The holes came to Holkum Springs one day in the summer without a sound. They turned up on the outskirts of town on the other side of the train yard, opening up in dirt roads and the miles of corn stalks on the Henderson’s farm, fat round cavities where people fell in and didn’t get out. Geologists from the college up the highway got on the six o’clock news and said they were sinkholes from heavy rains and soil erosion. The mayor slapped them on the backs with a smile and declared the matter closed to the public, and it made good enough sense at the time. They didn’t make towns like they used to anymore, what with all the jobs going to China and India and all the factories closing up. Sometimes towns just got old and fell apart.

In the heat of July the holes came to the water tower. They appeared in the old red barn on Route 91 and the roof of the church on the hill, big enough to fit a man through if one were so inclined. Pastor John shook his Holy Bible during Sunday service and yelled through the hole above his head for God’s strength to see them through, but God didn’t seem to be listening. If he had been, he didn’t have much to say on the matter. Theories moved through the town like a fire over the telephone line from house to house, but nobody seemed to know where the holes came from or what they wanted. When the holes got to Main Street everyone decided that they were bad, because by then everyone could see them and there was no skirting it at City Hall. The holes found their ways inside of the drug store, the barber shop, the fire station and the court house. They opened up in trees and dogs and pick-up trucks, like little windows or port holes made to look through to the other side.

Some said it was caused by pollution and space radiation. Others claimed that it was caused by gay marriage and drugs in Amsterdam. God was punishing sinners for prostitution and aborted babies, in a miniature Armageddon going down in Holkum Springs, a practice run for the real-deal. Talk down at the gun shop and diner pegged it as moral decay and liberal wishing-washing. It was weakening the fabric of the Heartland, crooked politicians making it bad for everybody else over coffee and eggs. That’s when the strings began to unravel, one for every hole, at the corners of buildings and under the frames of pickup trucks. They began to curl at the edges of leaves of the trees and in the webbing between fingers and toes, like the loose threads of a sweater, plucked and pulled.

Rick from the corner store said that it was just that the strings that held things together in the world had come undone. They were coming apart bit by bit until the holes began to appear, the spaces in between all things. It happened sometimes, he said, when they loosened up from overuse, something to do with the time-space continuum. Rick was a stoner from the community college who drove an old hatchback and mooched off of his girlfriend, so nobody really took him seriously. Nobody else had an answer either, not the mayor or the six o’clock news, so Holkum Springs continued to unwind, a little every day. People and houses and cars frayed around the edges, loosening up like straw-men, fearful of gusts of breeze that could sweep up their threads and carry them away until they unraveled completely.

After a few beers on a Tuesday night Rick got into his hatchback and drove past the train yards where the first holes appeared. Sitting around wasn’t going anybody any good, so with a flashlight in hand he wandered down the dirt road behind the Henderson’s farm until he found the first hole. It had grown since it first appeared, swelling up wider with each loosened string. Nosing around the hole with the toe of his shoe, Rick found a thread torn free of its mouth. He scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders, and stooping to take the thread he tugged on it, tugged and tugged until the hole closed up. Rick kept tugging, until the holes in the water tower and the church closed, the drug store and the barber shop and the fire station sealed shut with the sound of laces pulled up tight.

When Holkum Springs woke up the next morning, all the people were pulled back together again, with their dogs and pick-up trucks, strings taut and edges smoothed over. Half the town ran down to church, the other to the liquor store, and no one was talking about the apocalypse anymore. Rick just tugged the tread and tied it off, digging a pen and pad from the book-bag in his backseat. He left the thread where he found it, with a note, “In case of Armageddon, pull.”

"In Case of Armaggedon"
Copyright: © 2010 Magen Toole
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Magen Toole is a writer and student from Texas, whose work has appeared in MicroHorror, Everyday Weirdness, The Battered Suitcase, and others. Her blog can be found here http://magentoole.wordpress.com/

He hated the white coat. It made him feel like a lab rat scurrying through a hospital maze. Without it, though, security would treat him like some criminal instead of a resident on rounds. He liked the stethoscope. He slung it around his neck, where it drooped like an unknotted tie. He shut Locker 33 and slid a padlock through the handle, clicking the shackle and turning the blue dial twice past zero.

Tonight he was working the glass-walled Intensive Care Unit, a laminated ID card hanging from his neck. Dr. Thomas Block, it said, under the obligatory grainy head shot. It didn’t look like him at all.

He picked up the first chart and stared at it. Okay, he thought. Let’s see if we can’t get Mr. Gregory Hampton’s pain level down. He slid a syringe into the IV tube and pushed the plunger. He moved on to the second bed and pulled the chart. Metastatic melanoma, he read. Bowel. Good candidate, he grimaced. He administered the shot and moved on.

The night nurse came in.

“Excuse me, Doctor”—she located his name tag—“Block. Where is Dr. Isaacs? She’s supposed to be on rounds.”

“Family emergency,” he said. “Last-minute kind of thing.” The nurse eyed him. “But I’m glad you’re here,” he continued. “Can’t seem to find the lab results for bed three. Any clues?”

“Didn’t know labs were ordered for Ms. Ruiz,” the nurse replied. “I’ll check.” The nurse went back to her desk and picked up the phone. The door to the ICU whispered shut and he stared at the innocent face of the comatose Ms. Ruiz. High-grade lymphoma, the chart said. How could he not administer the miracle cure? He pulled the needle out just as Mr. Hampton in bed one began coding.

A riot of alarms and beeps coming from the bedside monitors brought the night nurse back in, running. She bent over bed one just as the monitors for bed two erupted.

“Doctor Block!” she cried. “I’ll take Hampton. You take the melanoma!” He stared at her heaving shoulders, saw the way her spine bulged like a cable through the back of her green scrubs. He moved behind her and wrapped the stethoscope around her neck and pulled, his knee in her back. She was a fighter. She flailed and kicked back, trying to topple him. She went limp and fell to the floor just as the third set of monitors went off.

He dropped the dry, empty syringe into a sharps box, then walked out of the ICU and down the hall. Nurses and EMT’s went running past him, pushing complicated-looking machines, heading for the ICU. He took the back elevator that went express to the basement.

He stuffed the white coat and the laminated ID into a trash bin just outside the morgue and followed the signs to the Emergency Room and exited to the street. The night air was freedom on his face. That was just it, he thought. Air was freedom, whether in his lungs or in the barrel of a syringe.

He could still smell the nurse on him, her Johnson & Johnson hair, her Dove-white neck. He thought he might swoon as he stumbled along, inhaling the scent clinging to his shirt.

When he got home, he poured a glass of Chablis and surfed the Internet for some naughty nurse porn and released himself manually into a flushable wipe. He fell into bed and slept dreamlessly until he was awakened midday by the garbage men slamming metal trash cans against the back of their truck. He rubbed his eyes and went to the window and opened it, letting in some air. He poured himself a bowl of Frosted Flakes and sat at the computer to check his sales on E-Bay. He was happy to see that his volume had almost doubled overnight.

The next day, the police used bolt cutters on the padlock of Locker 33, after they were pretty sure it wasn’t just a sandwich going bad in there. When they pulled open the door, out fell a bloated, greenish-blue body. It had a wad of surgical gauze stuffed down its throat. Dental records identified the remains as Dr. Thomas Block, a resident physician who had been missing since the day before.

Dr. Block’s ID had been retrieved outside the morgue, where his body was taken. The medical examiner leaned against the slab, looking back and forth from the ID to the swollen green hamburger of Dr. Block’s face. The M.E. was sure of only one thing.

Dr. Block’s ID didn’t look anything like him.

Now.

"First Do Some Harm"
Copyright: © 2010 Robert Meade
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Robert Meade is a transplanted Bostonian now firmly rooted in Mohegan Lake, in Westchester County, NY, with his wife and three children. He teaches at Loyola School in Manhattan. He won the Wordweaving Award for Excellence for his book, Daily Bread: Seven Days to a Healthier Soul. A published author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, his recent work has appeared in Angels on Earth magazine and online at Guideposts and Apollo’s Lyre.

David sat on a bed, happy in his experiments. He tried not to wake his father as he poured over an ancient book of science. A diagram instructed him to place handfuls of straw and dead spiders into a box and close it. Shake gently and wait—he opened the box, and white mice appeared: pink noses, red eyes, bristling whiskers. David said it's not possible, and the mice began to die so that rats took their place by threes. David consulted his book of science.

3 MICE = 1 RAT

That made sense in a book, but these creatures lived. They gnashed yellow-white teeth. They scratched at the box to escape, and their bodies were warm and wet inside. David tried to hush them, but the smell of rat urine woke his father.

“Get out of here, you little—!”

David’s head hurt in the daylight. He fled to the old pond down back where he found the waters neglected and ill. Big animals died here, carcasses steaming with the fog of decay where primordial things grew. A giant oak tree rose from the muck. David saw that at least the frogs were alive. One of them sat motionless with his arms folded and his back turned. David wanted the frog’s attention, so he pulled up his courage like a warm jacket and tapped the old lungfish on his bony shoulder.

“What now, boy?” the old frog grumbled.

“I came outside to play. Do you want to play with me?”

The old frog didn’t answer, just raised a bloody hand and gestured toward a nearby hole in the ground. It was an abandoned well gone bitter and black, and David headed over to see what the matter was. He found four turtles there, swimming on their backs in the muck amid the slimy leaves. The turtles snapped at his fingers when he reached for them. Flat white teeth crowded their lips, and David returned sadly to the old frog with insight.

“One of the turtles bit you. Didn’t it?”

“Yeah-hup,” the old frog said, and David knew how that must’ve felt. Painful, but with a sort of shame mixed in. He made a point to stand close to the old frog but very still. Dusk electrified his eyes, his skin. His fingertips tingled. These moments mattered to him: a little like sharing but too much like asking.

May I sit with you?

May I shoulder the burden?

May I please have a slice of your people pie?

Death and decay pumped into his lungs. It oozed into his pores and filled his head like a toilet bowl. He looked back at his old house on the hill and realized, All that shit trickles down here…septic infusion poisons our pond.

“Fuck ’em,” David said like a big boy now. He referred to the turtles and to the imaginary eels too, and he settled beside the old frog to divide this ancient feeling. They watched the oak tree grow. Even in darkness, its leaves were lustrous.

"Septic Infusion"
Copyright: © 2010 Bryan Lindenberger
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Bryan Lindenberger's stories have appeared in over 300 books and magazines including Zodiac Fantastic, Fantastic Worlds, New Writings in the Fantastic and many others. New stories are forthcoming in the Clash of Steel: Demon anthology, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and Mirror Dance. He has written historical and spiritual articles for consumer magazines and am editor/publisher of Symphonie’s Gift, a digital ’zine that began in 1996: http://www.bryanbergmedia.net/symphonies_gift.html.

“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.

In her spare time, she teaches the parrot Chinese - how to speak it and how to write the glyphs by dipping its claw tips into a dim sum bowl of ink, then scratching on the newspapers lining its cage.
.
She moves onto rhinos. She teaches one how to hula hoop the lid of an oil drum that has been reconstructed to look like a lopsided O.
.
Teaching the cheetahs to roller skate is a breeze. They’re brazen creatures, showoffs, doing figure eights and shuttling backwards blindfolded.
.
The hardest thing to do is to get the snake to stand up straight. He keeps eyeing her with contempt, its wide nostrils flaring, looking just like her husband.

"Snake Eyes"
Copyright: © 2010 Len Kuntz
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I threw myself out into the black air, all metallic skin and pulsing bones. The action almost made me sick. I struggled to steady my body while the streetlights shone beams of light directly into my eyes.

Wrapped up in dirty cotton, I had only one thing on my mind: concealment. Loping off into the dusty evening, I pulled my hood up over my head, my eyes sunken treasures at the bottom of my ruined face.

After stopping briefly to smother a patchwork cat with disdain, my quest underwent an injurious challenge. I filled the beggar's cup with heart cold phlegm and hunched my back like a fairytale bridge. Gloomy keyboardists descended with questions about illumination and I left them in the dark.

I fixed my hated shoes with a gaze usually reserved for misspelling. A shadow in a headscarf tried to engage me in political discussion almost instantly. I crossed the cracked street, narrowly avoiding a car full of exhortations of love. Idolaters congregated at a sixty degree angle eagerly awaiting the Next Big Thing. I broke wind loudly in their direction, content that they would not be able to carve a golden statue of shit particles floating in methane.

Noting my complete lack of personal success, I hurried towards my destination. Snippets of conversation fluttered down on me in an indecipherable paper hail and I removed the words “banging birds” from my ears with no small degree of irritation.

A shriek of sloppy babies rumbled towards me in their devices. Using my hair as a slick veil I made myself into a hiding place. Acquaintances bluebottled me and I honoured my noble self with the title of Worst Ninja Ever.

I juttered away like claymation, blaming the time for everything and finally I reached the portal to salvation. I passed the pillars of smoke and designer gear and was confronted by shelves of bewilderment. Locating the antidote quickly to avoid derangement I shovelled the weight from my pockets away and emerged back into the outside. I unwrapped the ennui-breaker and chewed it noisily. For several minutes my mouth became a crushing cavity filled with brown delicious.

Time passed.

After that things didn’t seem so bad for a while.

"The Grump"
Copyright: © 2010 John Harrower
----------------------------------

John Harrower 24, WM, NS, GSOH, OMG, WLTM interesting individuals that he can shamelessly use as characters in his flash fiction or put in ridiculous and often fantastical situations for embarrassing effect. Find him in Stirling, Scotland scrawling non sequiturs in underpasses.

Jerry tapped his foot, rocking back and forth, his eyes peeled to the warehouse across the street, a cold, dreary, transportation building.

“Ohh, no, no, don’t want to go over there,” he said. “Nope, but the boss man’ll get me. Yeeup, fire me like a barbecue! Barbecue …yeeup, I like barbecues.”

He picked up the package ready for ground shipment to San Francisco, Metropolitan Orthopedics, (FRAGILE was taped across the top).

“Gotta get it to the dock. Yeeup, that’s right.” He bit on his cuticle, already split and raw. “Okey, dokey, here we go; one foot in front of the other. Not gonna end up like Mikey. Nope, no siree. Just set it on the counter and go. Yeeup.”

Last week, the morning crew found Mike’s body cut into pieces inside a coffin waiting for ground shipment to Deadwood, Oregon. Mike was six-foot, three inches—all muscle and attitude, so whatever killed him, nobody wanted to know, and no one ever took the night shift anymore. But Jerry needed the money, needed to buy Ma some new teeth, and the abandoned night shift offered overpay.

He stopped rocking to check his digital watch—11:30 pm. “Better go, gotta do it. Yeeup.”

He hopped from his stool, clutching the package with whitened knuckles. Outside, the dark angles in the vacant lot fueled his paranoia.

“Just keep walkin’…one, two, skip to my Lou. Yeeup.”

The peppy skip lightened his mood, but then he remembered the package, (FRAGILE was taped across the top).

“Uh-oh. Can’t break it, gotta be careful.” He slowed to a fast walk, one of his hidden talents—sometimes, he could even pass joggers in the park.

Along the building, tall, sharp shadows reached out for him and he dwelled in the streetlight for a moment before unlocking the door. The lock didn’t click as it usually did. He shrugged and went inside. The door slammed shut behind him, booming through the still expanse like sheet rock falling on concrete. Overhead, fluorescent lighting lit up the 30’ foot ceiling warehouse with a dim coldness—like Mikey’s body, he thought.

Jerry smacked his palm against the side of his head. “No, no, no, just set it on the counter and go. Yeeup. Easy as pie. I like pie, pineapple cherry pie. Yeeup.”

He checked the bill number again. Dock C was located across the building through a maze of metal shelves, stacked pallets, and open, black space.

“One foot in front of the other, uncle Ted kissed my mothe…,” he stopped when he heard the main door close with a bang.

Uh-oh, you dimwit, Jerry, he cursed. Shoulda’ locked the door.

He turned around, hugging the package with bloated, nervous eyes. “Hello?”

Nobody answered.

“Knock, knock, who’s there?”

Only silence.

Moving on, he hummed a tune from Cheers. The familiar melody gave him comfort, even though his thoughts kept saying things like, Hey, weren’t Mikey’s arms and legs cut off at his torso? I bet his balls looked like Ma’s beets.

Against the wall in the back were two forklifts, an old 1967 Mustang waiting ocean vessel shipment to some place better, and at the end, a long cherry-wood chest.

“Ahh, bloody knuckles. No, no, no, not good. Yeeup, that’s a coffin. Yes siree.”

Jerry passed by the casket at an angle similar to the Tower of Pisa and when he reached dock C, he signed a Hail Mary—backwards.

“Set it down, gotta be careful.” (FRAGILE was taped across the top). He checked his watch again—11:47 pm. “Good to go. Yeeup.”

He rounded the corner, back into the main hall—it seemed different, but everything looked in order, except now the coffin lid was open.

Crusty critters! Jerry stopped so fast, he tripped forward. “Oh, I shoulda’ stayed at the office. Ma could just eat bananas…and she likes oatmeal too.”

His heart thudded as he looked down the aisles and behind his back, all without moving his feet. Then, in front of him, something rustled behind one of the pallets.

“Gotta be a mouse. Yeeup.” But the thoughts in his head said, That’s probably what Mikey thought too.

As he headed for the door, Jerry tried to ignore the scraping noises behind him. Sounds like a dead body being dragged, his mind suggested, compelling him to glance over his shoulder. He did and noticed an unusual thing—a little boy, maybe three years, stood upright on one of the pallets.

Jerry stopped. “Hey there, little mister. How’d you get in here?”

Cherub cheeks fattened with a giggle. “No, big mister…how are you going to get out of here?”

Huh? Jerry scratched his head. “Isn’t it a little late for you to be out? Did you lose your parents?”

The little boy smiled, disturbingly. “Not lose, mister…ate. I ate my parents.”

Jerry laughed at the little fellow’s joke, though he felt pressure building in his bladder. The boy’s smile widened, exposing a row of silver teeth. You bonehead, Jerry, he thought, backing up towards the door. Yeeup, this is not good.

He bumped into something solid…behind him stood a man, about six-three with sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes. “Mikey?”

“Yeeup,” Mike replied, flashing a silver-toothed grin. Blood oozed at the corners of his mouth. “Hello, Jerry,” he said in a soft, joyful voice. “I heard you like barbecues; we were just about ready to have one. Would you like to come and join us?”

The pressure in Jerry’s bladder was beyond a tickle now. He noticed giant staples around Mike’s neck and arms. At the brush of cool air on his skin, he spun around to find not only one child, but a group of them, grinning with silver teeth and little palms clutched around shiny, carving knives.

Yeeup. Fire you like a barbecue, his mind whispered.

Mike led Jerry back to the coffin. As the kids sharpened their blades using their steeled-tooth mouths, he couldn’t help but think how those teeth might work real well for his Ma.

"The Warehouse"
Copyright: © 2010 Erin Cole

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Erin Cole loves a good barbecue, but she hates pineapple cherry pie. Though she writes mystery and horror for fun, it also a good means to hide from three little monsters that follow her around. She's been published in Lame Goat Press: Howl, Sex and Murder Magazine, Outside Writers 1000th Monkey, and has upcoming work in Pill Hill Press: Daily Flash Fiction. She blogs regularly at Listen to the Voices.