Mutilation- Horror Flash Fiction

Content Warnings: graphic descriptions of cannibalism

Her face is the prettiest when rusted with blood. 

She’s wearing a clear raincoat, the cadaver within like meat bleeding out of a plastic bag, folds of fat and lumps of muscle seared with wounds cut against the grain. Her teeth peek behind her crusted lips craned in a smile, her breath the smell of pennies as I put my fingers on her chest and monitor her pulse. Her heartbeat is slow, stagnant, staccato. A red sonatina orchestrates around her as I lap her up, notes of silver on my black tongue. 

~ 

I am an ugly man. My hair is an oil spill, my eyes are shadows without brows and my high cheekbones are riddled with acne. My image is a descendant of a Chippewa chieftain, but my skin is pale and rather sickly. The shirt I am wearing is of a metal band since I was unable to find Mozart in the thrift shop, and my jeans have the texture of bandaids ripped off the skin. The fabrics loosely clothe my rotten skeleton underneath, stripped bare of any muscle. I say this all objectively; my bathroom mirror cannot lie. 

Before I depart my city-suburban home, I slide into my mother’s heeled boots and clomp out of the building. I am 207 centimeters with them, a behemoth to be revered as I march down the Tittabawassee and as the homeless saltines snap their necks to watch. If they can admire me, they can also cower before me. But when? 

I dream of the day when the sun ripens into strawberries over the humble buildings and melts the mud-drifted snow, and when I can write stories about Saginaw instead of detailing the abandoned buildings and businesses, and when an ugly beast crawls into this empty husk and devours the bodies of all people inside. When blood rains from the sky and the citizens enter a dancing plague to entertain him. And of course, the beast shall be me. 

Someday. 

I go to the local Walmart and trudge my cart through the parking lot, wheels trilling upon the patches of brown ice on the pavement. The people are vacant souls, any shred of personality being frostbitten by the blistering cold, yet are oddly proportioned just like me. It is off putting. To remember that the wrinkled middle aged Bump-It wearing blonde barbies aren’t satire, that the men who are insanely obese bean bags aren’t Hollywood actors in fatsuits, and the children wailing aren’t in a fire, although I would very much like them to be. 

The pretty people are even weirder; I am convinced they come here to look at us like zoo animals. I know that the white girls with tattoos on their lower backs and their waffle fried boyfriends slung around their waists aren’t here for groceries. They are here for Youtube videos and plan to film us like Animal Planet, taking turns riding in the carts and licking ice cream from their compartments and putting them back. 

Those are the people I would like to eat the most. Their meat is moist and tender, young and soft like baby goats and when spiced and well done they are the most satisfactory. Especially when watching television. They provide a healthy change to the programming: the star football player absent from an integral game or the prom queen going missing at midnight. Anything to get this drab Midwestern town to show any signs of color. 

However, I shall hold off for today. 

There is a meal awaiting me at the rear end of the store, next to a dumpster filled with the remains of what people don’t want to buy. Marked down Ben and Jerry’s, holy pantyhose, paperback classics and a dead body. 

I will name this one Sheila in my mind, but will never say it aloud. The moment the sound comes from my lips, the taste leaves my tongue. It would be such a waste. Her parts look delicious. 

~

There is blood on my chin. The police have arrested me and the news is filming me like a movie star on the red carpet. They survey every detail: my pale skin, the band Death Grips on my t-shirt, my skeletal figure and construct a bildungsroman of my wretched character- the perfect outcast to villain story. I smile with red crusted teeth and make sure they get a good look.

They ignore the girl behind me, don’t even bother to say her real name and keep crying Shattered Sheila- a marketable catchphrase for the media. The moment the killer comes on screen, they don’t care about the victim. 

They only see the ribbons of blood pooling, the lacework of guts on the concrete, the object of their fear. They only see their mutilation. 

Cameras flash and snap like the jaws of Dobermans, silhouettes of reporters behind them as the cops cuff me and show me off like I’m their prey.  Ironic.

I take a bite of Officer McKinley, his name and taste on my tongue, teeth digging into his buff upper arm. Red cascades down his skin and flattens his grey body hairs as he lets out a howl under the full moon. He faints and aches in pain, the wound revealing the ivory shimmer of bone. The reporters back away: click, click, click, snap, snap, snap- eating up seconds of the scene before the other policemen can restrain me and stuff me into their childish metal contraption. I wave bye bye and imagine how fearsome I shall soon be.

The dancing plague shall begin on TV screens, all of them watching me. Watching me as I feast. I know…

My face is the handsomest when rusted with blood. 

McDonald’s Soda- Horror Flash Fiction

You slump down my throat as my taste buds pop with your frigid snakeskin. Shangri La.

Well, not exactly that. You’re an ice-tuned McDonald’s soda, diluted ichor of the gods on this hot as hell day. My solace as the deviled sun blazes onto the field and stilts the freckled dry wheat-grass. My solace as I drive along this lonely road, to escape the fires before me. 

“Ah-”, I pant like a dog, “the weatherman wasn’t kidding when he said 115 degrees, huh?”  

I’m in a navy pickup, one out of country songs, and today the radio twangs a sour melody. The seats are muggy leather and the steering wheel is a lava stone, my clammy hands upon it. My sweat beads upon my brow and gashes my underarms. Heat sears through the window and threatens to set fire to the carcasses of fast food amassed at the bottom of the car, to send me hurdling into an abyss of crop circles, but to my dismay, it doesn’t happen. 

I continue to drive away, hot coals in my throat, as my eyes dart to the empty street behind me. No one is there. Not yet. 

I take another sip. 

Your delicate plastic orifice is bristled against my thinning mustache. You’ll make it grow again, right? Thick and bushy as it once was? 

I drink you more and continue down the long wandering pathway, you occupied in my left hand in a warm bear hug. My fingers oscillate upon your cardboard skin as my wide cuticles divot your golden arches. I sigh in delight. 

You are cold. Ice Christ cold. You take me away from the barrel bodies in the trunk, from the raw flesh-acetone scent and their bones that click together, tick tock tick tock. Time ceases when I am with you. When I take another sip. 

I swear I’m not crazy. But you know that. I am just a common man, overweight with fried foods and existential thoughts. I swear it. 

“Would you like another kiss?” I look behind us again, to make sure no blue clad men are looking in. None. 

“I love you.” I confess, “There is a fire in me; the heat of the sun.” 

I gulp you down. The liquid stops. You let out a dehydrated croak. 

Of course, I crush you under my boot, Just like the rest of them. 

Ice cracks. Blood seeps out. 

Butterfly Effect

Warnings: mental illness, animal and child abuse, graphic gore

~

I examine the butterfly pinned on the table: stained glass window membranes, mushy eggplant guts and midnight seaweed skin. Its legs still writhe. My fingernails sear the edges of its wings, cuts them fresh off. Its legs still writhe. I pluck the antennas like eyelashes, squish the eyes like globs of ink-oil, and tear the body segments apart onto the rough-soft paper towel. Disseminated. Dead. Its legs are still. 

One day, I’ll do the same to you.

~

I am a mother. I live in a cottage. There are rolling hills of sweet grass, hair dried willow trees, and kids whose imaginations have run far away. Schizophrenics- that’s what the doctors call them, but I call them the Lost Boys. Perhaps, that makes me Peter Pan, to lead them through their fantasies, or Wendy to sing their delusions to sleep. 

I don’t know. I’m not familiar with fairytales. Can you tell me one? 

~

I asked you that on the morning you arrived on my doorstep. 

You were a pale faced child who took on the spirit of a butterfly- the same ink-oil eyes, delicate antenna lashes and a mosaic of a mind behind the flapping six-year old arms. You have your hair pulled in a tight blonde braid and you wear a sky blue dress as you prance about. Your lips flutter with teensy giggles. I want to catch them in the air. 

And pin them to the wall. 

~

Junonia almana. 

The peacock pansy, with fuzzy mustard wings and those cocoa hue owl eyes that watch me through the glass. It is framed on the basement drywall, in a new place, rearranged with the others for a new blank space- approximately 50 by 150 square inches in area. There are larger pins. Bolts. And rope. 

Just like your pretty little braids.

~

I comb your frayed locks, free from those little ginger roots. You gaze into the mirror, bite your nails and curl up in your seat so your knees pillow your chin. A cocoon. I tug on your longest lock, what you think is a silkworm shaving.  

“Don’t-” I say, “we’ll go to bed soon.” 

You water your eyes at me, lips in a red larvae pout.

I yank the hair from your head. The wailing takes a while to settle.

~

I sew your silk back on the next morning. Your glass eyes are beading with crystal, and your nose blushes with rosy sniffles as you wince at every prick of the needle. In, out, in, out- skin and blood and dandruff and tousles of rope thread hair. 

“It hurts,” your tears pool on your cheeks, “Can you stop, Miss?” 

“No,” My lips thin into a straight line. 

I can’t let the doctors know. 

~

The doctors flood into the cottage. They take the lost boys one by one, cultivating caterpillars into their nests. Some are bribed with leaves, others simply slink in, and all of them leave slimy paths behind. Good riddance. 

I only think of the white coat, white mask doctors, and their syringe slits of eyes that scan us with pinpoint precision. I clench your hand tight. 

I’ll never let them have you. 

~

We run down the dark stairway, slipper flats and baby bare feet tip-tap against the ashwood. We spill out into the basement- the clothes I scrimmied off you splayed on the tile floor. You shiver under my touch, as my cuticles indicate lines upon your back. 

I drag out my butterfly canopies from the closet. Layered blankets: monarchs, swallowtails, painted ladies, buckeyes, blue sulphurs all weaved together. 

Remember the fairytale you told me? What if I said I could make it come true?

~

“Miss, I-” 

“Hush.” 

I sew the quilts onto your back, stitching them to the skin with black thread. In, out, in, out. My needle is diligent, but my eyes are disorderly. They look at places they shouldn’t. They linger as I work. In, out, in, out- eggplant mush and seaweed skin and a set of prismatic wings, spread before me like Neverland. 

~

My butterfly.

Halloween Horror Story

Hi peoples!

Happy spooky day!

It’s my favorite holiday. I LOVE Halloween.

What are you going to be for Halloween? I’m a cactus.

SHORT STORY!

---

She woke with a choked gasp, her fingers clawing at her throat, before she fell back into her pillows, realizing that she was still in her bed. She waited for her heartbeat to settle, gloomily accepting that she likely wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. She curled up and tried to get warmer beneath the mound of blankets, the nightmare already slipping her mind.

She was in a daze, in that quiet space between waking and sleeping, when she heard a soft creak, like footsteps on old floorboards. It must’ve been imagined. It must’ve been the first whispers of a dream. But she was alert now, listening and tense beneath the sheets, her eyes still closed.

What am I doing? she thought, with a short burst of laughter that more resembled a sigh.

A door slammed.

Whispers rose.

The footsteps came faster. Quicker. Urgent.

She rose slowly out of bed, wrapping a quilt around her shoulders, letting it drag on the floor behind her. She went downstairs, listening looking terrified. She flicked on the light, prepared to find something sinister and relaxed a bit when there was nothing. She was about to go back upstairs, to write off the sounds as figments of her imagination, when she heard a voice in her bedroom and froze, her foot hovering over the stair.

The sound wasn’t in a language she could recognize. It flickered at the edges of her mind like she should’ve been able to comprehend it. Yet it didn’t sound completely right, either. Something was off. A hissing undertone that wasn’t possible on the human tongue.

She climbed up the stairs, softly, slowly, coiled up and ready to fight or flee as soon as the cue was given. She flipped the light switch in the hall. She breathed a soft curse as light didn’t flood the hall. A moment later, the light at her back from the kitchen plunged into darkness, leaving nothing but shadows and silvered moonlight.

The quilt drifted to the floor behind her as she used touch and memory to find the hall closet. She pulled out a flashlight, praying it to work as she switched it on, and a dull glow filled the hall.

She followed the sound of the whispers, the sound rising and falling in chaotic waves, to her bedroom. To her bed.

She fell to her knees and pressed her face to the floor. Her hand shook against her will as she directed the flashlight beam underneath the bed.

The darkness seemed to swallow the light.

A solid mass of shadows.

Roiling and swallowing and shuddering.

Consuming.

She squinted and pressed closer. It couldn’t be. The light. The darkness. Her imagination. Her eyes. They were lying.

Her eyes widened.

A gasp escaped her lips. What did she see? What did she see?

She scrambled backward, lunged for the door.

Something pulled her back.

Something took her.

Something swallowed.

Something consumed.

---

© ARACHNID WEAVER 2018