I hate the way he breathes, the heavy nasal wheezing keeping me up through the night. And I hate the way he smells. But most of all, I hate the way he eats.

People tell me that over time I'll get used to it. "He's only been alive for three years. Give him time. Give yourself time," they say. But I know the truth. I know the little fucker's been waiting inside me my entire life. I could feel him just under the surface, waiting to scratch his way towards the light.

People don't ask me who the father is any more. They know what I'm going to tell them, what the doctors confirmed for me several times over. There is no father. And when people hear his muffled cries during the day, they look the other way.

I'd let him starve if I could, but every time it gets hungry it claws at my now sagging breasts. There's nothing there for it. I'm not lactating because this isn't a child. As I reach down to spoon another small heap of gruel into the gaping, toothless maw protruding from my waist that somehow uses a part of my stomach for its lungs, that somehow belches and screams in flatulent utterances, I realize what my body knows: that this malformed tumor growing out of my body is somehow me, has always been a part of me, and never had any intention of leaving. And if it dies, I die with it.

"Immaculate Conception"

 

Copyright: © 2011 Kirk Jones

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Kirk Jones is the author of Uncle Sam's Carnival of Copulating Inanimals, published by the New Bizarro Author Series, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. He reviews classic works that could, in retrospect, be considered bizarro on Retro Bizarro at www.bizarrojones.com. Forthcoming work will soon be published in Unicorn Knife Fight.

 

Sitting on a park bench, he watched the faceless, two-dimensional people scramble past one another, moving thoughtlessly through the streets. His lunch break was almost over. It was time to join them.

He placed his hands on the bench to lift himself, when he realized his legs were gone. Reaching down to confirm what his eyes told him, he noticed the lower half of his body on the ground. He grazed his underbelly to make sure all his vitals were in tact, expecting to feel the moist warmth of blood. Instead there was only a cool, smooth surface, what he thought a cauterized wound might feel like. Then he was gone.

Miles away his eight year old son Billy carefully rendered a picture from black coloring pencil. He ran to his mother to show her his progress.

"Mommy! Mommy!" he said, handing her the picture. "Look!"

She held the picture at a distance, straightened her glasses. "What is it?" she asked, though she recognized the crude stick figure rendering of bifurcated and beheaded bodies.

"It's a picture of daddy. He's dead."

"Peter, why would you draw something like that?"

"I'm almost done with yours," he said, running back to the other room. "I just need to find the blue marker, for your dress."

She looked up from the picture and towards the window. Faceless, two-dimensional figures walked aimlessly on the unlined pavement. She rolled up her blue sleeves and started for the water in the sink, when she realized she no longer had arms. She called to her son as she tried to think of a way to stop the bleeding. But there was no blood.

Billy ran into the room with his new picture. "Mom?" he asked. "Have you seen my red crayon?" 

"Death by Limited Palette"

Copyright: © 2011 Kirk Jones

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Kirk Jones is the author of Uncle Sam's Carnival of Copulating Inanimals, published by the New Bizarro Author Series, an imprint of Eraserhead Press. He reviews classic works that could, in retrospect, be considered bizarro on Retro Bizarro at www.bizarrojones.com. Forthcoming work will soon be published in Unicorn Knife Fight.