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.

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.’

Terrible Lizard King

by Nathaniel Lee

That night, Patrick’s dreams were troubled, full of rumbling sounds like drums or distant guns. Patrick woke up several times in the darkness and lay frozen beneath his blanket, unwilling to peep out because he knew what would be at the window.

He could hear it breathing.

Lives

by John Grant

Twenty minutes later, a ring at the doorbell.

That’s them, announces Marian, a slight drawl in her voice. Anxiousness has shoehorned her swiftly into a state of minor inebriation.

But it’s not them, it’s a man and a woman in blue, with faces as long as empty roadways.

A drunk started driving his SUV on the wrong side of the freeway. Took out four cars, another SUV and a plumber’s van before swerving right off and hitting a tree. Seven dead including the drunk driver. Three of the dead – an adult and two children – in the burned-out wreck of a blue Neon registered to Richard G. Charters Jr. The cops called first at Dick’s and Marian’s home, and were sent here by a neighbor . . .

All three of us on the couch in tears, me in the middle with my arms around the shoulders of the two women, as the cops do their best not to transgress their professional code of non-involvement.

The bell goes again, and the lady cop murmurs to us that she’ll get it.