectually stunted species. So they spent roughly 1.5 Earth years talking this over and debating the best way to proceed.

Fig 9: Klunod view of 5-B

Meanwhile, when the Klunods had finished their primitive magnifier, they positioned it on a mountain top and gathered around it, looking into the sky. For the first time, they saw another planet there. Not just another planet, but a sister planet, orbiting the same star. At the equator, there was a single large, green island. It looked like a pupil in the middle of the blue-green eyeball staring back at them. And on that island they saw the fishlike Blovats with their rubbery appendages and environmentally friendly cities loaded with bicycle paths and wind farms. They were sickened by the sight of it.

Fig 10: Klunod fears

This provoked a time of great uncertainty in the Rednodian system. The Klunods became rather nihilistic. They were acutely aware of how far they trailed the Blovats, technologically speaking. It seemed to them that at any minute the evil fish from the enemy water-planet might attack and destroy 5-A, or conquer its populace, or kill off all the males and enslave the females for sex (this last possibility being the most common and widely-discussed speculation). So the Klunods poured all of their energy and national treasure into developing more powerful telescopes and interplanetary weapons.

But eventually 5-A and 5-B, which orbited Rednod 5 at different speeds, moved to opposite sides of the star. They remained in opposition for nearly .7 Earth years.

During this interlude, the Blovats once again argued about what they should do in response to “the 5-A problem”. One Blovat faction wanted to build a super weapon to sterilize 5-A down to the last atom, while the other wanted to send a second, less-threatening probe droid bearing a message of neutrality and separate-but-equalism. Then again, there was a tiny but vocal third party of Blovats who said, “Why do we even care about this? Those blobs of mucus don’t even have television.” This third party spent most of its time mocking the other two parties with performance art.

Fig 11: Klunod preparations

Neither were the Klunods idle. They applied all their inherent industry with single-minded dedication. By the time the two planets came back into view of one another, the Klunods had built something that looked like a giant, purple, cement volcano. It was more than 3,000 gnobinks tall with a large, round hole at the top. Clearly, it was some form of weapon. Blovat scientists estimated the Klunod cannon might be able to launch a projectile into space, perhaps something large enough to reach 5-B and destroy all life there.

Now it was the Blovats’ turn to collectively squirm and defecate on themselves. They began nervously watching the skies for signs the Klunods had fired their space cannon. At the same time, they rounded up several thousand of the most infamous Blovat political satirists and grilled them alive for their sedition. A military council was convened and it concluded that the Blovats really had no choice but to destroy the dangerous and unstable Klunods lock, stock and barrel. And it just so happened that they’d secretly developed a biological super-weapon just in case something like this happened.

The planets slowly drew closer and closer to one another. The optimal time for the Klunods to use their cannon—because of the confluence of their orbits and certain gravitational effects—was approaching. It might be in as little as a week. The Klunods seemed to be readying for this; they’d built a railway to the cannon and the cars that rode the rails disappeared fully-laden into one side of the mountain and emerged from the other side, empty.

Fig 12: Approaching space fungus

The same was true of the Blovats. If they meant to launch their bioweapon, the time was drawing near, though their superior technology gave them a bit more leeway. They could afford to wait, but not much.  They counted down the days.

Neither the Blovats nor the Klunods were even aware of the existence of Space Fungus. The fungus—which had previously knocked off entire galaxies—came into the Rednod system undetected. The granular spores traveled in clouds. To a distant observer, they looked like nothing more than flecks of interplanetary dust. Most simply floated in the vacuum of space for all eternity. But some few of them happened across the orbits of 5-A and 5-B, almost at the same time. When the fungal spores hit the planets’ respective atmospheres, they made a pleasant light show and then flitted down all over the planetary surfaces like snow. There, they infected every living thing on 5-A and 5-B—the furmers, the tods, the flooglits, the shrims—with Space Fungus of the Brain. Gradually, the fungus took over the bodies of the Klunods and the Blovats alike, using their grey matter for food and reproduction.

Fig 13: Dead Blovat w/ mushrooms

Because of the distance involved and the speed of light, the photons and EM waves containing the information about the apocalypse around Rednod 5 took almost 70,000 years to reach Earth. That is, the Klunods and the Blovats were already dead and had long been so when humans first learned of their existences. But the Hubble XCIII Deep Space Array got pretty good images of the final chaos on the planets and also caught the very last bit of the Blovats’ doomed broadcast news. So human scientists were able to observe 5-A and 5-B as the cloud of fungal spores approached, and then watch as all the Blovats and Klunods looked skyward, took in the light show, and then lay down on the ground, curling up in balls. They twitched spastically for awhile, then little white mushrooms grew out their ears and nostrils.

Fig 14: Earth and environs

However, it seemed pointless to the Earthlings to pine over something that had happened so long ago, so far away, especially since it did not involve quick weight loss, firmer erections or multi-level marketing. To them, it was almost as though the events around Rednod 5 had never really happened. They were just a fiction. And so the humans refocused their space instruments on other, more interesting planets, never once suspecting that they too were under distant observation.