The old man walked among the flock gathered in his makeshift church, taking stock of their nubile, barely legal bodies, comparing them to his own withered countenance… when he heard a sharp scratch and saw a dark shadow moving at the speed of illusion across the candyglass window depicting a well-hung Christ dangling his manhood before a flock of salivating children… before he could blink the shadow repeated it’s whip-like movement… there was no way in hell that was a flying squirrel (hell, the word repeated in his inner monologue… hell).

Days before, two men had come to the deepest part of the jungle, where the treetops were so thick that even the African sun, whose ego boiled the droplets of filthy water in distended bellies could not penetrate, where she, Sekhmet, once Hathor, cow now lion had lived in solitude, so much so that she did not even think to hide her bared breasts from the first men she'd lain eyes on in years. Sekhmet pulled her razor-edged Ida, emasculated them in every sense of the word, returned it to the sheath and sped off into the realms of legend, while as the men lay bleeding, her sister Bast masturbated in under a blanked of misanthropic shadows, far removed from the African sunscape.

 Sekhmet had refused the peace offering they'd brought on the old man's behalf, knowing the difference between a virtuous man and a hole in the world. Her sharpened teeth shinier than the shoes of selfmade archons, her conscience as clean as a gas station lavatory in Quito, the War-Goddess stalked across the Atlantic, moving in on the homeland of her chosen target... New York City.

And there she was, outside the old man's window, a shadow bouncing just out of sight, to let him know that all that he had built died tonight.

The old man could smell the blood-warm scent of his fate even before the candyglass shattered and She stood black furred and tall before him, smiled and pulled a small hunting knife from a tight leather sheath (this was not the wide sword blade of her Ida, but a smaller crescent tool, meant for pain of a more delicate nature), but the old man looked back to his naked flock now shivering in the rush of a Manhattan winter, brought on he the broken window, and stood his ground, saying only, in a betrayed warble, "Never trust a God who throws out his heart."

Though the old man thought he would find peace, he found instead that his grey matter was shifting, writhing, transforming into something else, his mind filled with warm, decent thoughts, fathers having ice cream cones with their children, monks chanting words of gratitude to a world they knew was imperfect, orgasms not paid for with money or deceit, great acts of anonymous altruism, hope, goodness, life that was life, the raw juicy electric bittersweet burning truths of the human potential that he had never realized and lived to vanquish were there where once his rotten porcine brain had been.

SHE was making him feel these things, and as he began to cry she handed him the knife... he felt guilt for the very first time in life as he slit his own throat before his sheep, and perhaps, in the end, it might have served to him as come small comfort that his funeral was vigorously attended... that is if you counted the maggots.

"Of Mice, And Men, And Cats"

Copyright: © 2011 Garrett Cook & Ash Lomen

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* The authors would like to mention that this story was created using Alan M. Clark's word tech, as shown in his new book BONEYARD BABIES.

Two men faced each other in the center of an ornate metal ring.

One was big, white, oafish, and bald.

The other was short, stocky, handsome and black with long dreadlocks.

Despite all outside appearances, the two men were brothers. They had both watched in chains as the big blue eyed mother that they shared was torn apart in the cruel gears of some Vladrott steam machine just days before their minds were sufficiently warped, pumped, and prepared for the gas.

Hundreds of cramped and creeping spectators surrounded the ring in a living, purple-black mass of phallic eyes, malformed tentacles, and other writhing, groping, oddly twisted limbs. A musky chemical smell like stale semen seeped through their alien pores as the tension built.

The big white man looked down to his brother, “I love you Charlie”

Charlie never had the time to respond. The gas was soundlessly released.

The white man dove into his brother before he could even think about his first move. He picked Charlie up and slammed him down upon the cold metal floor with a sound like sledgehammer meeting a side of frozen beef. Charlie attempted to roll and minimize the assault to his spine while simultaneously locking his ankles around his brother’s midsection, taking the giant down with him, on top of him.

The big man continued his assault; pummeling Charlie’s head against the floor. Charlie’s face slowly begin to dissolve into pulp beneath his brother’s heavy fists, until the smaller man somehow shifted his mass, and in a flurry of unseen movement it was Charlie now atop and behind his brother, ebony arms locked around his thick neck, bleeding crimson upon his pale face.

And just like that it was over; the snapping of the bigger man’s neck punctuated the lustful hiss of the Vladrott mob.

Charlie dropped to his knees and draped himself across his brother’s, naked, lifeless body.

It was then that the assembled Vladrott were informed over Ship’s telepathic communication system that males with darker skin pigmentation, such as those descended from Middle Eastern, Latin, Asian, or African stock, had because of some, as of yet undiscovered genetic anomaly, become resistant to the effects of the gas.

The circle of Vladrott erupted in a burst of maniacal, alien laughter.

Charlie, now prone over his dead brother, let loose a bloody sob.

"A Tiny War Between Brothers"

Copyright: © 2011 Ash Lomen

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My phantom soul itches at the sight of something vaguely human shambling in the distance. Upon closer inspection I see that whatever it is… it's male. His missing arm, ripped recently from his muscular shoulder, is more than made up for by his hairy, dangling, third leg.

"And testicles the size of grapefruits."

I realize that I am talking out loud, and masturbating my own miniscule member.

"Fuck it, something to rape is something to rape."

I shift my weight atop my perch of piled human heads as I discard my notions of female companionship for the moment, jumping down to ground level and landing cleanly on my filthy feet, displacing the fine layer of bone dust that covers the entire rocky surface of New Hell (giving it the false look of snow).

He spots me and thinks to run, but I have a blade buried in his heart before his brain can even process the thought. I stand above his pleasantly twisting corpse and look down into his fading eyes. I watch intently as his soul leaves his oddly proportioned body and passes onto the final plane of existence… but before it does… he looks up at me and (probably unaware of what I intend to do with his remains) says the strangest (or perhaps, upon further reflection, not so strange at all) thing.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." I reply.

"An Unintentional Act of Kindness"

Copyright: © 2011 Ash Lomen

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Abe followed the choking, cloudy, bonedust trail up to Spire and knocked somewhat reluctantly upon it's meaty door. As cold flesh parted he was met by his master's avatar. A spindly creature, more loose cartilage than grace, rubbery, and dripping with salvation.

Or at least something like it.

But Spire's fleshy door closed, and Abe, naked and crying, was denied the psychotropic heroin-white paste that dripped form his master's pores. Perhaps the god had found a new boy to lick him. Abe felt dejected... and oddly disillusioned.

He took solace only in a magenta knifeblade hidden tightly in his boot.

As Abe drew the blade in thoughts of cool revenge, machinations forming like cockwork in his once placid eyes, it might as well have cut a smile straight across the boy's tear stained face.

Abe followed the choking, cloudy, bonedust trail up to Spire and knocked somewhat reluctantly upon it's meaty door. As cold flesh parted he was met by his master's avatar. A spindly creature, more loose cartilage than grace, rubbery, and dripping with salvation.

Or at least something like it.

Before the fleshy door closed, Abe dove in and drove his blade into the chest of his master's avatar. Imaging, as he hacked away, how the insides of a god would taste.

When he calmed his stabbing to begin his dissection Abe realized that he was no longer assaulting his master's gangly avatar, but his own lifeless form.

He woke up.

Abe followed the choking, cloudy, bonedust trail up to Spire and knocked somewhat reluctantly upon it's meaty door. As cold flesh parted he was met by his master's avatar. A spindly creature, more loose cartilage than grace, rubbery, and dripping with salvation.

Or at least something like it.

"Dripping With Salivation"

Copyright: © 2011 Ash Lomen

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The night was cold, and dark, and ultimately derisive of my blackened heart.

I could even care less about the apocalypse raging on around me. You see, I had decided to stop living long before the undead ever rose to walk our city streets. The monster that took away everything I ever loved being all too human...

Zombies stalked by me uncaring, craving something alive, something that would still scream and fight if they tore into its flesh.

Or perhaps somehow they knew I would only thank them for quickening my inevitable death, perhaps they even hesitated showing me their secret world where the fire of emotional pain no longer burned. Either way, they ignored me.

For all intents and purposes... I was one of them.

Still, they offered me no company, and loneliness, like slow undeath, soon caused my body to shrivel and my brain to wither.

In time I committed atrocities aside my brethren. Atrocities that put even the heartlessness of my lover's killer to shame. I raped and cannibalized entire families. I purged entire bloodlines.

Yet I was merely playing the role of a beast. There was never any real catharsis.

I still hoped against hope, that one day, I would forget the pain of being a man.

And perhaps, if I was very lucky... I would forget that I was ever a man at all.

"I, Zombie"

Copyright: © 2011 Ash Lomen

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