Italian artist Alberto Vittorio Viti is best known for his work in portraits. He is an artist and painter who brings canvas and page to life in a way that few could. http://albertovittorioviti.deviantart.com/

Twilight

In the mystic dark of twilight
Before the Sandman is dusting
Comes the rustling of the dead

The whispers start
As the chirps of crickets
The murmurs become
A rattle of bones
As the silence is stunned

By the thoughts
With the questions
And the statements
Of those passed
On before us
Into the glow of beyond

Not even the counting of sheep
Or the taking of pills
Will help them gain the sleep
For the infinite unrest
Of those six feet deep

Wishing to let us know
What they have discovered
The secrets of beyond
The fantasy of life
Because they can only come
When we refuse to believe
In the mystic dark of twilight

Barry Hunter has published Baryon Magazine since 1976 and it is well known in the science fiction and fantasy field. He has been writing since his college days and most recently his fiction has been presented in various anthologies published by Whortleberry Press. He is married and has one son. His websites are www.baryon-online.com and thebaryonreview.blogspot.com

Phantom Limb

The way sunlight pounds through traffic to reach my body on the sidewalk—
this, this is always with me
and also
the snarling city cops looking for something to smash
and how they always find it
and also
the night noises: howling sirens, shouts, something breaking,
the coyotes up by the Hollywood sign—nobody’s babies
and also
watching where I step, the growling citizenry, the sly smiles, the shrugs,
the caution, the desperate religion, the snorting busses, the cast-off shoe
under the bus bench
and also
and also
Leaving my city—an amputation—a mistake of such egregious proportions
that the only rectification come in dreams
and also
and also
pungent sidewalks, unlit laundry room in my old apartment, roach baits to
be purchased
every 60 days, my city, my love
A shrink told me once, “Contrary to popular mythology, people DO die of a
broken heart.”
So it goes… so it is this grief of mine, this missing city
I want you even when I am with you.
—

Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is Learning by Rote. (Deerbrook Press, 2012) She is also the author of What We Can’t Forgive. Late Night Radio, Perhaps You Could Breathe For Me, Hunger, After the Earthquake: Poems 1996-2006, Not Untrue & Not Unkind(Arabesques Press, Amari Hamadene, editor) and Running Like a Woman with Her Hair on Fire: Collected Poems(Red Hen Press). She has written four novels and several books of poetry, has been included in Ascent Aspirations first hard-copy Anthology, also in the anthology In The Company Of Women and has been widely published in literary magazines such as: Ascent Aspirations, Bellingham Review, Blessed Are These Hands, Cape Rock, Connecticut Poetry Review, Cenacle, Counterpunch, Current Accounts, Divine Femme, Haight Ashbury, Iota, Istanbul Literary Review,Niche, Piedmont Literary Review, Southern Review of Poetry, Shot of Ink, Smiling Politely,Touchstone, Women’s Work, Yet Another Small Magazine, and others.

Blue

The beads slipped down the virgin s white slope,

precipitous crevice; flew low, like new

little birds; skimmed the blue dress threads,

land of floating clouds covered their glow.

They slid into the cupped palms of a pious

priest, who bedeviled them with snaking thin

digits until the gems gave in, found a child.

Love, the religious hissed, Love; and he draped

those beads across the child s clavicle,

down the spare and narrow chest. He fingered

the pretties; found his true god; exulted.

The child cried, and the air went quiet.

The beads glimmered on to the next, and

the next every innocent blinded

by his own thistled eyes and quaking lips.

Bertha Rogers s poems have been published in literary magazines and journals and in several collections. Her latest collection, Heart Turned Back, was published by Salmon Poetry Publishing, Ireland. Her translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, was published in 2000 by Birch Brook Press; her translation of the Anglo-Saxon riddle poems from the Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, is forthcoming.

The War at Night

You’re not who you say you are
but that doesn’t matter to me.
I’m not who I say I am
that’s why you’re perfect for me.
Behind your battlements
an army of one presents
a plan of attack to slay
a hero we all betray.
Can’t you see the humor in it all?
I’m only here to watch you fall.
So wicked am I.
And you could lie to me always and constantly
I’ll tear them all apart to match your wounded heart.
Cant you see the humor in it all?
I’m only here to watch you fall.
So wicked am I.

Sean Spillane first gained notice from his time in the critically acclaimed band ARLO. His career in music has led to various national and international tours and four full length albums. With work that spans genres Spillane makes music with a genuine touch of soul that is hard to find. Most recently Sean composed and recorded the delightfully edgy soundtrack for the film The Woman (based on the writing of Jack Ketchum and directed by Lucky McKee). He also released the 80’s inspired soundtrack to Brian Keene’s Ghoul. He also scored the soundtrack for Jug Face.

(While we normally do not post song lyrics, this one is one I hold very dear. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do. Thank you kindly ~Tina)

Autumn

The leaves are flying off the trees, red and yellow
And here I am Poland again, among the mountains
Alone in my hotel room
Listening to the wedding music beneath me in the ballroom.
Laughter, and singing

I went to a wedding once
and it was mine

Or ours, I should say
But she has gone now, gone forever
And while the music thumps beneath me in the ballroom
The bed beside me is empty
Just as the seat beside me on the plane was unoccupied
And the chair next to me in the restaurant this morning
Where I ate smoked fish and eggs for breakfast
was vacant

I come here to Poland
because my heart is here, and always will be
It is the closest I can get to the love that I have lost
Her ghost is here; if she is anywhere

As autumn falls, and the leaves fly off the trees, yellow and red
And the evening air grows chilly
I can almost hear her laughing, as I cross the market square in Bielsko
To stand by the fountain of the children turned to stone

The children, turned to stone.

And then, in the gloomy cathedral
As a choir sings high and sweet
Alleluia in Polish
I light a candle for her;
As she lit candles for her father once
And all those friends who left us; as she has now left me

As I light it, the portrait of Christ looks down at me with infinite tenderness

with infinite tenderness.

But, why should I need tenderness?
What good is tenderness?
I need only to sleep when the wedding party at last falls silent
And sleep; and then wake up
To find that she is lying here beside me, still alive
And that she turns to me the way she always did and smiles

Tomorrow, though, I know that she will still be gone
And I will have to leave Poland behind me
And her, too, if this is where she is

My only consolation is that I know where to find her ghost, if she is anywhere
In Warsaw, in Poznań, in Kraków, on an autumn day
Or in Bielsko, in the mountains, as the red and yellow leaves fly off the trees

But now the wedding music stops,
and silence falls

Except for one last freight train clattering through the night, and a woman laughing

If only she knew, this woman
If only she knew, laughing, what grief that those who loved her will one day feel
the day she dies

 

Graham Masterton is a well known horror writer in Europe. He has also worked as the editor the British edition of Penthouse. Not one to be limited to any one genre of work he has countless novels and short stories on a very wide array of subjects from, thrillers, horror (including horror books for children), and historical fiction, to his sex instruction books, his work is sure to appeal to a even wider range of fans. He works impressively well with some of his works being penned in a week. Grahams work can also be found as a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, Woman, Woman’s Own and other mass-market self-improvement magazines.

http://www.grahammasterton.co.uk/

(This poem was written for Wiescka Masterton and is previously unpublished, it is part of an interview with Mr. Masterton that will appear shortly over at TheDamnedInterviews.com . It was so sincerely full of love and devotion that I had to share it with all of you here as well. My deepest thanks to Graham for taking the time to do the interview and for sharing this poem as well. ~Tina)

 

YERSINIA-Z

In the passenger’s seat of their stolen motorhome, Sally coughed. She retrieved a tissue from the glove box and blew her nose. She wadded the tissue up and tossed it out the window.

Steve, behind the steering wheel, took a drink of whiskey and then handed the bottle to Sally. “Yersinia-Z?”

She took a drink. “No. My bronchitis is acting up.” She screwed the cap back on the bottle and placed it between her feet.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

She lit a cigarette. “Same to you.”

Yersinia-Z struck the planet six weeks ago. It was far more destructive than the Black Death that killed millions of Europeans in the middle ages. Yersinia-Z was a new breed of pneumonic plague that swiftly claimed the lives of billions worldwide. No one knew what caused it. It spread too quickly for anyone to pinpoint its origin. It was a global catastrophe, wiping out the majority of citizens on all continents equally.

At the plague’s onset, before the TV screens went blank, most of the newscasters had denied reports of chemical and biological terrorism. A few of them indicated that perhaps Yersinia-Z began in Africa. They had spoken of AIDS victims raping babies to cure their illness in some filthy village that worshipped gorillas.

On conservative radio stations, religious broadcasters had preached about how this pestilence had been prophesized two thousand years previously.

Ever since Yersinia-Z struck the planet six weeks ago, Sally and Steve (both nineteen) had been living like kings amongst the deceased. The dead of Greater Los Angeles were everywhere: in the streets and drainage ditches, decomposing; rotting in clusters of thousands in shopping malls; wasting away atop the palisades in ultramodern mansions.

They pillaged the city relentlessly, Sally and Steve, filling their stolen motorhome with firearms and ammunition looted from abandoned pawn shops, alcohol lifted from empty liquor stores, and a fortune in currency swiped from cash registers, ATM and bank-teller machines, and the purses, wallets, and pockets of foul corpses crowding the rotten metropolis.

The new rule was lawlessness, all men, women, and children for themselves, but chaos rarely ensued. There were too few people left living in Los Angeles for competitive warfare to bloom.

Curious was the fact that most survivors—like themselves—happened to be chronic alcoholics.

Sally grabbed the bottle from the floorboard. She unscrewed the cap and took a drink of whiskey. “Where are we going?” She handed the bottle to Steve.

He took a drink and screwed the cap back on the bottle. “To the beach at Santa Monica.”

She relieved him of the bottle. “Do you promise to blow my brains out if I contract Yersinia-Z?”

He stared straight ahead at the road. “Of course. But I believe we’re immune to the disease. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that we’ll be fine so long as we keep guzzling this whiskey.”
*
Justin had always known that nature—like himself—was a serial killer, for all things born are only born to die. But now that nature had lost its patience and unleashed this plague upon the planet, there were precious few creatures left to slaughter.

Yersinia-Z didn’t merely exterminate humans exclusively. The horde of feline and canine carcasses in the streets was voluminous, and the dead birds outnumbered the multitude of human corpses decomposing in Los Angeles enormously. Justin had never realized how many birds existed until they started dying and dropping from the sky in feathery swarms. He now scarcely noticed when their hollow skeletons crunched beneath the tread of his feet.

Even the rats were succumbing to Yersinia-Z, emerging from sewers with red whiskers to asphyxiate on the misplaced blood oozing out of their snouts.

Justin did, however, encounter a few humans occasionally, all of whom were—like him—chronic alcoholics.

He murdered these people, of course, these survivors of the new pneumonic plague, and consumed them, because he didn’t much wish to eat infected meat.

Sometimes he cooked the flesh and sometimes he didn’t.

But he always chased his meals with a fifth of whiskey.
*
Steve turned west off Pacific Coast Highway and parked the motorhome behind Santa Monica Visitor Center. The streetlamps were still glowing six weeks after the end of civilization, and though the chance was minimal that anyone would attempt to steal their belongings, Steve nevertheless locked the doors and engaged the alarm system when he and Sally exited the motorhome.

Human and animal corpses in varying stages of decay were literally everywhere, but with the sun’s absence and the night wind and the salty scent of the sea, the stench wasn’t quite as putrid as it was during the day.

Sally took a drink of bourbon and handed the bottle to Steve, then lit a cigarette and looked up at the cloudless and moonless sky. All the stars of the firmament were on display, like diamonds on a vast black satin cloth. Tears welled in her eyes at the lack of airplanes passing by, which was ludicrous, of course, for she had seen no aircraft flying in quite some time. She shivered, though not from cold, while puffing on her cigarette.

Steve took a drink. “This is eerie.”

“Yes,” Sally agreed. “Would you like to take a walk up to the pier?”

“Sure.” Steve handed the bottle back to Sally.

They traversed the bicycle path to the stone-walled sandbox at the foot of the pier. The corpses of four children decomposed in the sandbox, recognizable as three boys and a little girl by their clothing and their hair.

They ascended a wooden staircase to the pier. Hundreds of dead bodies littered the promenade, the arcades, the souvenir shops and the carousel still turning round and round. Other than a few blown bulbs here and there, all of the bright multicolored lights and beeping video games remained functioning. The dried blood covering the white plastic horses of the carousel was abundant, a shockingly mute reminder that these people had been living lives before the new pneumonic plague had forced them to bleed to death from their lungs, nostrils, and mouths.

To their right was Pacific Park, still lit up like a Christmas tree, with its tall unmoving Ferris wheel and high motionless roller coaster that jutted out over the ocean.

“People used to fish here,” Sally said. “Just six weeks ago and even over a hundred years previously people used to fish from this old pier.”

“I know,” Steve said. “And they watched these same waves, and danced beneath those same shining stars.”

“They shopped for souvenirs,” Sally said. “They played volleyball down there on the beach.” She drank and handed the bottle to Steve.

He drank. “They dined in all these ocean-view restaurants.” He gave the bottle back to Sally.

“I can’t take much more of this.” She swilled deeply from the bottle. “Let’s walk down to the shore. I need to hear the indifference of the sea.”

They finished their whiskey on the coastline, with the surf caressing their bare feet whenever the waves languidly licked the sand.

They made love beneath the stars. Afterward, they reminisced about how things used to be.

They passed out holding hands. The tide—dragged by an unseen moon—provided a soft soundtrack for their dreams.
*
Justin drove around the sprawling urban jungle of Los Angeles, guzzling bourbon from a bottle behind the steering wheel, searching for a survivor to murder and consume. He was hungry, and not just any food would do. He was in the mood for human flesh.

Justin had been a serial killer and a cannibal since his teens, and now that he was pushing forty—and despite the fact that he was a heavy smoker and drinker—he could easily pass for a man ten years younger. His thick dark hair wasn’t graying or receding in the least. His face was still fresh and utterly devoid of lines. He had retained his lean physique with only minimal exercise, and in his heart he had lost nary a bit of his boyish capacity for astonishment and wonder.

None of this surprised him. The key to extended youth wasn’t a mystery, for when he killed someone and ate them he absorbed their very essence, their vitality, their life force.

But Yersinia-Z had certainly reduced the smorgasbord of humanity to limited morsels….

Tonight, however, he happened upon a club in East L. A., off the Santa Ana Freeway, in which six Mexican male survivors had gathered. Three sat at a table, engaged in a game of cards. Two were playing eight ball on the pool table. One stood behind the bar. Their Spanish chatter ceased when Justin walked in with a machine gun slung over his shoulder. He strolled up to the bar, tossed a fifty on the counter, and said, “Give me a glass of whiskey.”

The bartender had thick tattooed forearms and a broad chest and black eyes and a sullen scowl on his bearded face. “You got the fucking plague, man?”

Justin smirked. “Do I look like I’m dying to you?”

“Why the fuck are you bringing that gun in here?”

“It’s a new world out there,” Justin said. “I carry a gun everywhere I go. So, unless you have something against white, Anglo-Saxon heterosexual males, I would greatly appreciate that glass of whiskey.”

The bartender smiled, and Justin shot him eight or nine times in the chest, neck and face before spinning around and introducing the five remaining patrons to instant annihilation with a casual spray of automatic gunfire.

He then crossed the club and locked the door.

He feasted.
*
Before the plague, Polly Crawford—twenty-two years of age—had been an aspiring writer working on her first novel while battling her addiction to alcohol. But now that Yersinia-Z had wiped out most of the planet’s population, she saw little logic in stopping drinking anytime soon. Besides, according to the broadcasters on the few radio programs transmitted during the lonely hours of night, the only people still alive were chronic alcoholics.

How ironic was that?

The booze that she had feared would be the death of her was perhaps the one thing keeping her alive.

She was, however, still writing that first novel, despite the fact that there were now no agents or publishers to accept it, no audience to receive it, no one left alive on Earth to even read it. But finishing her book was all she cared about these days, for there was something inside her that needed to get out, and that something was the story’s conclusion. And when you cut to the heart of the endeavor, isn’t that what genuine art’s truly about anyway? If the artist is honestly pleased with the final product, what could possibly matter more than the satisfaction of accomplishment?

Nothing.

Or at least that’s what Polly told herself this morning while drinking whiskey and stepping over corpses on the shore of the beach at Santa Monica.

The sun was a low yellow orb in the eastern skies when she happened upon two people who appeared to be still alive but merely sleeping, half-naked, holding hands on the straw-colored sand, a male and a female no older than twenty or twenty-one if not teenagers. An empty liquor bottle rested at their feet, and a pair of semiautomatic pistols lay within their reach.

Because she had no desire to be shot, Polly pulled her own 9mm pistol and clicked the safety off. She wanted to wake them up, but she didn’t know what to say, so she fired a bullet into the ocean.

That did the trick.

Both of them opened their eyes immediately.

“Good morning my fellow survivors,” Polly said. “I was beginning to think there was no one around here left alive but the homeless drunks wandering downtown. I believe their brains are so fried they don’t realize everyone’s dead and they can now move into their choice of a thousand mansions.”

She introduced herself. Sally and Steve followed suit.

Polly put her gun away. “I apologize for waking you. I’m obviously smashed and starving for conversation.”

“All will be forgiven,” Sally said, “so long as you strip out of those clothes and share your whiskey.”

Steve was sitting cross-legged on the shore, and his big stiff penis was pointing straight up at the sky. “We hope you’re into threesomes. Sally likes to lick pussy almost as much as I love to fuck.”
Polly smiled. She handed the bottle to Sally and got naked.
*
Justin abandoned the car he was driving when it ran out of gas on Sunset Boulevard, and though his metabolism, as always, was racing on the stored life energies of all the people he had killed and eaten over the years, it was simply too hot and early in the day to travel very far on foot. Besides, there were numerous stranded vehicles on the road from which to choose.

He selected a late-model Ford Expedition because (1) he liked SUVs, (2) the keys were in the ignition, (3) the fuel tank was almost full, and (4) there were no corpses within stinking up the interior.
The engine started without remonstrance.

He drove south down Harbor Freeway toward Central Los Angeles, searching for a survivor amongst the dead. Looking for breakfast.
*
When they finished making love on the beach at Santa Monica, Sally and Steve offered Polly—who’d been up all night drinking—a place to sleep in the back of their motorhome.

Polly accepted their invitation. How could she refuse? They were the only appealing people she’d encountered in six weeks, since Yersinia-Z.

But the fact that she’d drunkenly fucked them didn’t mean she trusted them completely, and though two doors and a long hallway between the lounge area and the bathroom separated the motorhome’s cockpit from the back bedroom, Polly was wise enough to click her pistol’s safety off before locking the door and lying down on the bed.

She heard the engine start and the brakes release, and she stared at that door.

A child could kick it in.

Polly was pleasantly smashed, on the verge of passing out, but consciousness wouldn’t surrender just yet. It forced her to crawl beneath the bed and hide with her finger on the trigger before falling asleep.
*
Up front in the cockpit, Sally poured shots of whiskey for them both in the passenger’s seat while Steve drove the motorhome eastward. The morning star was so bright through the windshield that they had to keep their eyes squinted perpetually despite the dark lenses of the sunglasses they wore.

Sally muted the stereo. “I’m glad we met Polly.”

Steve nodded. “So am I. Not only is she beautiful, but she’s cool.”

“I think she likes us.”

“Well,” Steve said, their threesome still vivid in his memory, “if she doesn’t, she’s one hell of an actress.”

“She wasn’t faking those orgasms,” Sally said. “She came all over my face at least five times. And I’ve been thinking, for the past half hour or so, that perhaps the three of us should start a family.”

“Start a family? You mean, like stay together?”

“No, silly,” Sally said. “I mean that maybe you should get me and Polly pregnant. We could be like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, only with three of us we could multiply more quickly.”

Steve smiled. He tried his best to keep even a trace of condescension from his voice. “Honey, this is post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, and we’re a long way removed from the Garden of Eden.”

Sally lit a cigarette. “It was just a thought. But someone has to begin the process of repopulating this planet eventually. Why not us?”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Suppose we do create babies. What are we going to do once they’re born? Feed the babies vitamins and whiskey to keep them from contracting Yersinia-Z? Their developing livers couldn’t process the alcohol. They’d be dead of cirrhosis before they learned to walk.”

“You’re right,” Sally said. “It was a horrible idea. I apologize for even suggesting it.”

Steve patted her leg. “At least we have each other.”

“For now,” Sally said, and frowned.

It was then that a Ford Expedition pulled up beside them at an intersection.

Steve rolled down his window when a man wearing a trench coat exited the SUV and approached the motorhome.

“Good morning,” the man said. “I didn’t think there was anyone left in this city alive. Name’s Justin. Mind if I climb aboard for a brief discussion?”

“Not at all,” Steve said. Moments later the three of them were swilling shots of whiskey in the lounge area.

Justin, taking visual inventory of their horde of firearms, ammunition and currency, said, “It’s best to be prepared, I suppose. For danger has a way of appearing when you least expect it.” He then retrieved a Colt .45 revolver from the small of his back and shot Steve once in the face at pointblank range. The heavy-caliber bullet all but decapitated Steve, and he crashed into the built-in sofa, instantly dead, before sliding off onto the motorhome’s carpeted steel floor.

“You son of a bitch,” Sally said, and then she lunged at Steve’s killer with her bare hands to claw his eyes out because there was no time to reach for a weapon.

Justin easily overpowered her. He knocked her out by slamming his gun’s barrel twice against her temple, then taped her mouth shut and bound her hands and feet with rope he’d been carrying in a pocket of his trench coat.

Next, he searched the bathroom, the closet, and kicked in the locked door of the back bedroom.

There was no one else onboard.

Justin drove the motorhome off the boulevard, parked behind a shopping mall, and then settled down to feast on human flesh.
*
Lying on her stomach beneath the bed, sleeping the dreamless sleep of alcohol, Polly nevertheless awakened instantly at the sound of gunfire. The single shot was followed by Sally calling someone a son of a bitch, and, after a brief ensuing struggle, she heard footsteps approaching out in the hallway.

Polly had been sleeping with her feet toward the headboard, and she was therefore facing the bedroom door when, moments later, it was kicked in. She saw a man’s black sneakers and the rumpled ends of his blue jeans straight ahead. She aimed her pistol at his shins, held her breath, and hoped he didn’t peer beneath the bed. She would shoot him in the face if he exposed it, of course, but, uncertain of the number of intruders, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself in this vulnerable position if he wasn’t acting alone.

Curiously, the man didn’t search beneath the bed. Polly watched his feet turn around and walk away. Was he that stupid? Why would the bedroom door have been locked in the first place if no one occupied this chamber? Perhaps he’d smelled the whiskey vapors seeping from her pores and he was toying with her, teasing her like a cat playing with a cornered mouse, creating an illusion of escape when there was none.

She waited, listening, but heard him speak to no one, and when, moments later, the motorhome began to move, Polly crawled out from underneath the bed.

Her bladder felt on the verge of bursting, and her mouth literally burned with thirst. Pistol thrust out before her, she risked a glance into the hallway. It was deserted. Only two steps were necessary to transfer from the bedroom to the bathroom.

Once inside, she sat down on the commode and relieved herself. When finished, she wiped dry with toilet paper, then stood and pulled her pants up immediately.

Suddenly the motorhome was no longer in motion.

She parted the curtains to peek out the lone bathroom window when the engine stopped, and discovered that whoever was driving had parked behind a shopping mall.

At least a thousand rotting corpses decomposed on the asphalt in the blind blazing glare of the morning sun.

Polly waited, listening, the internal pounding of her heart like a ticking clock, and she’d never needed a shot of whiskey this badly in her life.

Eventually, she could wait no longer. She stepped out of the bathroom, tiptoed down the hallway, and stood at the threshold of the lounge area.

Sally was roped across the surface of the coffee table, naked, bleeding from a gash on her temple, mouth taped shut but still very much alive, with bright wide-open eyes.

The intruder was also naked, on the floor before the sofa, eating Steve’s raw flesh with a butcher’s knife and bare bloody hands. When he saw Polly standing there pointing her pistol at him, she could tell by his expression that he was baffled by her unforeseen arrival. He tossed aside a piece of dripping meat, and then stood with an erection. His stiff penis was far thicker and perhaps two inches longer than his blade. He smiled. “You must have been hiding beneath the bed.”

“Did you hear that, Sally?” Polly said. “We’re dealing with a regular Einstein here.”

“For all of his genius,” Justin said, “Einstein died in 1955. He discovered that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, but he couldn’t unlock the secret to everlasting life. I, however, am immortal. The flesh, the blood, the very souls I absorb from my victims shall sustain me through all eternity.”

“You’re a psychopathic cannibal with delusions of grandeur,” Polly said. “And nothing more.”

Justin clutched his erection with the hand not holding the butcher’s knife. “You mistake my enlightenment for insanity. It’s a common blunder that’s occurred repeatedly throughout history.”

Polly cocked her head. “Do you believe in God?”

“No,” Justin said. “Of course not.”

“Well I do. And I also believe in Satan. And when you get to Hell, I want you to tell the devil that a female sent you there.” She then emptied her clip into the nude intruder, filling his chest, neck and face with eighteen rounds of 9mm ammunition, exposing Justin’s claim of immortality for what it was: a sham; a fraud; a self-deception.

Polly removed the tape from Sally’s mouth and unbound her from the coffee table.

Sally sprang to her feet. “That crazy hateful son of a bitch killed Steve and fucking ate him.”

“I know,” Polly said. “But you’ll see Steve soon enough again. As surely as the sun will explode in a few billion years, all souls that once loved will reunite afresh in the great beyond.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“With faith,” Polly said. “Without faith, we’re as lifeless as the masses that have perished in the wake of Yersinia-Z.”

Sally got dressed. “I wish I shared your optimistic outlook.”

“It could be worse,” Polly said. “At least we have each other.”

“For now,” Sally said, and frowned.

In the meantime, there was little else to do but guzzle whiskey.

Brian Bowyer has been writing stories and music for most of his life. He has lived all over the East Coast. He has worked as a musician, a banker, a bartender, a bouncer, and a bomb maker for a coal-testing laboratory. He currently lives and
writes in the mountains of West Virginia, although this may change at any moment.

Unattended Fields

With their hands in the soil, they lived well off the land
Psalms flowed from their church, as bells rang in their steeple
They prayed for the sun and for the rain when needed
The salt of the earth, and true god fearing people

They were so very young and so innocent
On returning they confirmed many a myth
They were bigger, stronger, braver and wiser
But none came back bearing the smile he left with

The horrors will take a lifetime to erase
This war has raged on oblivious to time
It makes men do things that should never be done
This is so much more then a sin, it’s a crime

After coming back from deaths very doorstep
Putting aside arrows, armor, spears and shields
Grasping to their hearts their women and their kin
They come to restore long unattended fields

John Frazee resides in Boynton Beach, FL, USA (temporarily) He also resides under the impression, that like the infinite number of monkeys at the infinite number of type-writers someday he will accidentally create something worthwhile. He relies on you humans to evaluate the results of this experiment. Published in Skyline magazine, OMNI magazine, The Horror Zine, Twice the Terror and What Fears Become, The Horror Zine Anthology, Death Head Grin Anthology, My Word Wizard, Aphelion, StoryMania and The Horrroe Zine Magazine

Across the Sky

Blackbirds vanish into the ocherous mist

Exactly as they had done for thousands of years

They turn back to remember the past as it was

Before a limitless infinity appears

 

Stray shadows flee across roofs in ghostly rhythm

Wakening trapped gods, their breath hushed in compromise

Broke out of bounds, unloosening the hold of time

And as the sun set they snatched the shrouds from their eyes

 

All tomorrows bleed into the edge of perception

Under an ineffable light that bore an ancient heat

Reborn beneath a hurtling flame across the sky

Where their immortal bones are no longer obsolete

Teresa Frazee is a published poet, including Skyline Magazine, Literary House Review, Poetry Shelter, The Horror Zine and Twice The Terror: The Horror Zine Anthology, Death Head Grin and E Book Anthology, Aphelion, What Fears Become: The Horror Zine Anthology, My Word Wizard, 100 Thousand Poets for Change at World & Eye, The Horror Zine Magazine, short story published in Storymania,  Founder & Host Poetry Reading series “Art & Literature”, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Artists’ Guild and Author of “New City” Souls, A Poetry Cabaret.

 

Fred Larucci is a self taught free-lance illustrator and the creator of the site The Night Gallery(which has nothing to do with the iconic series). In the words of Fred himself, “I draw because it gives me a purpose, keeps me busy focusing on good things….to be constructive and Positive and maybe to brighten or inspire someone else to do the same. Too much hate in a world filled with negatives, I want and choose to be Positive.” More of his work can be found at: Facebook and DeviantArt.