It came in the mail, a little package like Netflix uses, but white cardboard. Grass stain on the back along with a deep scratch, the address handwritten and smudged, like it had been handed off in the rain. No return address, postmarked Maine.
A DVD. No note, no explanation. A hand-written label read “Girls Gone Insane 16” in blocky felt-tip writing.
Mandy Adams noticed her face peeling off while coloring her hair Monday evening. She leaned over the sink for a closer look at the small flap of skin on the upper right corner of her forehead. She slipped off one of the plastic gloves and gingerly touched it with the tip of a finger; it was thicker than she expected, almost rubbery. Surprisingly, touching it didn’t hurt; in fact, there was no sensation at all.
Mandy carefully took hold of the errant skin between her thumb and index finger and gave a slight tug. It pulled away enough to reveal a hard off-white surface below the edge of her hairline, smooth and cool to the touch like plastic. No blood, no viscera; the revealed underside was the fresh pink of new skin. “What the hell. . .?”
Three Flash Fictions of Still-Lives, Voyeurism and Exhibitions
(a regular “Night Gallery”, if you will…)
“Hunting” is a PseudoPod original
“What Makes You Tick” was originally printed in War of the Worlds: Frontlines and the text can be found here: http://www.brainharvestmag.com/2010/04/what-makes-you-tick/
“Pageant Girls” was originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #42
By Kirsty Logan
There was only one inner door, so the hunter opened it. He held his candle at arm’s length, but still could see nothing more than the foot of an ocean-sized bed. The hunter crawled across its length, disregarding the brief waft of mold from the blankets. He placed the candlestick on the squat table beside the bed and pulled the covers up over his body. (Continue Reading…)
Man Eat Man
by Mike Irwin
The Dumpster Kid is already recounting the tally behind Uncle Sam to make sure that there’s no foul play. When they finish the first vote, he puffs out his chest and in a slightly deeper voice says, ‘Now all those against.’ Again the two go competitively counting heads.
‘Sixteen for.’ Sam says
‘Sixteen against.’ The Kid corrects.
Look at that Corinne: your glass is half full, or half empty that is.
‘So do I shoot her?’ Miller asks.
Uncle Sam shrugs and says, ‘It’s a tie.’ Then she turns to face me, my fat head a dark, inhuman red as I struggle to keep the door closed against the increasing intensity of your attacks. ‘Shoot, only one who didn’t vote was you.’
And just like that, the rest of your life is in my hands.
The Sound Of Gears
by Ferrett Steinmetz
Bit by bit, he took apart his wife’s murderer, hammering the cracked windshield behind his desk like a strange map, tacking the rubber hoses in snakelike trails around the room, carefully nailing every gear and fanblade to each of the four walls until he sat at his desk, surrounded by the guts of a dead car.
He took the key out of the ignition and kissed it, then hung it on a silver chain around his neck.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘I am ready to begin.’
We would be remiss if I didn’t provide a link to this
Top of the Heap
By Nathan Robinson
I open my eyes and the dead smile back with bare teeth. In the fresh, sparse daylight I can see the bodies beneath me. I want to reach out and touch their faces, close their beseeching eyes. I recognize a few of them. Some I don’t, either through decomposition or the fact that I didn’t dump them here. Marcone has a lot of guys and a lot of enemies, so a few strangers sit down here with me.
The thought of food rumbles my stomach, making it ache. I keep my eyes up, away from the bodies, I look up the throat of the shaft, towards daylight, towards hope.
The Horror Of Their Deeds To View
By Lizanne Herd
The door opens and we each press against the nearest wall. I lower my eyes. The police officer, the last one to be taken, had stood up and screamed at them, had taken a swipe at them, knocking one over. It hit the wall and made a sickening crunching noise, a crack in its shell, splat from several of its eyes smeared thick and brown as it slid to the floor. It took them only moments to turn on him. We all watched unblinking as new appendages, metallic and inscrutable, appeared from nowhere. They cut up the cop, perfect cubes of flesh, the blood filling the floor, the cracks, our clothing. The whole time they made those terrible clicking noises, swarming in on our faces and hands. Those cutting blades gliding over our flesh like a warning.
But not this time. They haven’t come for one of us. I’d thank God if I had a reason to believe in Him anymore. This is another drop. They make drops every few days. A pile of debris on the floor, garbage and scraps. And bodies.
Murdock The Nobody
By Kate Jonez.
‘Destiny is what you make it,’ Murdock’s eyes were unnaturally bright. ‘And luck is what’s left over. If you want something to happen, you’ve got to make it happen.’