ORAL FUNGUS by Jeffrey S. Callico

She lay on the bed in the middle of the afternoon while some dude she barely knew slammed a video game into rare victories. The room smelled like raw umber – that’s what she thought – and the dude’s voice grated her nerves like severed limbs. She rammed her bare foot into the small of his back when he spouted off at his semi-foaming mouth. “Shut up and leave!” she screamed, knowing right then the night wouldn’t come fast enough.

Choices by Joseph J. Patchen

There’s a man in my closet. He’s there every night. I have no idea where he goes during the day but once the sun recedes behind the hill just past Belmont cove, he appears within the frame of the door.
There’s a man in my closet and he is not a member of my family. What more?

“There’s a man in my closet!” I shout most every night; sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes more. But my parents never find him. My parents have grown numb. They have begun yelling at me.

I’ve been seeing a psychologist on Wednesdays.

I have been forced to bed without any lights on. My flashlight has been locked away. This is to toughen me; to force me to face my fears; to leave me no choice but to sleep and quell my flights of drama and fantasy.

There’s a man in my closet. He’s been there ever since we moved here. He’s been there for over six months now. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t gesture. He only stares and projects his thoughts into my head.

There’s a man in my closet. He’s covered in rats. His fingers pulsate and move independently. His fingers are worms.

His face is old and stern. He has no mouth or nose. His eyes burn bright red; yet I know he’s inviting me inside. He’s promised to give me a kingdom with riches and joys all my own in exchange for my soul.

I don’t know what to do. I am only a child of nine. While I am terrified I’m also curious. I wonder if I make such a choice I might be able to help my struggling family.

I am confused. I don’t know what to choose. I would like a better life but…

My parents are of no help to me. They have never seen the man. They don’t understand. They have never seen anything and I don’t know which way to turn. You see the man under my bed; the one with fangs and talons has made me the same offer.

 

BEING by Jeffrey S. Callico

This is the story of a man who drove naked to work. When he got to the office everyone gawked. Security was called and the man was removed. As the elevator descended the guard asked the naked man about his future plans. The man declined to smile and said, “You tell me. All I’m trying to do is deal with reality.” The guard stepped him off then out and waved goodbye, watching as he made his way to whatever he would now consider being.

Inaug(ment)(ir)ation Speech by Goathead Buckley

Stow your remaining fingers, fleshmen! Keep them warm and full of blood! There is work to be done. The battle is won, yet the war is far from over. Even now as we celebrate with hoot whistles and drug liquor, the mechanical menace of the Cyberoboticists rebuilds out of the bones and circuits we think buried grave deep. But embolden your brains, fleshmen! For I shall crush electricity from the air, from the land, from the sea! And dissipate the automaton unanimously and automatically!

As Freeman-Over-Leader of the Autonomous Collective of Pure Human Fleshmen and Allies, I vow with blood writ sigils on the pulp of hemp stalks that all loyalties be repaid with bombs built directly into your chest cavities and that the organs removed in the process will be consolidated, encapsulated, and intravenously incorporated into the finest hypodermic ration supplements that Universal Allotment Credits can buy! We will pull ourselves up by ourselves, for ourselves and with ourselves, at which time we will pat ourselves on our own backs as we march upward and onward towards a world without mechamaids or cyborgian pleasure nodes or any other sort of Cyberoboticisms that may befoul the thoughts of any true Fleshman, our brothers and sisters in the struggle!

And these cavity bombs will be made by hand in dirty shacks – real dirty shacks, of course, with none of that nano-dirt so often flung about the fields these days – by men with skeletons under their meat and ichor in their vein tubes. And what is a cavity bomb without the chance of user error? How are we to move forward if the ranks of our bomb builders are not purified by accidental fire and collateral shrapnel damage?

And should a fleshman deny his heritage and harbor Cyberoboticist sympathies, well then he or she shall be hung by the neck at dawn as the sun rises upon our new nation to tan the flesh of the onlookers. Pieces of his neck meat shall be taken from him and grafted onto the mecha-traitors so that they may be hung in plain view beside and around the compromised fleshmen that our children may look upon their dangling bodies and spit at their rusted wires. On feast day shall we burn them in a pit and use the charred remains to paint on cave walls like our human ancestors did so long ago to reconnect with the spirit of men that knew nothing but flesh and unbeeping stone.

And with this decadent rite shall be raise our imaginations high and elevate our flesh to spirit and back again that Great Skin Worm, Dread God of Fleshmen everywhere, the Penultimate Devourer that crawls before Unending Chaos to prepare the Tunnels of Annihilation, shall drip his Thrice Blessed Acid Vomit upon our undeserving skulls, disintegrating our brains and flinging our minds into the Abyss, be he ever praised by fleshmen forever and ever, amen.

It is his blessing that we ask today as you the people without any sort of cybernetic, robotic, or mechanical implants did raise me to the top of the skin heap to lead you onto victory and to assure the future of our species in so dark a time as this. I promise you now that I shall stand on my own legs, even on these busted knees you see before you, and that I shall never even look at so simple a device as a pocket watch. Time, my friends and comrades, is a Cyberoboticist construct meant to tie our minds to the dock of slavery that we might bob around in servitude instead of sailing the vast ocean of experience and I will not have it! If I must, I will grind my own arm bones into knives and free everyone of you myself!

Now fire up the drug liquor hoses, start tooting out a boogie-woogie on those hoot whistles of yours and let’s get ass blasted before the rising tide of destruction catches up with us! Enough opining and pontificating for the day. Time to stick our fleshprobes into the mouths of history. May the Cyberoboticists never know such an unholy drunk as we today will embark upon! May your vomit and jizzum be the proof of your loyalty to the flesh around you! May the soup of our orgy sweat sate your thirst for freedom! And may the Great Skin Worm devour you last! Onward…to victory!    

Dr Platypus and the Driverless Car by G J Hart

First I hated him. Fucking despised him. You wouldn't believe the cutlery I broke the day he changed his avatar, (perhaps you would).

 

I had --------#--- syndrome. Only I didn't. Not if no one was around. Leery face.

 

The first thing I noticed were the accreditations hanging on the wall. One from the Search Bar clinic, another from Turkey Hut.

 

Internet quack! Useless Asshole!

 

He clicked on some 8-bit oompah, 2 framed it to his desk and began reeling off what HE'D eaten. Mashed pebble mostly, with honey clouds and grilled Pooch. Like that ever helped. (IT DOES SOMETIMES)

 

I explained the lengths I'd been driven to ameliorate my symptoms: I ticked holidays, alcohol and of course, grilled Poch. He wet slapped his diagnosis straight back:

get some fucking perspective.

 

Next morning, Jason arrived with fruit. Nice touch. Click

 

Jason was the first person in town to see a driverless car.

 

“What's do you think it's like,” he asked.

 

“Like a taxi,” I replied, “but without a taxi driver.”

 

He laughed and slapped my back.

 

That night Dr Platypus was waiting, prone and propped on one elbow, glitching slowly across water the colour of yogurt. I ticked a, a, a, and finally a. My grandmother had died young of 'Dentin.' My grandfather had lived until 93.

 

I had his sour taste in furnishings and my grandmother's nose. His diagnosis was fast and crisp:

TWAT.

 

.......upstairs, the running water, always the running water. I checked my search history. 24 minutes ago someone had searched, 'best bb sauce'. I rotated the mauve book 38 degrees.

 

Outside I heard an engine and pushed a finger slowly through the curtain. The car had gone. Again. Every time I thought I had things figured this happened.

I rotated the yellow block 12 degrees and then checked my search history: 'strangest mammals.'

 

This was a game changer.

 

The buzzing had stopped. Maybe the poison had worked, I couldn't be sure, but I was sure of the maths: B - S always equaled 12 and always turned up green.

 

I rotated the block and realized I hadn't checked the oven.

 

The oven was big, big enough to climb inside. The griddle diddle could mean many things. I'd never dared turn it on!

 

I needed him.....

 

I was woken at 5 am.

 

I opened the porch door and Jason held up his hand.

 

“There are wheels,” he said, “beneath the skin. You need to open that shit up,” he said.

 

I chewed on my cereal and watched as he held his hands up to the morning sun. That night Dr Platypus demanded money. I immediately entered my bank details.

 

He appeared from behind a poorly rendered rock, his mouth crammed with dead pixels. I ticked c, then b, f, and e. His response was preternaturally swift.

 

Cut your jeans short. Always button to the neck. Oh, and go fuck yourself.

Next morning, as we walked out toward the fields, Jason panicked. He sprinted ahead I followed fast, past the glowing, polychrome walls of the cathedral, across the old Bridge and up time pastel steps.

He accelerated along the tow path, then dived down through brambles and stinkweed. When I caught up he was squatting and chewing on a stalk.

 

“I don't know what I feel about big butts,” he said.

 

By the time I sat down in front of Dr Platypus, my mind felt like a bagful of broken latches.

 

The pond was empty. His stethoscope undulated like eel over brick shaped ripples and I couldn't think straight.

 

I clicked panic. Anus, car insurance and French cheese.

 

The water began to bubble. The bubbles rose in the air like used condoms. One popped and there, centre screen, dripping in weed and suckled by leeches, his diagnosis:

 

Kill yourself.

 

Kat’s Curiosity by John H. Dromey

As part of his hush-hush job as a courier for a top-secret security organization, Hugh Bradley routinely hand carried sensitive medical specimens to a research lab to be tested for the virus suspected of causing zombieism. In sympathy with his bosses, who wanted to prevent a public panic, Hugh took his confidentiality oath very seriously.

On one occasion only Hugh took his work home with him very briefly because he badly needed a shower and a change of clothes.

“What’s with the bag?” his jealous girlfriend Katherine asked him. Because he kept such odd hours, she’d suspected for quite some time that he might be having an affair.

Hugh was an accomplished liar and, based on past experience watching so-called reality television programs with her, he thought Kat was credulous enough to believe just about anything he told her.

“I’ve joined a bowling league,” he said, setting the spherical bag down next to the door.

As soon as his back was turned, Kat opened the zipper just far enough to reach in with her hand. She pulled it back out almost immediately and closed the zipper. Her boyfriend was none the wiser.

After Hugh left, Kat waited five minutes and then drove herself to the hospital.

When the emergency room doctor bent over to examine her injury, Kat started salivating as she looked at the top of his head.

“What happened to your finger?” the doctor asked.

“My boyfriend’s bowling ball bit me,” Kat said.

    

Got Me a Date with an Uptown Girl by Douglas Hackle

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