“Hide behind doors that creak and moan;
don’t be caught with your monster alone”

I’d really love to fuck you.

My head tilts a bit, unsure if I’d said that out loud or not. A few seconds pass, and the man sitting tensely in my recliner remains silent. Perhaps I didn’t say anything; perhaps he’s still reeling from the shock. He adjusts his little necktie and raises his eyebrows…

“Mrs. Fontaine?”

“Uh… yes? I mean, yes?”

“You trailed off for a minute. You were talking about systems, by the way.”

GORE GORE GORE CHEW CHEW CHEW

“Oh, yes! Systems! Thank God! Uh… I mean… people tend have their own little personal systems. Little things. Like how you’d chew your food, or how ah… I don’t know. Some people spread their peanut butter left to right, or up and down. I spread mine diagonally, every time. That reminds me – I’m dying of hunger here. You want, like… you want a BLT or something? I could really go for a BLT right now, you know? All that crunch and flavor and awesomeness, fucking yummy. I like to chew stuff like a cow chews grass. Except, you know… not as long. Cows chew for a long time, y’know. Like, absurdly long. But I do like to chew things for a decently long time. Probably more than most people. More than human beings with normal chew cycles, anyway. Hey, you want a BLT?”

“I’m pretty full,” says… shit, I forgot his name. Maybe it starts with a V, but I really dunno. I’d still really love to fuck him.

“That’s good,” I mutter, nibbling on the quick of my thumbnail. “I mean, that’s not good. I mean… um… I just meant that I don’t have any bacon in the fridge, and that… uh, nevermind. What was I talking about?”

“Systems,” he says. He’s such a hack. He’s incredibly cute, but he’s such a fucking hack. Look at him, scribbling his notes. He’s probably doodling or something. I wish I could see that notepad; maybe he’s drawing a silly caricature of me, spewing all my problems into his face. I start to wonder what I must look like in his eyes – those rich, dreamy, hazelnut jewels… wait, what was I talking about?

“What was I talking about?”

He raises his eyebrow. Hack. “You were talking about the little systems people make for themselves.”

“Oh yeah! People have systems, to like… help them through their lives. You can’t survive without some sort of system in place. You’d go insane, right? So I chew my food slowly and I apply my peanut butter diagonally and I gnaw my thumb like a madwoman because, well… those are my little systems. That’s how I’m programmed, I guess.”

I’m starting to taste blood, but I don’t dare stop chewing. Gotta keep chewing right down to the bone. Go, go, GOGOGOCHEW

“Mrs. Fontaine,” the V man says, “I’m sure that—”

“It’s Miss. Please call me Miss Fontaine. Good Lord, I don’t look that old, do I? Actually, don’t call me Miss Fontaine either. Call me uh… call me Sarah. Because that’s my first name. But I’m pretty sure you already knew that. Sarah, yeah.”

“…Yes, well Miss Fontaine, I’m sure that your systems and your methods are…”

Well, maybe I was wrong. His cuteness level might be higher than his hackness level, but nobody can ever be sure with these things. Oily black hair hanging low over a pair of auburn stunners, peering at me past his stylishly thick-rimmed glasses, oh God! I wonder if he can see me fidgeting. Yeah, he’s very stylish, but in a progressive pornstar kinda way. Yeah. I’d hit that, I guess. But the notebook… augh, his little red notebook full of doodles kills any attractiveness he would have had. Fuck that notebook.

“…do you understand what I’m trying to say, Miss Fontaine?”

“Totally. Uh, yeah. I mean yeah.”

“Have you been taking your Adderall?”

“Yeah, of course. All the time. It’s been helping at work and… y’know, stuff,” I lie, pausing a second before attacking my thumb again. Bleed. Bleed. Bleed. Sweet nectar. That medication doesn’t even work. Hack. Nothing works. Nothing’s ever gonna work. You people have been prodding me entire life, and none of it ever works. I can’t believe I still pay for this. Gotta remind myself to stop paying one of these days. KEEP FUCKING CHEWING

“Miss Fontaine?”

“Sarah!” I screech at him, my thumb still lodged between my teeth. A thin trickle of blood makes its way down my chin. “Uh… call me Sarah. What’s your name again?”

“Doctor—”

“Nuh no, your first name.”

“Virgil. Er, Sarah… I think we should probably wrap it up, eh? It’s been about an hour, and I think I’ve gotten all the info I need.”

“Yeah, good idea. I mean—”

“I know what you meant,” he sighs, flipping the notebook closed and hopping to his feet. He doesn’t even bother to look at me as he makes his way to the door. “I’ll see you next Tuesday, Sarah.”

“Bye Vir…gil,” I mumble, trailing off as the door slams shut behind him. Hack.

Snowflakes.

By Alex Moore

BLT. I really want a BLT for some reason, yet I can’t quite remember why. I meander over to the fridge, scour it for a minute, realize I don’t have any bacon and immediately rush to put my shoes and my hoodie on. I’ll be damned if some silly bacon will ruin my night – let’s do this.

Hot night. On my way to the bus stop, I start to struggle with the zipper of my hoodie… ah, damn it. C’mon you stubborn little thing, cooperate with me just this once… augh. Forget it. Wait, no – don’t forget it. Defeat it. I take a deep breath and tug the shit out of the plastic zipper until it shatters and disappears into the depths of the shadowy tarmac. Exhale. Mission uh… accomplished. I guess.

I take off the stupid jacket, take a few steps towards the bus stop and immediately realize that I was more comfortable with it on.

“Zippers,” I growl to myself, my mangled thumb slowly making its way into my mouth. “Zippers can uh… zippers can suck it, man. Shi-it. Whoever invented zippers should be dragged out into the street and shot. Uh, twice. Yeah. Zippers, man.”

I re-don the jacket and drape the hood over my eyes, pushing a tuft of frizzy blonde hair out of my face. Need to straighten it, but the thought of using my ancient straightening iron is almost unbearable. It was a gift from my grandmother – well actually, nevermind. That’s a lie. I stole the old thing out of a shoebox in her attic a few years ago. Fun little expedition with the high school boyfriend, but I don’t quite remember his name. Probably started with an L or something. We’d gone exploring up there, messed around a bit, stole some valuables. Stupid iron doesn’t even work too well. It’s a cool antique, though. Maybe I should get it appraised one of these days.

Uh… what was I doing?

I stand at the bus stop for about five minutes before I remember that I’d been waiting for the bus. The Nite Owl lumbers around the corner and comes to a stop right in front of me, heaving and hissing like an overweight dragon. Oh, augh! My thumb gushes as I nibble the flesh away. Need to remember to buy Band-Aids. Need to write it down somewhere.

I hop on, trying to remember where I’m going. No luck. “Hi, uh… Thomas?”

“Terrence,” the bus driver says, smiling. “Heh, sometimes I wonder if you’re faking it, Sarah.”

I stare at him for a second, then meander to the back of the desolate dragon and take a seat. “Yeah, me too.”

I ride around for an hour before Terrence drops me off at my apartment and thanks me for the company.

“Sometimes I really want to shove my head in his thing,” says Olivia – the only person whose name I can always remember. She pushes a bit of auburn hair out of her eyes and smacks the broken smoothie machine. “Piece of shit. I hate this job.”

“Well, uh… nobody likes food service, y’know? You’re always serving people and um, dealing with douchebags and stuff. It’s infuriating,” I say as I hand a customer his poorly-blended cherry limeade swirl. “Thanks for choosing Slurp-A-Lot, have a nice day.”

“Yeah. Sure. Stuttering cunt,” he mutters, snatching his drink and walking off.

“I don’t stutter, do I?” I ask Olivia as soon as he’s out of earshot.

“You should have spit in his smoothie.”

“I did – a loogie the size of um… well, a big one. Like, ocean sized,” I say, taking a seat on the faded pink counter. “But I don’t uh… I don’t… what was I saying?”

“You don’t stutter sweetie,” says Olivia, laughing and tugging at my frizzy hair. “I mean, sometimes it’s pretty hard to comprehend what you’re trying to say, but you don’t stutter. You’re not that messed up, goldfish girl.”

We’re both quiet for a while, staring at the various mall shoppers as they go about their day. Wet clothes, pink faces. I realize that outside, the November snow is just starting to fall. A cringe makes its way onto my face as I realize I could be out there enjoying the desolate weather right now. Sometimes I don’t even know why I’m here. “Why do we work in this pit, Olivia?”

The twenty-something girl fiddles with her ponytail for a moment. “Because college is expensive and time-consuming, goldfish.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say, leaving it at that. “Hey, um… can you take over for a second? Well, I don’t mean ‘take over’ like Hitler or anything, just, y’know. I haven’t had a cigarette in four hours, and a break would be nice. I mean it’d be great. Can you just do me that favor? Don’t tell Amanda, please!”

“Chill, goldie! I’ll cover for you – go enjoy yourself. Not like we’ve got any fucking customers anyway. Ugh, I hate this place—”

“Thanks Liv,” I tell her as I toss my pink ‘Slurp-A-Lot’ hat under the counter, slip on my hoodie and push past throngs of sniffling shoppers before bursting outside into the snow. Olivia doesn’t suspect anything. I just need a cigarette GNAW ON YOUR OWN FLESH that’s all. Just a harmless cigarette, and I’m back at work.

It’s a euphoric wonderland of fresh ice and cold smoke out here – the vaguely industrial grit of the small town fuses with the natural beauty of the falling snow, and it’s beautiful in a depressing way. Greyish-black snowdrifts and an overreaching, austere sky. Icy air slams against my face and reddens my cheeks, but I don’t mind – it’s gorgeous out. Fluttering crystals everywhere. Ice on the roads and the sidewalks and whoawhatthefuck—

crack

It’s dark for a while – whether it’s minutes or months or years, I’m not so sure. For some reason, I’m able to concentrate incredibly well. Focus on the darkness. Become the darkness. No shapes, no colors… just slow and pessimistic gloom.

And my thoughts.

Scream for the kingdom of Sarah Fontaine, nibble your flesh away, become a figment of your own imagination. Never, never stop chewing. You are your mind’s sustenance. You are a Goddess among your nightmares. Never, never stop chewing. Never, never wake up.

The pitch-blackness solidifies into terrible crawling beasts, all slithering tendrils and lethal fangs. They surround me and prod at me, trying their best to get me to take a dose of bullshit medication. Blackened pills raining from the endless sky. Vile little snowflakes. The creatures begin to nibble at one another, at themselves, and I can feel every tooth as if their flesh were my own. Undying, effortless gloom—

“Miss?”

I scream myself awake, slapping at my arms, wishing the nightmares would go away. “Stop biting me, stop biting me!”

“Miss,” says the voice again. “You alright? You cracked your head against the pavement something fierce. Hey, don’t get up now. The paramedics are gonna be here soon—”

I can’t quite see his face, and that bothers me – it’s all just a shifting mass of misty blurs and gory uncertainties. Odd voice, really. It’s amazing how strange a voice might sound when it’s disembodied, like a garbled drive-thru operator or a grim reaper’s conscience. Eerie. Spooky. Undeniably inhuman. I wonder if this is death – am I dying? Is this my final few moments of consciousness before the toothy darkness swallows me up for all eternity?

I find myself begging for reincarnation, although I’ve never actually believed in it before now. Funny how dire circumstances will turn even the most dedicated skeptics into sniveling worms, eh? Disturbing funny. Not ‘ha ha’ funny.

“Just lay there, Miss. Wait for the paramedi—”

THEY’LL FIND OUT WHAT YOU’RE UP TO

“No!” I start screaming, trying to pull myself away from the sticky blackness. “Those Goddamn things aren’t gonna get me! I won’t let them pull me down there – I won’t let them drag me down there getthefuckoffofme—”

It rapidly dawns on me that I have to go. Right now. Far, far away from this place. My conscious being shifting back and forth between icy roads and dripping shadows, I shakily push myself to my feet and look around. Everything’s purplish-grey, and those creatures still won’t disappear. They’re not even really there, is the worst part.

Alright, gotta pay attention. Gotta go, gotta go. Slick, icy sidewalks. Lanky, skeletal demon twitching around like a glitch in the machine, just miles upon miles of tangled evil, tightly wound into a being of unsure blackness. It wants to tear me to pieces, but I’ll be out of this if I can just pay attention, if I can just focus. I wonder if any great artists had problems like this. Did Einstein ever have to pull himself away from his dreamscapes in order to create the atomic bomb? Wait, did Einstein even create the atomic bomb? Shit, maybe it was Edison or Hitler or something—

I scream bloody murder as unbearable pain shoots through my body; I look down at my abdomen and see a spiny black tentacle staring back up at me, poking through my pink Slurp-A-Lot shirt.

The blood they show in the movies is nowhere near realistic. It’s usually too red, too goopy. Neither the right consistency nor the right texture, but – and I really can’t stress this enough – it’s wayyy too red. Fire-engine red. Cherry chapstick red. The shit gushing from my stomach right now, splattering all over the icy pavement and scaring the ever-livin’ out of me is black, delicate, smooth and oh-so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything so majestic – the Rorschach pattern it makes as it gently twists through the air; the slow and meandering virus it imitates as it soaks my shirt and jeans with its essence; the twitchy road map it becomes as it dots and streaks the ground below. Oh… blood. How poorly I’ve known you.

Right out of a horror flick, the creature grins at me, showcasing its award-winning incisors, its nightmare-slathered fangs. Little bastard. As suddenly as the pain began, it dissipates. Mister Darkness slides its barbed appendage out of my gut, takes a few steps backwards and watches me bleed out. Terrible pain, poetic delivery. I collapse as the life begins to pour from my body. Purple, ice-slick roads fade in and out of sticky redness; blurry, concerned faces trying their hardest to see what’s wrong with me. They don’t see. They can’t. No matter how far I shove my blood-smeared fingers down their throats, no matter how many hundreds of gallons of red-black gore pools around my twitching body, they’ll never know. Strangers to my cause.

“…she’s fading, I don’t think she’s really conscious—Goldfish? Goldfish! Are you alright, sweetie?”

Fade in, fade out. Darkness, ice. Focus on the light. Go towards the light. I can’t even see Olivia’s face, it’s so bright out.

“Hang on and wait for the paramedics, alright Goldie?”

SHE’LL KNOW SHE’LL KNOW

“Nuh uh,” I mumble, pressing my hand against the gaping hole in my belly, forcing myself onto my wobbly legs. Don’t fall. “Nuh, I’m fine. Duncallanybody. I’m ‘kay, superfine. Imean I’mfine, ‘kay? Lemme smoke my damn cig.”

Don’t fall to pieces – just wave it away. Stop the bleeding and you’ll be right as rain. Or… whatever. Never really understood that saying. My Aunt Millie used to say things like that, and I was never able to comprehend any of her little similes. Right as rain. Cool as a cucumber. Fuck similes.

What was I doing – ah! Keep standing, stop bleeding. Get the hell out of here before the paramedics come and take you away. I can hear myself rambling about cigarettes to Olivia, feel my bloody fingers fumbling with an old pack of them. Where’s my lighter? Ask Olivia for a light.

“PLEASE BURN ME,” I scream at her, drenched in blood and darkness, desperately grasping at her pink and white Slurp-A-Lot polo. That sneaky little demon is giggling in the distance. Bastard.

“Sarah, what the hell is wrong with—”

I like Olivia, but this has to end soon. I have to do what I came out here to do, and she’s standing right in my way. Time to bleed for me, Liv.

I buckle down and start to gnaw on my poor thumb, nibbling more flesh away than I ever have before. Irony, meaty gore fills my mouth. Bliss. Power. Control. I strip away the flesh and the brittle nail, the tendons and the muscle, savoring every bit, every depraved moment. My teeth screech against the bony remnants. Bleed for me, Liv.

With the slightest of nods, I’m able to let the demon know what I want done. A slow and vile grin, and its off to work.

The screams that eek from Olivia’s mouth are almost immediately accented by the goriest noises I’ve ever yet heard. Redness becomes her very being, it’s so prevalent. The darkness digs its instruments of death into her, and redness envelops her soul. Her eyes gush red, her flesh becomes like a devil’s. Teeth like tiny red peppers, muscles bursting at the seams with scarlet.

“Goldfish!” She gurgles.

NOTHING CAN SAVE HER NOW

“Goldfish!”

“Huh?” The gore disappears. It’s bright out. The world is wintry and grey. Industrial. I’m leaning against the brick façade of the Terraview Mall, a smoldering cigarette butt burning against the edge of my finger. My Slurp-A-Lot shirt is pristine as it ever was, if a little wrinkled. I glance around a bit, trying to remember what I was doing.

“Are you done with your little smoke break yet, Sarah? Amanda’s really getting on my ass and I could use your help, eh? Chop chop.”

Oh yeah. Smoke break. Silly me.

“Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute okay? I mean, uh… gimme a minute Liv. Please?”

“Just hurry up Goldie,” she says, smiling a bit and adjusting her pink striped hat. “I can’t take this shit alone, y’know. It’s driving me crazy.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Heh. Me too, Olivia. Me too.”

She walks off, and I stare at the cigarette for a minute or so. Burning me. That’ll be one hell of a blister, I’ll bet.

“Scream for the kingdom of Sarah Fontaine,” I mutter. I’m not sure why. I flick the ashy filter and head back to the smoothie shop.