Juice And Candy Really Do Mix

She’s on the couch now — he’s left — she gets up; third glass now. Eight in the morning now with a toothache. Pops another bottle. That’s three labels covered in her name in the trash now. Swallows hard — it’s a habit now. Sits down — her shows on now. She falls asleep and dreams of sound. Heart pumping hard, she wakes up and he’s there with new legs now. He’s on TV and she yells. He cuts her throat and he’s gone now. The blood is pink insulation and she’s up now. Door’s still locked but he’s back in the bathroom brushing his teeth when they all fell out. She picks them up off the floor and he’s out the door. She starts crying; can’t remember high school. Black and blue, she gets another bottle. Three down, asses up, one straight up, asses down. She’s sitting in the kitchen in her own blood and vomit now. Hair’s thinning now. She needs a minute now. But now is gone and hits the pavement now. And that’s it. Dropped the bottles and that’s when mommy stopped drinking juice and eating so much candy. That’s when mommy’s brain was never the same. That’s when mommy’s heart twisted up and squeezed all of the sugar out of her lungs. Oh — that’s when mommy died too.

Preview of “Parasite”

He lies in a clear glass box almost like an empty fish tank. His wrists and ankles are bolted down under sleek cylinders of some sort of metal he’s never felt before. His neck is under a ring of the same material, bolted down to the glass below him. As he adjusts to the extreme light from all around him and even underneath the glass case, he feels as though he is in an empty pinball machine.

He looks up to find three analogous shadows stirring back and forth above the chamber. He realizes that he is in the floor and they are walking around above him. He tilts his head to the side and sees more shadows below him on another floor. They are all looking at him, waiting for him to say something, but when he opens his mouth to speak all he can hear are the muffled words inside his head. His ears are bleeding from some sort of penetration.

He finds himself naked in the chamber and the distance between the top and bottom glass surfaces feel so much smaller. All around is light and the shadows that every now and then spare his eyes.

The chamber reminds him of a pinball machine because of an opening at his feet that curves downward and leads through the floor below him. On the other side of his left foot is another smaller gateway that extends straight and into the wall of light. This is normally where the ball would deploy, but instead of dropping off near his head, the passageway for the ball curves straight into his shins.

The shadows pace back and forth watching him anxiously. He can barely move under the strange binds and the blinding white light. All is quiet until he hears some sort of machine charging up. The sound oscillates from the pinball alley at his feet. The opening carries to sound into the chamber as it gets louder and louder and suddenly a shadow emerges from the white.

It seems to have been shot from a pressurized contraption for the speed it is traveling at. As the shadow passes through the light and closer to the chamber, its detail is revealed. The object is long and fat almost like a baguette. As it comes closer to the chamber, the object reveals a long, sharp bayonet coming for its head. Beyond the razor sharp blade is the head of what now appears to be a creature. Its face is comprised of a narrow opening, which appears to be its mouth. Along the body of the animal are small protruding barbs much like those on a cactus plant. At the end of the body is another sharp bayonet, but unlike the one at the head, it lays like a tail.

He struggles as the monster no longer than his thigh flies around the curve at the opening and into his legs. The sharp object at the head rips its way through his lower legs like a bullet through water. The chamber is instantly spattered in crimson and he begins to scream inside his head. He shakes around as the monster doubles back and shallows what remains of his feet whole. The slug-like thing circles back with little effort leaving on blood and scrap flesh below his knees. Then the worm makes its way up his legs and continues to feast without any obvious exertion of energy.

In a short matter of time the worm is swimming around in his torso as his heart stops beating and slips from out of his ribs. His remaining organs also slip out and sail down the river of blood that leads to the ball return. The shadows below swirl around as blood passes through the pipe before them. The shadows above kneel down and look him in the eyes.
With his last breath on of the shadow’s face splits open and fades away revealing his own face looking down on him.

Kevin wakes up cold and shivering. His bed sheets are wet with his sweat. His legs still kick in reaction of the dream.

Preview of “The Final Level”

This is an excerpt from the first chapter of a book I’m writing called “The Final Level”

We march in line
All battered and bruised
Covered in Kevlar
Marked civilians

I have trouble
Twisted ankle
From the window I threw
My self out of

Another second
My head would have been all over the floor
Several of them over me
On their way to genocide

But now I am safe
Among strangers that may be traitors
With knives hidden under their skin
But soldiers are within arms reach

So my worries fade
As we march out of the city
And into the dark jungle
Deep away from the war

Our home burn behind us
Masking the sky in black blood
Drawn from our friends and family
Just moments ago

The soldiers escort us away
Not enough in number to stay and fight
Never enough
We will all die the same way

Alone

Snow Leopard [Issues 1 thru 3]

The valley of white. Snow. Everywhere. Footsteps — trudging along, sinking the snow, inching towards the center of the snowy field. An expanding radius — blood everywhere — and a body in the center. A man of about thirty years, propped up on his twisted arm, sprawled behind his back. The spread of crimson was coming from what used to be his right leg. His face was not to be spoken of, so horribly transformed from some sort of high-powered shotgun.

“It’s Victor,” Steven said as he approached the radius.

Harold nodded from across the site. They had been walking side-by-side and Harold circled the body when they were close enough. He wanted a closer look at the hand of the twisted arm and realized that Victor was no longer carrying the envelope.

“It’s not here,” Harold said as he bent down on one knee in the thin cover of snow. It had been snowing since sunrise and was going to pick up heavily throughout the day.

“Then let’s get back to the jeep.”

The two men began walking back towards where they came from when the stench of Victor’s body first hit them. They never looked back and they never returned to that field.

***

Steven and Harold were in the jeep slowly sliding down a tree-covered road frozen by the bone-cracking ice storm. Harold began slamming the dashboard as Steven could not control the wheel. The raining ice and snow was hammering the windows. Steven gained control again and straightened the jeep out, “Will you relax.”

“It’s gone.”

“We’ll get it back once we get to the other side of the ridge. We’ll find the sucker and we’ll cut his head off for it. I’ll do it bare-handed if I have to.”

“First Jason,” Harold began, “and now Vic.”

“Listen, you need to drop it and focus. We’re not gonna get the envelope if all you do is panic!”

Harold sat silent for a moment as Steven hit more ice. He continued, “This fucking ice is killing me.”

After another long moment of silence, Steven began to speak, but he found it hard to open his mouth when a hole suddenly burst through the windshield and a chunk of rock and ice crashed over his knuckles. He swerved the jeep for a moment only to get it back on track and stare as his bloody hands. The rock had broken off the ridge from high above and targeted itself right over his hands, just like the bullet that killed that old women went right out of the muzzle, right past the Senator, and right into the apartment window across the street. As Harold began to panic again, Steven dropped his head slightly and muttered a very tired, “well this sucks.”

***

Harold glided through each aisle like a gentle tide, skimming his fingers along the many boxes sitting upon each shelf. He came out of the pharmacy store with a box of gauze wrap and got into the jeep. People here and there were staring through the hole in the windshield as they entered the pharmacy to pick up anything they might need for the coming storm — food and what not.

Harold carefully bandaged Steven’s hands. A collection of flurries were piling on the dashboard, coming through the hole. By the time the heavier precipitants from the ridge descended and made it to town, they were well on their way.

“We’re going to need plastic wrap for the windshield,” Steven started, “before we start freezing to death.”

“We should have grabbed some off Jason’s head when we found him suffocated.”

“What the fuck?”

“What?”

“What the hell has gotten into you? Are you high? You were just freaking out before we got to town?”

“Well I took some of this stuff Victor gave me the other day,” Harold reached into his jacket pocket and produced an orange and white prescription bottle. He shook it like a container of Tic Tacs, but Steven soon swiped it for a closer look.

“Ket… Keta… Ke…” Steven stuttered, “Harold, this is Ketamine!”

Harold was sinking in his seat, smiling as he felt himself floating like a bubble towards the roof of the car.

“How many did you take? How many?!” Steven was now screaming.

Harold just sat and smiled and closed his eyes. Then he finally said, “Well, when I opened ‘em, they didn’t shake around so much.”

Steven popped the cap off of the bottle to find two tablets sitting in the bottom. He rolled his window down and tossed the bottle.

“Harold,” he began, “You listen to me now. We’re going over the northern ridge and up the mountain to get the envelope. Okay?”

“We wouldn’t be in this position if you never took up that job. You would have never fired that gun and killed that poor old lady. But no, you’re just a greedy murderer…”

“I didn’t mean to kill that lady!”

“… and now both Jason and Victor have been suffocated and blown to pieces, respectively, in order to get to you. And now they stole the envelope and now everything’s been blow to shit and we just as good as dead.”

“Harold! Listen to me: we’re getting that envelope back!”

“How? How can you possibly get it back? These guys are way out of your league… let alone mine. Not only do they have that stupid envelope that we should not have even had in the first place — that should not have existed if it weren’t for Jason — but we’re being hunted down like animals because you screwed up yet again and you took the money and ran…”

“You’re an asshole, okay, I…”

“You’re a liar. And a thief. And you’re not my friend anymore. No way, pal.”

“Fine, but we’re getting that envelope back whether you like it or not.”

“You better count on the latter, cause at this rate no one’d like getting that envelope back. It’s probably too late as we speak…”