Tippler’s Bane

by Evelyn Wang

Creatures of dusk, creatures of dank and dark and dregs of mealy meaty toxins, we sit here in the dust and the damp, in the many shadowy shadows that lurk like pockets. Creeping, slithering, longer and lengthier the shadows grow, into our kingdom of shit and mildew. Nighttime, yes, and we stumble, tumble, unmoving, into the moonlight. Moon, moon. Renders us ghostly little babies, and that we are, nothing but stupid putrid babies, only living, always dying unmentionable deaths, drowning constantly in our own little babies.

We grow, we grow, crop up, pop down, we, we, creatures of grandmamma-secrets and impish delights. A carpet of heads, unfurling to tasty death and hasty birth. Food between our toes and drink from the cracked pipes, bloody rusty nourishment and filthy sustenance, our constant diet, our home.

Girls Gone Insane

by John Jasper Owens

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.

On Being Mandy

by Sandra M. Odell

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. . .?”

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.’

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.