[Author’s disclaimer: Ladies this is a sexist tale. It isn’t written for you, but for MEN, MEN, MEN. Stop reading right now or else . . . just don’t blame me afterward . . . ahem]

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As the result of humanity’s losing the war with the Andromedans, all human women were stripped of their buttocks. Yes, those twin pads of fat which human men lust after were stolen by the alien fiends.

Earth’s men woke up the next day feeling strangely cheated, and yet strangely at peace with themselves, as for the first time in their lives they found themselves able to stare at female members of their species without any lust whatsoever.

Even more amazing, most men now began to view women as persons rather than sex objects.

If men were pleased with this state of affairs however, the female of the species most definitely wasn’t.

*   *   *

Fifty miles above the Earth’s surface, the ruling committee of the Female Emancipation and Domination of Man (FEm-DoM) society were deliberating what to do about this latest sex crisis.

“This is a total disaster,” the goddess Electra growled, “it’s almost as bad as when the feminist lobbies got equal pay for women in the workplace.”

“That was easier to resolve,” Athena interjected, “All we had to do to ensure we kept the upper hand was get the sexual harassment legislation passed through congress.”

“We’re about to lose the ability to use sex as a weapon to disorient men for good ladies,” Hera said miserably. “Six thousand years of work is about flushing down the drain because some alien invaders . . .”

“Er . . . mankind started the war . . .”

“You KNOW what I mean!”

“Girls,” Electra chided gently, “fighting will get us nowhere. This is way beyond any crisis we’ve ever faced. With the loss of buttocks, ass, tush - call it what you will, these damn Andromedans have unwittingly crippled femalekind. Of what use is it having sexes if sex can’t interfere with the smooth running of society, create endless unresolvable issues, perpetually fuck up the gears of the relationship machine?”

“Yeah, all men love ass,” Hera said reflectively.

“Gay men don’t.”

“Yes they do; they just love a guy’s ass!"

Hera’s two compatriots stared at her narrowly. “Try to be serious.”

“What about trying to shift the focus from back to front, to the tits instead?”

“Won’t work, it’s considered sleazy to look at a woman’s chest instead of her face when she’s facing you. When she isn’t facing you however . . .”

“Damn, I forgot that!”

“Think, sisters think. There has to be something men like as much as ass; all we need is to give every woman a set of those instead and the status quo is restored, ergo, we’re in control again.”

They deliberated on this awhile.

“Guys love money.”

“No, cash-butts will send inflation skyrocketing.”

“Cars?”

“Yes but . . . women won’t be able to get through doors anymore. I like the transport concept though - keep thinking along those lines.

Finally they hit on the perfect solution.

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[A brief explanation of what the FEm-DoM goddesses were so panicked about.

Despite all their protestations to the contrary, women have ALWAYS dominated men. If you’ve any doubts as to this, remember accurately your mother’s relationship with your father, possibly before he left home never to return.

The average man doesn’t abandon his girlfriend or wife, he flees for his life.

It makes no difference however though, as whoever they end up with, they still end up in the same place.]

*   *   *

And so it came to pass that every Earthwoman now has a motorcycle in place of her stolen buttocks.

Things are more or less back to normal now. It’s routine to hear guys ogling girls saying things like:

“Wow dudes, check out that babe’s Harley Davidson! Man those rear lights. And those tires - just incredible,”
“That girl’s a Grand Prix Honda man.”

“Nooooooo, she’s a Confederate Hellcat.”

“I’ll betcha five dollars.”

“You guys talking bout Mary? Dude, save your money. She’s some low-cost Korean brand!”

Cocktail party conversation:

“You know personally I’m a 16-inch rim guy myself; give me too much tire and I’ve no idea what to do with it.”

“I know exactly what you mean. My last girlfriend was a German three-wheeler, really heavy duty, she kept leaving tracks all over my . . .”

And the ladies themselves?

“So I asked him: Do you wanna go freewheelin’ sometime?”

“No you didn’t girlfriend! That’s just nasty!”

“Well you know me! He looked like the sort of guy who’d be able to get a good grip on my handlebars.”

“Personally I prefer a guy who fits neatly on my seat . . .”

“And you’re calling me dirty-minded . . .”

And lawyers?

“Your honor, I propose to show that Mr. Mackintosh here twice attempted to oil Miss Blakeley’s gears without her permission while she was working as his secretary, and also tampered with her starter-keys . . .”

Fresh expressions have been coined:

“Dave’s such a pain in the motorbike Kate.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s a real exhaust pipe.”

Teenage girls now all have either BMX bike or skateboard behinds by the way; teenage boys are extremely content with those.

*   *   *

So Earth’s women are happy again, no they’re overjoyed, no - ecstatic. The man-domination business is booming better than ever before.

Earth’s men however, though happy as hell to have something to ogle and lust after and fight over again, still can’t help feeling screwed.

It’s like they were let off the hook for a few days, and just when they’d gotten used to the sweet scent of freedom, bam! The hook’s been rammed down their throats again. Only much deeper this time.

And they still don’t understand what went wrong.

To find out I suggest they pick another fight with the Andromedans.

"Behind Every Successful Woman"

Copyright: © 2011 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall. He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

Since becoming wealthy enough to do so without fear of embarrassing myself, I’d liked attending the horse races. Since meeting Miss Carol Chang, I’d come to love them.

Carol was a jockey, see. Mad about horses. I was mad about Carol.

I bought a horse. Sorry ladies, it’s a normal guy maneuver - pretty woman loves horses, I buy a horse, I get to meet her. Works every time.

*   *   *

I hit my head.

I was walking through the stables looking for Carol, thought I heard her call me, turned about hastily, and knocked myself half senseless on a horseshoe hung on a nail by a stable stall.

After the resulting headache subsided somewhat I became aware of voices speaking next to me.

“Yes,” said a pretty mare stalled next to my horse, “Humans have no taste whatsoever; I wonder what he sees in the yellow-skinned chink neo-communist bitch.”

“Flat-chested slopehead slut,” my horse added.

The horses were talking?

This was too real for me. “Did any of you just say something?” I asked politely.

The horses gaped at me in shock equal to mine. “You can hear us?”

“Uh huh.” I made sure I had unobstructed access to the stable door in case of danger to my person.

“Okay, we’ll level with you,” my horse said. “We don’t approve of your sniffing around that slant-eyed jade.”

Bradley, my black chauffeur, came into window-view then. “Oh look, it’s the jungle bunny again,” another horse said. The rest laughed heartily in derision.

Horses talking was one thing, but there was something very disturbing about this now.

“Why’d you just call Bradley a ‘jungle bunny’?” I asked, suddenly certain great enlightenment was about to hit me.

“He’s black.”

“So, why not just call him a black man?”

“Where’s the fun in that? We’re racists - we’ve got to insult people based on their ethnicity, or if that’s in doubt, where they originate from.”

“Aaaahh. You’re joking of course.”

“Nope, we’re horses. All horses are racists - it’s inborn.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean racers?”

"No, racists. Conjugate the verb ‘to race’. Race, racer, racist.”

“Should be racest then.”

“Yes. Racist."

*   *   *

They were serious. I tested them.

Soon the crowd for the 4:00 began to arrive.

“C’mon guys,” I said, “you’ve got to love Mrs. Jackson’s hat, just dig those natty feathers. And those shoes.”

“Stupid fat-assed nigger bitch.”

“Stupid? She’s medical director of a hospital.”

“So? Damn ho must have got her med degree on her back.”

“Okay, how about Carlos Alberto? Check out that suit and Rolex he’s wearing, and his wife’s dress, just lovely.”

“Spic drug-runner . . .”

“He’s an investment banker!”

“. . . . yeah sure. His greasy ass came over the border hidden in a fruit-cart. I know so for sure - my cousin Dinky pulled it; and that wife of his - good lord, don’t Mexican women ever stop eating?”

A distinguished old Jewish couple were crossing the lawn towards the stands. The 4:30 race would begin in fifteen minutes. I pointed them out. “And the Goldsteins?”

“I thought you had some class, boss, please don’t foul the air of this place by mentioning kikes.”

*   *   *

They went on and on and on and on.

Greeks and Canadians were degenerate sodomists. Italians were all Dago Mafiosos. Australians all had kangaroo mothers. Blacks were uneducated lazy pimps and wife beaters. The French were frogs, snail eaters, and Godzilla-making nuclear degenerates.

The British? I’ll have MI6 after me if I repeat what they said about the Queen and Prince Charles, the late Princess Diana, and David Beckham.

For some reason horses really hate David Beckham.

It got worse. Poor Salman Rushdie’s ordeal prevents me from repeating what they said about the Shah of Iran, and Arabs in general. To the horses, terrorism was the least of the Arab’s crimes. And I think it wise not to even consider offending the Russian Mafia, the Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Africans in general - the list was almost endless.

I assure you I heard more political incorrectness in that stable than I’ve ever heard anywhere else in my life.

*   *   *

Finally they convinced me. I stared at the horses in horror. “You really are racists.”

“Yeah, that’s what we do, we race.”

But you’ve mixed things up. There’s racing and then there’s . . .”

“Race, racer, racist, boss.”

A black stallion nodded agreement. “Word, boss.”

My mind slowly wrapped itself around the concept. “Okay so why aren’t you insulting me? I’m Irish.”

“Health insurance policy boss. No one here wants to wind up as cans of dog food. We’ll wait till you leave.”

That was honest at least.

The 4:30 was over, I could see the board from the stables, Abe Goldstein’s ‘Golda Mare’ had won.

I finally thought I saw where this was headed. “So, if you don’t like Jews, or Blacks, or Spaniards, or Asians, or Greeks, or the British, or the Russians, or Native Americans or South Americans, or just everyday un-prefixed Americans, who do you like? The Germans? I mean Hitler must be your hero, right? You wanna set up the Pureblood Aryan Horse Reich?”

My horse looked at me in disgust. “Screw that damn Kraut punk and his entire country.” It groaned at me, surprised at my hardheaded lack of comprehension of this most simple of equine principles. “We’re just racists - we don’t discriminate. Unlike you humans, we dislike everyone equally. You’re all to blame for the state of the world.

"Worse still,” the pretty mare in the next stall added, “You all ride on our backs.”

*   *   *

Chastened, I left the stables and walked slowly back to my Rolls.

I haven’t had any stomach for the racists . . . sorry I mean races, since then.

I sold my horse. It had already served its purpose. Miss Carol Chang now comes over to the house to visit me instead.

"A Day at the Racists"

Copyright: © 2011 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall. He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

Brad hated women.

It wasn’t his fault, but his parents’.

His mother was a loud brassy woman with a chainsaw tongue; his father a weak, insecure man whom his wife’s never-ending insults had made seek solace in alcohol. Brad’s father’s drinking however had made him violent, and after a while, when his wife insulted him, he beat her up, often bloodily.

And yet the pair had remained married.

Brad had silently absorbed all this. While he disliked his father for being a weakling, he hated his mother, particularly since she’d tongue-lashed him into insecurity too.

He’d run away from home at sixteen; drifting and taking on a succession of jobs.

Finally he’d had his first girlfriend, the emotional programming of his early years making him select Tyla, a woman as loud and irritating as his mother had been, with the inevitable results - unable to stomach her tongue, he’d snapped under the influence of drink and beaten her to within six inches of death.

He’d done five years in the state pen for aggravated assault - a reduced sentence because the judge’s son was an old classmate of his.

Once he left jail, Brad had decided it was safer to hate women than to love them.

He’d found no reasons to change his mind since then, and had had no relationships. It had occurred to him to simply date men instead, but here he had major reservations. Men were great for companionship and conversation, but romance . . . ?

Then the alien came.

*   *   *

Trina hated men. Here there was no ambiguous sublimations as if Brad’s case. She hated men because they’d abused her. She hated her father for not loving her, and her four elder brothers for beating her up regularly. Her mother had died when she was four so she’d had no protection from them.

Most of all she hated the drunk male driver who’d left her permanently in a wheelchair with a broken spine, and she hated all the men who never looked at her, only at her glossy friends.

“Homosexuality stalks in dark recesses of my mind,” she was fond of telling Trish, her glossiest friend. “In daytime visions alternate sexuality calls sweetly unto me. I currently seek the last male straw which breaks my heterosexual camel’s back.”

No lesbians came into her daytime actuality however. So Trina contented herself with hating men with all the passion she would have used to love them.

Then the alien came.

*   *   *

The alien was actually a robot, a silvery manlike humandroid with telescoping eyes. It arrived late one afternoon in a battered spaceship it parked out in the Arizona Desert, and set up shop in a prefabricated kiosk: ‘Dr. Sigmund Droid, Psychiatric Cures - Phobia Specialist.’

First there was skepticism in the nearby towns about the new ‘Doctor’, then a few people went into the desert and were cured of their fears of snakes and rats, then there was a deluge of patients and Brad and Trina went too.

*   *   *

“I had a woman in here yesterday with a similar problem to yours,” Dr. Sigmund Droid told Brad after hearing him out. “Only in her case she hated men."

“Why would she do that?” Brad asked, “Men are so cool. Women are the problem.”

“I’m sure Ms. Trina will think the same when I tell her your views of her sex,” the robot psychiatrist replied. “That however, is neither here nor there - it helps neither of you. I however, have a solution in mind - one which might cure you both. Are you willing to try it?”

Brad nodded. A few hours later, Trina nodded too.

Brad and Trina met in Dr. Sigmund Droid’s office and hated each another appropriately for an appropriate amount of time. Then the doctor placed metal caps over their heads wired to a humming gizmo on its desk and flicked a few switches.

The gizmo hummed louder and louder, then stopped. Dr. Sigmund Droid removed the caps from both their heads and stepped back.

“There, both of you should be cured now.”

“I don’t feel any different,” Brad said.

“Me neither,” Trina said.

“Oh but you do,” Dr. Droid said, “Try hating each other now.”

They tried, they really did.

Brad found that rather than hate the pretty woman stuck in the wheelchair, he now hated his dad who’d neglected him as a child, his four brothers who’d beaten the crap out of him, and he hated worst of all the driver who’d put him permanently in a wheelchair . . . shocked, he stopped hating for a moment and examined himself to ensure he was still whole. No, he didn’t hate women any more.

He however HATED those DISGUSTING MEN with a passion.

Trina made the same discovery. She now HATED WOMEN. Most of all she hated her foul-mouthed mother who’d made an alcoholic out of her loving father, and made her beat up her first girlfriend (who wasn’t any better than her stupid mother - YES she HAD been a lesbian that ONE time, SO WHAT!?) into a bloody pulp, and go to jail for it . . . Men were OKAY. But women? Shit, they were worse than crap. She HATED them.

Dr. Sigmund Droid smiled at the pair.

“Like I said, you’re both fine now - perfectly ready to cope with romance.”

*   *   *

“This is some weird shit Trina,” Brad said, “But I think you look cute in that wheelchair. You wanna go get a drink?”

“Yeah let’s.”

“Okay but don’t get worried if I beat up a few guys; you know, I just can’t stand the sight of those disgusting pigs ogling my girl . . .”

“Me, it’s those waitresses I can’t stand, all slinky like snakes, trying to snare my boyfriend . . .”

“Boyfriend eh . . . ?”

Now properly maladjusted, they lived together happily ever after.

"Good Medicine"

 

Copyright: © 2011 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall. He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

Marv, Jake and Luke put on their costumes. White robes with red cross-patches on them and peaked white hoods. The hoods covered their entire heads, with just a pair of eyeholes cut in them.

“Fuck man, this is creepy,” Luke said. “We look just like the KKK.”

“That is the whole idea. Stop being such a pussy.”

Luke glared at Marv. Marv ignored him, began loading himself with weapons.

Jake got out his slang dictionary, opened it to Racial Insults, thumbed to the ‘Negroes’ section.

“Nigger,” he said softly. The word sounded dirty ugly -like an alligator lurking in a Mississippi swamp. He said it again, inserting a southern drawl: “Neegra . . . dumb neegra . . .”

“Will you please stop saying that?” You’re freaking me out, Jake.”

“You’re such a sissy Luke. This has got to be realistic, okay? Just make sure you don’t lose your damn nerve when we pick the neegra up . . .”

“Stop saying it!”

“Dude,” Marv said softly. “You make one giveaway crack when we pick him up, and I’ll shoot you before I shoot him.”

*   *   *

They stopped the hovercar. Overhead the desert sun burned HOT. In the distance a lone tree watched the sands like the ghost of bad things impendent.

Jake, Marv and Luke pushed the black-hooded man out into the heat. They pushed him along toward the tree, then unhooded him.

Hanson Wayans, middle-aged black businessman, stared at the three Ku Klux Klan members in horror. “I’m telling you I haven’t done anything.”

“But you did neegra,” Jake said, laughing. “Mah sista Peggy said she done see you ogling her.”

Hanson Wayans eyes grew large. “You gentlemen are mistaken; I never . . .” His eyes hardened. “For heaven’s sake - this isn’t Mississippi in the sixties, what sort of shit is this?”

“Consider this time-travel boy,” Jake said, brandishing his knife. “We here don’t take kindly to neegras looking at white women.”

Hanson gaped at the three Klan members in disbelief. “This is America, this is 2032 . . . You know - I had a dream? What is going on!?”

“Ain’t gonna warn you to curb that sassy tongue again boy,” Marv growled.

Hanson Wayans’ bravado drained out of him like diesel from a punctured tank. He stared at his hands. “Why?”

“He just don told you dat nigger,” Marv said. “We’re your Interracial Time Machine. Now pull down your pants boy, he got some cuttin' to do.”

Luke was sweating bullets. He said nothing; he was ready to cut and run. He’d almost not turned up to execute the plan, but that would have shown him to be yellow.

Jake advanced on the black man, waving his knife menacingly. “I’m gonna cut your balls off coon, stick em in a cup, watch you bleed like a stuck pig . . . serve you right for eyeing our women.”

“Yeah boy,” Marv added, “Can’t have you black animals thinkin ah defiling white purity - thinkin ah makin high-yella baboon kids.”

“Then we’ll string ya up to that tree over there.”

“Yeah boy, we gonna have ourselves a sweet southern lynching up north here . . .”

“No you won’t,” Hanson Wayans said quietly. He’d stopped shaking.

“What you say boy?” Jake asked, his heart beating faster. “You tryin to sass us again? What you say, Neegra!?”

“I SAID: NO, YOU WON’T HAVE A LYNCHING!!!”

It happened almost too fast for the eye to follow. In a rippling split-second of madness, Hanson Wayans expanded into a monster.

A Haman. A seven-foot-tall three-eyed, three-armed, legless thing covered with porcupine quills.

Yawning a mouth full of teeth, tongue slobbering, it leapt at Jake.

Marv was however faster. He stepped between them, letting off a volley of explosive shells at the Haman.

The alien tottered unsteadily for ages, spouting green gore, then it crumbled into the desert sand and dissolved into slime.

Luke discovered he’d peed himself.

*   *   *

The atmosphere on the drive back was celebratory.

“The one thing Haman’s can’t cope with is racial abuse,” Jake explained for the umpteenth time. “Apparently on their home world, they were a maltreated minority, got racial abuse aplenty - it’s why they came to Earth.”

“It seems a stupid way to become accepted; eating people and taking their place,” Marv said.

“So they’re stupid. Fuck em, fuck their home world.”

“I feel sorry for Mrs. Wayans; I know her - she’s a nice lady.”

“When he doesn’t show, she’ll assume he’s run off with another woman,” Jake said. “Much better than being eaten in her bed one night by the Haman.”

Luke said nothing. He was drowning in embarrassment, though his friends had tactfully said nothing about his wet pants.

He knew Jake had the right idea. The government couldn’t very well hand guns to everyone and tell them to start insulting (and shooting) everyone they met; could they?

*   *   *

They got back into town.

“Hey Luke,” Jake said. “Tomorrow you rent Nazi uniforms - say they’re for a play we’re doing.”

“Shit Jake. That’s what I said the last time. Why’d I always get the bullshit jobs? They’re going to be looking at me like . . .”

“Stop bitching,” Marv said. “You knew the score when you joined Interracial Time Machine - Jake does the planning, I handle the weapons, and you’re the gofer - how’s our organization going to function smoothly if you don’t hold up your end - can’t even handle a simple rental? And who says you have to get the costumes from the same shop anyway?”

Jake nodded. “We need authentic WWII gear, swastikas, lugers, the full works. We’ll be skinheads too - we gotta overload on the sort of shit that freaks Jews out: the next Haman’s masquerading as a Rabbi down at the old synagogue. I’m just not sure which one he is.”

He pulled out his slang dictionary and began to memorize anti-Semitic insults.

"Retro Race Relations Rumble"

Copyright: © 2011 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall. He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

“I’m sick of this crap,” Georg said. “I’d kill myself if I weren’t already dead.”

“And in Hell,” the walls whispered in completion. “Never forget that - you’re DEAD and IN HELL.”

Georg sighed; at random he picked a Block out of the ‘Plot’ box and read the words cut into its corpse-flesh: ‘Then the president had a burst of inspiration: what if she . . .’

He shook his head, dropped it, picked out another: ‘“It can’t be true,” she gasped, “she’s pregnant!!?”’

Georg nodded, this was better, more in fitting with the tale he was ‘making’ for David Heilberg.

He pulled the ‘composition’ box towards him, examining and tagging the bits he’d already got. So far Doctor Mary O’Blige had come home to find her father dead, had been chased down a dark alley by a werewolf, and had had her little brother kidnapped by the French terrorist underground. Now she’d just discovered her boyfriend Inspector Hardcop had gotten her best friend pregnant.

Feeling like he was being emotionally castrated, Georg resumed ‘making’ Dave Heilberg’s next bestseller.

One Hundred Years Earlier.

“Look,” Georg told Beetle-Pie, the UGLY-AS-HELL demon he’d just summoned, “I want the gift of originality. I’m a writer, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t think up anything that hasn’t been done before. My last four books were all panned for being derivative; worse - they sold worse than expired milk. So I want . . .”

“Originality? There’s no such thing, Georg.”

“There is . . .” Georg said defiantly, “I’ve often come up with . . .”

“Recycled versions of everyone else’s stories.” The demon laughed, picking his teeth with a bloodstained fingernail. “Let’s simplify things, okay? All you want is originality?”

“Georg recognized the trap. “They’ve also got to sell BIG TIME.”

Beetle-Pie pulled a briefcase out of his belly and rummaged in it a while. Finally, he extracted a paperback novel and handed it to Georg. “Your next book.”

“I said I want to create it dammit; are you deaf!?”

Beetle-Pie’s smile faded.” You will create it Georg; you will. You’ll NEVER once remember this conversation, this . . . contract . . . until it’s pay-up time.”

“Gimme that bullshi . . .” he snatched the book out of the demon’s hand and irritatedly flipped through, quickly growing more and more enamored with its contents. He finally stopped, stared at the demon in total stupefaction. “It’s fantastic,” he stuttered, “exactly what I’ve always wanted to write . . . the characters . . . the plot . . . the setting . . . Nobel Prize shit for real.” He smiled apologetically at Beetle-Pie. “Look dude, I’m sorry bout all that crap I spouted earlier. Let’s do the deal okay . . . Okay?”

Beetle-Pie smiled thinly. He’d been through this routine with so many writers through the ages.

“And now as regards payment . . .”

“Oh to Hell with that,” Georg said hastily, already living on Literary Olympus, “For a lifetime of this, I’ll sign anything . . . anything.”

“Fair enough,” Beetle-Pie snickered, with a flourish pulling a smoking contract out of his left nostril. “If you’d please append your signature here . . . and here . . . and oh yes here.”

*   *   *

It HAD been good. Georg had NO regrets. He’d won award after award, travelled the world, made MONEY. And died PEACEFULLY in bed at the age of ninety-three.

And immediately he’d closed his eyes that final time he’d found himself . . . in HELL.

*   *   *

“So what now?” he asked Beetle-Pie with trepidation, all memory of his lifetime successes already falling away like discarded clothes, “Am I in for an eternity of torment?”

“Something like that Georg,” the demon replied with an enigmatic smile, remembering he disliked Georg. “Something very like that."

He led Georg to a large room and pointed to a pile of packing crates and plastic cartons. “You’re just going to make up stories.”

“Oh that’s easy,” Georg breathed in relief, “that’s ea . . .” In shock he realized he couldn’t think up a single plot; not an idea came into his mind.

“It is easy,” Beetle-Pie said with relish. “The crates and cartons contain Writer’s Blocks; they’re all organized by plot character, scene . . . in some case even by writer, if they’ve a contract with us. Consider them a puzzle, you just put the pieces together, anyhow you like. Once you’ve made a complete book, we find an author it fits and . . .”

“Make books for other authors?” Georg’s dead face creased into a frown. “No way in Hell am I making stories for another’s glory. Let the uncreative hacks do their own legwork.”

Beetle-Pie smiled nastily. “Don’t be selfish George - How’d you think we got the bestsellers we gave you? Besides, if you don’t do it, we’ll chop you into Writer’s Blocks for other writers to assemble.”

He vanished in a puff of ochre smoke.

Defeated, Georg walked over to the ‘Plot’ box and pulled out a quivering cube. It seemed made of human flesh. He turned it over, read the script engraved into it.

‘Hard-as-nails C.I.A. operative Blake Hammer . . .’

Georg nodded, he liked the name Hammer. He picked out another Block - “then Jack and the rabbit . . .’ he dropped it back, picked out another - ‘The aliens landed and blew up New Moscow . . .’ That seemed good to Georg . . . but so far no women in the story; he began rooting amongst the ‘Female Love Interest’ Writer’s Blocks: ‘Melanie raised her gun and spat . . .’

*   *   *

Sitting in darkness much MUCH later, Georg wept: “I wish, just wish, I could create something original, anything - just not spend eternity as a hack . . .”

“Georg,” the walls whispered softly back, “there’s no such thing as true originality.”

"The Original"

Copyright: © 2010 Wol-vriey

-------------------------------------

Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall. He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

It’s been raining eyes for six months now. Human eyes. They’re everywhere, black eyes, blue eyes, red eyes, yellow eyes, pink, brown, green and purple eyes; albino eyes even. Sort of like hail but softer.

At first it was a major inconvenience, having to avoid them - if stomped they become this gooey pulp which is harder to get off shoes than schoolgirl-chewed gum.

Then a new company, ‘Demonpharm’ (am I the only one who finds their name less than confidence inspiring?), made a twofold discovery: first, a painless eye-transplant procedure, and second, that it worked on the falling eyes.

What happened next? Yeah you guessed right. With eyes raining all over the world (except over Beijing for some reason), everyone rushed for the new procedure, ditching their original eyes for new. It’s ongoing too - most people I know change eyes at least once a week.

[This last is encouraged by the government. The worst thing the government’s done so far in my opinion is introduce the weekly ‘eyepop’ events; you know where people dispose of their ‘old’ eyes into huge mobile bonfire furnaces. The ‘eyepop’ monicker came about because it sounds like they’re making ‘eye popcorn’ when they burst.

The government says eyepopping was introduced to stimulate the ‘eyeconomy’ i.e. huge eye turnover equals huge eye taxes on Demonpharm.

The government’s dumb as a carrot, But what can you expect from a Rabbit parliament? The president’s a Bug, the prime minister a Bunny. I know that sounds like a scene from a children’s cartoon but it’s not even half as funny.]

There’ve been three eye-trends so far. First, it was having eyes of different colors, then it was ‘eyeball’ eyes (you know the kind the undead slasher has in scary movies - all white without iris or pupils), and now, its eye-shades, where the left and right eyes are the same color, only one is a lighter shade than the other, so you get a disoriented ‘traveling’ feeling of motion when you look at whoever’s face.

Now I’m not an eyelier-than-thou religious hypocrite; I’m not immune to fads myself.

While I avoided the first two, eye-shades has sort of won me over. They look cool, if you avoid the more girly colors and get with the ‘gangster’ look. I’m currently on my sixth set of ‘shades’ now - my left one is black, the right a water-transparent middle tone of grey. Gives me great vibe when I’ve to deal with recalcitrant customers.

Yesterday Demonpharm announced eye-shadow, a new eye-drop which alters the color of the eyes you’ve already got, without you taking them out first. They say it’s their response to customer requests for saving measures, though with eyes as plentiful as sand everywhere, and replacement costs as low as underground fares, who’re they fooling?

More relevant and interesting (if you’ve a high pain threshold) they recently patented the eyejection, an eyeball hypodermic which enables you color your eye’s orb different from its iris . . . and from each other.

My girlfriend Briss is really into this, with her freaky Asian dominatrix thing. Her right eye is currently blue and yellow and her left one red and black. (Yes, she is a sight for sore eyes . . . ha ha . . . sorry couldn’t resist the urge.)

[Her name’s actually Bliss, but . . . well let’s say I never put much stock into Chinese ‘r’ and ‘l’ vocal switchover stereotyping until we started dating]

And still eyes keep raining. Everywhere in the world that isn’t Beijing rain clouds fill the sky like they’re going to pour water on people and pour out eyes instead.

* * *

So on Earth now we’ve eyes to spare. Which should be good, shouldn’t it?

But I’ve got a sneaky feeling about all this; A BAD feeling. I’m certain we’re all going to wake up one morning and find that these new eyes cause cancer or they’ll turn into water in our faces, and . . . and . . . something much, much worse . . .

[And if you think them turning into water sounds far-fetched, remember I just said they fall out of rain clouds?]

*   *   *

Just after the Demonpharm eye-rush began, I asked Briss: “Briss honey, why eyes never fall over Beijing?” (She’d just come over, her English wasn’t too good.)

“Chinese see flar ahead,” she replied while buckling on her thigh-length orange leather boots, and over them her dried-cobra belt. “Rong civirization, rong histoly of lead and pran future. We not need flesh eyes.”

“But you’re using them.”

“Because I lesident in decadent capitarist countly,” she retorted, putting in her cockroach-strung nose rings. She waited till she’d hung on her (life-sized but hollow) tuna earrings before adding angrily - “You know I cultular-exchange student; if I exchange eye as wer I leplesenting Chinese intlests.”

I saw she was angry with me, tried to kiss her. She pushed me off, glared freshly transplanted red orbs at me. “Keep decadent capitarist mouth away flom rovery sociarist body.”

And to make her point she draped her live-toad cloak over the ‘rovery sociarist body’ in question. She glared some more at me, her cloak-toads rolled their eyes and wagged disapproving tongues at me.

Watching her/them walk off, I realized I love her because she makes me look much less mundane and boring.

But her comments stuck with me. And lomance . . . sorry I mean romance, aside, she sounds more and more like a spy everyday.

So unlike everyone else I know, I was smart enough not to get taken in by all the ‘eye popcorn’ nonsense.

Unknown even to my darling Briss, I’ve kept my original eyes in a pickle jar in the fridge so I’ll know exactly where they are when the rain stops, our new eyes all dissolve, running liquid from their sockets, and the Chinese invasion begins.

"Can't See for the Rain"

Copyright: © 2010 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall.  He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

“Hello . . . ?”

“Hello Jane. This is Father.”

“Fa . . . Father?”

“Surely you recognize my voice darling.”

“But . . . you’re dead!”

“Yes, your husband murdered me.”

“Mark?”

“Poison.”

“But Margaret said your heart . . .”

“I’ve some bad news for you dear; Your husband and doctor friend are having an affair.”

“Margaret wouldn’t; she’s my best friend--that’s impossible!”

“Surely not as impossible as my phoning you from the afterlife? They killed me so you’d get your inheritance early, and now . . .”

“Hold on a minute father, I need to sit down; I feel rather odd.”

“I understand dear. That’s what I called about. Mark’s just poisoned you too. You’ve at most fifteen minutes of life remaining.”

“No . . . !”

“Afraid so sweetie. You’ll need to hurry now if you want to murder him in retaliation before you die.”

"Ring Ring"

Copyright: © 2010 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall.  He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

Jenny Loveless saw the scythe whirling through the air towards her at the last reaction-possible moment. She ducked backwards; it slashed the portion of air her neck had occupied and vanished.

She’d however ducked too far back; she lost her balance and pitched back over the quay-side into the black water beneath.

She fell flat, floating downward under the spell of gravity.

The water beckoned her; her reflection rose from its depth, rushed to welcome her falling self to their collision.

When she was six feet above the water, its surface suddenly altered, its glass smoothness bursting upward at points, forming shimmering knives of water perpendicular to its surface.

Jenny Loveless screamed as she was impaled on water. She hung in space, transfixed on water spikes, spurting blood.

I’m dying, she thought.

She was dying. Her blood - her life - streamed from her multitude of punctures. The water welcomed her crimson flow into itself, momentarily dissolving it into darkness.

Jenny Loveless felt her mind darken.

A scene in a nightmare, her body floated over black water; her blood traced rivulets down the water spears.

A mustached gondolier clambered aboard her, poled her water-suspended form back into the canals of Venice.

*   *   *

She awoke in a bright cavern. She got to her feet, standing on the water, still pierced through by water knives, parallel transparent rods of liquid sharpness which projected from both front and back of her body.

She no longer bled - she had no blood left to bleed.

*   *   *

The left side of Batchicken’s head was that of a bat, the right that of a barnyard rooster. It had four eyes, the upper pair a chicken’s, the lower a bat’s. Its right mouth was a beak, its left a twitching whiskered snout. Its noses, ears, and legs, were each divided between its component creatures.

It had four wings, the upper set feathered, the lower leathery. Jenny blinked, confused. She stopped trying to decipher the enigma that was Batchicken.

“I see the Reaper got you again,” Batchicken said unsympathetically. “I’ve told you more than once - escaping from Venice is impossible.”

“I’ve been here before?” Jenny was confused.

“Five hundred and twenty-six times. Why don’t you simply remain DEAD--be an inquisitor? Hell knows you’ve the natural aptitude for it.” It guffawed. “We’re always short staffed in Venice - you can have your choice of canal.”

*   *   *

Jenny glared at Batchicken’s miscegenation of parts. She remembered.

The copyrighter-of-the-year dinner party - the guest of honor had been a cockroach. A big glossy insect wearing a pleated tie and missing its uppermost left leg. It had been seated next to Jenny, on her left. In between bites of chocolate cake and swigs of childbloodwine, they’d made drunken conversation.

“Its economics madam . . .”

“Most definitely,” Jenny giggled drunkenly, unsure what it was talking about.

The door, a red rose, parted like it was blooming on a spring morning and Hatter Sane© walked in with Pink Rabbit© on his arm. Hatter Sane© was actually insane, but he was unable to call himself ‘Insane’ or ‘Mad’ Hatter for obvious copyright reasons. This irked him no end.

Pink Rabbit© had had the same copyright problem and so had dyed himself pink to try and avoid litigation. He’d then been told by everyone that he looked female, and so had decided to play-act a female until the dye bleached out again.

Jenny thought he looked disarmingly cute mincing along beside Hatter Sane©.

The pair walked up to and behind Jenny. She made her point of pointedly ignoring them.

“It’s economics of course,” the cockroach guest-of-honor opined drunkenly beside her.

“Yessssss-arghhHH!” Jenny felt the sudden stab of pain through the left side of her chest, and realized she been shot. She looked back, saw Hatter Sane© smiling down at her. While she gaped in incomprehension, he lifted his razor-gun and kissed its smoking barrel. Then he bent and whispered in Jenny’s ear.

“Malice© sends her regards. She says this is payback.”

Her heart sliced clean in two, Jenny Loveless took the only way out: she died.

*   *   *

“I remember everything now. I’m going to find and kill that bitch!” Jenny paced restively around Batchicken, which every now and then was forced to flap its indeterminately positioned wings to move its double-body out of her way.

“You said that the last five hundred and twenty-six times, can’t you simply accept the fact that you’re DEAD?”

“NO.”

“Okay the ALIVE door’s over there . . . weapons too . . .”

*   *   *

It went VERY badly: Malice© and the Crimson Queen© were expecting her. A gang of copyrighters ambushed her the moment she stepped through the door. She returned their fire, took pleasure in seeing their bodies explode into blood geysers, fled.

Jenny ran till she reached the quay, stopping there only because it seemed familiar. She thought fast; she needed a hideout, somewhere to scheme how to attack the copyrighters. Then she saw the Grimmer Reaper©.

“You again?” the walking shroud sighed at her, its voice the screams of a million ghosts. “Won’t you ever learn to stay DEAD?”

“Malice© done me wrong, I want to repay her.”

“You blew up Fake-Wonderland© - now we copyrighters have nowhere to live. Were you expecting us to thank you?”

“It was an accident.”

“So?”

It was speaking so calmly, Jenny almost missed the motion of its foot as it kicked the scythe at her.

She caught sight of the whirling blade and its trajectory at the last reaction-possible moment . . .

Duck Back! OOOOPS! Shiiiiiitttt!!!

*   *   *

The river’s surface waited patiently for Jenny’s body to reach it, waited for the right moment to form its water spears and impale her falling form.

In its liquid depths, her rising reflection grinned, anticipating their collision.

The mustached gondolier also waited, wondering how long it would take Jenny Loveless to accept the simple fact that no one ever escaped from Venice.

"Venice"

Copyright: © 2010 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall.  He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.

“It’s HUGE,” Macy said.

Jack affected a nod. Looking at their new home, all he could remember were the old salesman’s words: "It’s a great house, but with one catch - Never, ever, go to the east side of the grounds in the afternoon. Morning, evening, even night’s fine, but not afternoon. Not until the sun’s set.”

Weird advice, but which seemed to have been adhered to by the previous residents. The east side of the compound was a jungle. Jack doubted it had started out that way, but now . . . House-high themselves, the grass and bushes grew in such profusion that they looked like part of the Amazon. All it lacked was a river and some anaconda. Looking at it however, Jack was uncertain it lacked anaconda.

“Ugh, we’ll need to clear the bushes,” Macy said.

**

The oddest thing about the house were the animal statues. The statues, all of jungle carnivores, were, arranged in two rows between the house and its ‘jungle’, on pedestals higher than the building; stands staggered so no beast blocked another from view. Macy observed this the second day after they’d moved in, while staring down from their bedroom window. She called Jack’s attention to it.

“It’s creepy,” she said with a shiver, pointing.

He looked, saw what she meant. The afternoon’s sun’s rays had thrown the animal statue shadows on the ‘jungle’, arranging them in a line, like they were walking across the top the grass. In addition, the sun’s warming the air was making the shadows ripple as though they were alive.

“We need to clear the bushes,” Macy said.

Jack nodded.

**

Jack began clearing the bushes on the house’s East side two days later. Macy was insistent it had to go, and he’d discovered he’d no alternative.

To his surprise, all six gardening companies he’d called had declined the job once he gave them his address; two hadn’t even bothered to wait and hear what he wanted. Finally he’d called Mr. Macking, the housing agent.

“It’s what I was trying to explain when I sold it to you, Mr. Macking said. “There’s an old superstition that the place
is bad luck.”

“But that’s silly!”

“Maybe so, but still, no-one’s dared clear the bushes since -” Macking’s voice lapsed into silence.

“Since what?”

“Okay it’s more than superstition. The last owner was found half-eaten on the edge of the uncleared patch . . .”

“What!?”

“Neighbors heard him screaming at three in the afternoon. He’d ignored the instructions not to go there then, see?”

Jack was stumped. “I don’t get it, the police . . .”

“Won’t go near there.”

“The zoo then.”

“Them neither.”

“Let me try to get this straight: There’s a wild animal living in the grounds of this building, which for some reason no one’s willing to track down and kill, and you sold it to me. You didn’t even fence that part off. I’m going to sue . . .”

“You’ll lose the case,” the estate agent interrupted him, his tone indicating his patience had worn thin. “Listen Mr. Baker, there’s absolutely no danger to you or anyone else in the house . . .”

“I consider a wild animal . . .”

Macking’s voice was cold. “. . . as long as you don’t go into that patch in the afternoon. Have a nice day, Mr. Baker.”

Jack found himself listening to the dial tone.

He narrated the conversation to Macy. “We’re moving,” he said finally, “Just as soon as . . .”

“I like this place,” she interrupted him sweetly. “Can’t you clear away the weeds yourself?”

“That, Jack said, pointing out-window at the offensive patch of vegetation, the hot afternoon sun once again etching shifting animal shadows on its surface, “Is a jungle. How . . . where do you expect me to begin?”

“At that edge.” Macy pointed. “If you’re scared, work in the mornings.”

Jack felt like he’d been stabbed.

“Scared?”

Macy smiled a saccharine smile, knowing she had him. “Well it is creepy dearest: the superstitions, the shadows . . .”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

**

Saturday morning Jack began work, with a pair of machetes and a lawn mower. The grass reached well over his head, and to his surprise, he discovered that once inside the bushy patch, he was unable to see the animal statues lining it at all.

It was a cool day. He worked till eleven in the morning, forced to stop when he came on a patch of bamboo which had no business being there. He examined it cautiously, almost expecting to see monkeys chattering atop the longer stems.

He sat down, back against a bamboo stem, to rest. He’d so far cleared a fifty-meter-square patch, about an eighth of the offending vegetation. Working at his current rate he’d be done in seven days.

Macy brought Jack a glass of lemonade, went back into the house. Jack drank it down, made himself comfortable, dozed off.

**

He was wakened by a growl. He opened his eyes, scanned the sky. The sun was well past its zenith. It had to be about two o’clock now.

Damn, he’d slept into the forbidden afternoon hours.

Then he noticed the first oddity.

The cut grass had regrown itself completely around the edge of the patch, fencing him in.

He started, then noticed something else.

There was a shadow facing him. He blinked, wiped his eyes. It was a shadow, that of a lion. The only problem was that it was standing upright, out of the ground.

He watched in horror as it ‘thickened’.

As Jack stared back towards the animal statues by the house, now understanding the reason for the warnings he’d been given, other wild-animal-shadows walked out of the bush to join the lion.

‘Thickening’ as they came, they advanced on Jack, with hunger in their eyes and bared shadow teeth . . .

"The East Side of the House"
Copyright: © 2010 Wol-vriey

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Wol-vriey is Nigerian, and quite tall. He believes that there actually are things that go bump in the night.