042020d

reformatting spreadsheets
Sisyphus loses his tan

051619

took his soul to hell
in a thermos
hoping that would be enough
on his return
with his late fiancee
he found all 7 seals busted
some had leaked out
some in

041519b

Charles kept thinking that
at the end of his life
he would discover
that he was repeating everything
again and again
making the same mistakes
but never dying
he was half right

111018

Birthday in Hell

“Go on,” the demon said, “open it. It's your birthday present.” Hesitantly, Darrell reached for the package. This had to be a practical joke. But every moment of a practical joke was a blessed time in which he was not suffering excruciating torment. He had lucked out drawing Slapsteickkior as primary tormentor. Carefully, so as to prolong the absence of torment, he peeled back the silver-foil wrapping paper, striving to avoid tearing it. He almost had it off, but the last piece of tape stubbornly refused to yield no matter how he pried, teased, rolled, or tugged. After five minutes of this, while the demon drummed his fingers ever more loudly on the table, Darrell just ripped the last corner off. The box inside was so black he couldn't see the edges of the flaps. He found them by feel and pulled them open quickly. He was too anxious to stall any more. Plus, the demon always punished him for stalling, and the longer he stalled the more it hurt. Inside, a rolled scroll was tied with a pink ribbon sporting a frothy chrysanthemum-like bow. He slid the bow off the end of the scroll and unrolled it.

“This certificate entitles the bearer to one year off his sentence for good behavior. Happy birthday.”

He sighed, knowing that the worst part was still coming. Slapsteickkior delighted in explaining his jokes. You had to listen, because there would be a quiz at the end. If you missed any questions, well, it didn't bear thinking about.

“You see you get a whole year off, but naturally your sentence is of infinite duration; you don't get that year off until the end, and there is no end. What I'm trying to tell you is....”

033018

the red-tailed clerk says
no rest for the wicked
we got souls to burn

020418

Heck Ain’t What It Used To Be

Turn him over, he’ll burn if you leave him like that. Once the flesh is entirely cooked there’s no more pain till it heals. Holy turd! I have to watch you every single minute. Can’t do a blessed thing right. No! Stick the sanctified fork INTO the belly, don’t stroke the perfect thing. Unbelievable. Look. Our purpose here is to cause suffering. If the clients get too happy, we get docked. You do not want to find out what a millennium in “the halo” is like. You’ve given the saintly ghost a blessed erection—what are you trying to do, breed them? Let me show you. OK. You hear that ululating cry? That indicates DISTRESS. With a “D”. What we’re here for. Riiiight. Now get busy, or I’ll give you a white mark.

*****

I tell you Beelzie, it is just impossible to get effective help these days. The latest crop of demons are the sorriest, tithing, do-good numbskulls I have ever encountered. Some of them are as dense as mortals. Not like when I was a boy. I mean, I was born knowing how to properly impale a client, you know what I’m saying? Tell me about it. These kids can’t even recognize the sharp end of a stake when it pokes them in the arse. Oh, I tell you, this place is going to paradise in a gold-plated chariot.

080417

Past due

Tito always meant to return the demon. Thing is, it was so darn useful when Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door. Plus, the demon did the laundry and other chores while Tito was at work. Everything was fine and dandy until he got the overdue notice.

"Holy sh*t! This can't be right! This is the first notice I received, and it says I already owe a fine of 1.5 souls. I don't have 1.5 souls." He rubbed his bare scalp with one hand and shook the offending postcard in the demon's face with the other.

The demon sneered. "Bureaucrats. Emasculated worms. I'll take care of this."

A month later, Tito got a second postcard. 2.0 souls, and the case was being referred to a collection agency called "The Sole Source."

"I thought you took care of it," he screamed. The demon was vacuuming the drapes.

"What?"

"Collection agency! And turn off the damn vacuum!" He was almost as red as the demon.

The demon took the postcard. "Oooo! They must really have something on you. These guys don't pick up every sorry hellbound Tom, Dick, or Harriet."

Tito was pacing back and forth. "I haven't done anything. Not really. We need to take care of this before they get here."

"Too late," the demon said. The picture window exploded inward, shards of glass flashing and tinkling as they hurtled across the room. Four or five creatures hopped in. They were about the size of adult men, covered with patchy fur and what looked like scabs. Their wings were feathered. Their teeth were huge and brows low.

Tito put up his hands. "Look, this is all a misunderstanding. Here's the demon. You can just take him now."

"And how do we get our commission then?" the monkey asked.

"I never got the first notice," Tito quavered. "Can't this bill be resubmitted?"

"Sure," the monkey growled. "But that has to be done in hell."

"Tell you what," Tito said. "Why don't I send my servant here down to wait in line and get this straightened out. When the final decision is made, just let me know and I'll pay whatever I owe." There must be even more red tape in hell than above ground. Most likely he'd be dead before the infernal bureaucrats figured out what to do with him.

Today was Saturday. He was going to get stinking drunk tonight, and repent tomorrow. There was a Catholic church just around the corner.

Publ. July 29, 2008, Daily Cabal

073017b

Mr. Smith Makes A Complaint

"I want to make a complaint."

The being behind the counter, white robed, wingéd, and possessed of an unearthly beauty, looked puzzled. It cleared its throat. "I don't think I've ever gotten one of those."

I rolled my eyes. "You must be new here." Very new, I silently added.

The celestial being looked around, perhaps hoping to find someone else to deal with me, but no one was there. "May I help you?" it asked. "Mr....?"

"Smith. I think entropy has come to the afterlife."

"Entropy? But that implies progressive, irreversible degradation. It's just not possible here, what with this place existing outside of time and all." It smiled reassuringly. Immaculate wings fluttered and a couple of disarranged feathers settled back into place.

I scratched my head. "That's what I thought. I've been here a while (not sure exactly how long) and at first stasis seemed to prevail."

"Go on," it encouraged.

I had been standing in line at the celestial cafeteria, trying to decide between heavenly ham and a simple fried egg, when I suddenly wondered why there was a line at all. I mean, every other time I went to eat, I encountered only those people I wanted to meet, and we never had to wait. But this morning, the line had stretched from the heavenly serving area, through a lobby of unparalleled symmetry, and out doors of surpassing loveliness into a meadow of unmatched beauty. A murmur had arisen, and as I craned my neck to see what was going on up ahead, I saw many others doing the same. In the end, I had to settle for cold pizza, which makes an excellent breakfast, but wasn't what I wanted.

I later heard that no one had shown up to serve, which was why only leftovers were available. Not the level of competence I had come to expect, frankly. Which was why I decided to register a complaint.

After I finished the story the attendant did not respond. I waved my hand in front of its face, cleared my throat loudly several times. Nothing. Finally, I reached forward and lightly tapped it on the shoulder. It toppled over backward and plummeted through the cloud like a brick through rice pudding.

"Aaaaa!!"

I jumped back, tripped, and almost fell myself. Maybe all this time I'd been wrong about where I'd ended up. Maybe today's events were the next step in an extraordinarily subtle form of torment. Wherever this was, I needed to get out.

Publ. Daily Cabal

021817

The other night

upon the stair

I met a gal

who was not there

her lips her eyes

cascades of hair

tossed by tempest

shoulders bare

I knew that she

was in my head

she slept in dirt

that girl was dead

it was a fact

not baseless dread

I had removed

her pretty head

the moon shone full

on gamin ghost

I feared that I

would soon be toast

I ran, I tripped

I screamed the most

I snapped my neck

began to roast

011317

what do you call a daily calendar of dumb jokes
in heaven, year after year,
all different but all the same?
holy crap!
how many angels does it take
to screw in a lightbulb?
what do you call 69 angels
crammed into a phone booth?
(they still have those in heaven?)
what did Helen Keller say to...
ENOUGH!
You can all go to
wait, can you?

101816b

Breakfast World

Pancake Land was better than Bacon Land. Bacon Land! Oh my god, the lakes of boiling fat, the stench. Wilson used to like bacon. Bacon sandwiches were listed as his favorite meal on his Facebook page, for god's sake. Now, he hoped he would never have to eat or even smell it again. They had finally reached the portal in Bacon Land and passed through to find themselves still on Breakfast World.

In Pancake Land it was the sinkholes. The ones that had already popped meant a long, weary trek around a hemispherical hole. Some were miles in diameter. If you fell into one, it might be possible to climb out. The rough surfaces provided plenty of handholds. Might be possible, were the sinkholes not tenanted.

One of the clones had stood too close, peering into one of the first they found, and the edge had given way. The clone had made it about halfway back up the wall (the sinkhole was a small one) when something caught hold of his leg. The clone had struggled for a moment, then abruptly stopped moving and, a few moments later, simply melted into the surface. Soon there was no sign the clone had ever been there.

Nascent holes were much more dangerous. They were concealed under subtle domes in the irregular pancake surface. The bigger the cavity underneath, the gentler the slope above. Newly popped sinkholes were already occupied, but their deadly tenants (whatever they were) were slow to react. One member of the party made it out alive from the second breakthrough, though she left part of her foot behind. It took two more breakthroughs and more loss of life before the survivors realized that the caps were springier than other parts of the pancake surface.

As they toiled on toward the next portal they encountered fresh horrors: steaming rivers of molten butter; a viscous red fluid that pursued them relentlessly until they managed to trick it into a tremendous sinkhole; and fantastical white mountains that were so unstable a heavy footfall could unleash a deadly cream flow.

Finally, the portal was in sight. Its eldritch glow was by now so familiar the pulsing arch seemed like home. Wilson broke into a run, but stopped abruptly when Jordan screamed. She screamed and screamed, pointing at the sky. Wilson looked up. His voice joined hers as gigantic metal pillars plunged toward them.

"The Diner! By all that's holy, the Diner cometh!"

End

Publ. Daily Cabal, Feb. 17, 2011

082216

the trip

should've been more careful
with his shoelaces
next to the escalator to hell

Flash fiction from Gods and Monsters

Tails You Lose

The people on the coin were eating dinner. Or maybe lunch. Sarah tilted the coin to catch the light and looked more closely. A long table with a bunch of people sitting around it occupied the center of the coin, and she could swear they were eating a meal. She turned it over. On this side, it looked like a phone booth with a couple of people in it. Was this the obverse or the reverse? The side with the phone booth (and what were those people doing in there, anyway?) had a date at the bottom, if “666V13.1” was a date, and around the rim some kind of writing she’d never seen before. The other side had more writing around the rim, and the dining-room scene in the middle (was it supposed to be the Last Supper?). That was it. The coin was shiny and unworn, as if it had been minted just minutes before she found it lying on the ground. She flipped the coin and caught it, and was just about to stuff it in her pocket when something caught her eye. Had one of the people at the table … changed position? She really couldn’t see the details well enough, but she could have sworn she’d actually seen one of the people move. A thrill ran through her of mingled fear and excitement. She had always secretly believed that someday, something magical would happen to her. She could hardly keep from breaking into a trot as she hurried home to look at the coin with a magnifying glass.

Back at the apartment she sat in full sun, scrutinizing the coin with a 5X lens. She didn’t see anybody move, but she was almost sure that the table scene had changed slightly. “This is crazy,” she muttered. She turned the coin over, looked through the lens again. The people in the phone booth definitely were fucking. And hadn’t the woman been looking the other way before? Sarah tilted the coin to enhance the shadows. The woman’s expression seemed … strained. She didn’t look like she was having a good time. Back to the other side. With the hand lens she could read the tiny letters around the rim. She sounded them out loud as she read them:

Aach phthuighltn d’sjarathgh chu’ulgthln. Mngwlthnath fesht’ g’harashkkt.

It was odd, she thought: the words looked unpronounceable but they rolled off her tongue as if she’d said them a million times.

As she’d begun speaking a peculiar feeling had come over her, and as she spoke the last word it swept over her like a speeding train. She fell out of her chair and squeezed her eyes shut, head spinning and stomach lurching, feeling around on the floor for the coin. She found … a fork. Her vertigo receded and she sat up. Somebody wrenched the fork out of her hand and her eyes flew open on a scene of chaos. She was sitting on the floor beside her overturned chair. In front of her was a long wooden table, and all about her people were scrabbling about on the floor, feeling underneath her, sticking their hands into her pockets (and elsewhere) and shoving and slapping each other in their eagerness to find whatever it was they were looking for. A grossly fat man plunged both of his hands inside her bra. He seemed to be checking her breasts for lumps. She slugged him as hard as she could and stuck an elbow in whoever was feeling around inside the back of her panties. She pulled herself to her feet and readjusted her clothing. Everyone else stood up too, except for one tall, emaciated woman who kept crawling around on the floor and trying to lift up people’s feet.

“Did anyone find the coin?” the fat man asked.

“Nah,” replied a middle-aged man standing beside her, “she must have dropped it.” He stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the feast,” he said, “my name is Roger.”

“Crap.” The fat man waddled to the head of the table and sat down.

“Um.” Sarah didn’t really know what to say. A young man smiled and patted her shoulder. She stepped back.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I dropped mine too. I’m Bill.” He reached to pat her again, then thought better of it.

Roger picked up her chair and placed it in front of a clean place setting, offering her the seat. She hesitated, then sat down, and he seated himself in the chair on her left. Everyone else drifted back to the table and sat down. Even the tall woman crawled out from under the table.

To Sarah’s right a plump gray-haired woman with heavy eyebrows scowled at her and resumed eating fried chicken. Sarah looked around. About 20 people sat at the table, which filled about half the room. The walls were covered with what looked like medieval tapestries. The subject matter seemed to be entirely gustatory. She did not see any doors.

She examined her place setting. She had a plate, soup bowl, cup, wine glass, silverware, and cloth napkin. She even had a damp washcloth in a small bowl. She didn’t have any food, but a double row of dishes down the center of the table was piled high with cornbread, bread sticks, dinner rolls, boiled shrimp, hush puppies, chowder, barbecued ribs, fried chicken, six or seven casseroles, at least three stir-fried dishes, mounds of steamed and fried rice, salads, a pile of corn on the cob, cake, cookies, several different soups, and a lot of stuff she couldn’t see very clearly from where she was sitting. There was plenty to drink too. She saw at least a dozen carafes of wine, as well as tea, water, and pink lemonade. Everyone else at the table was eating and drinking steadily, if without obvious signs of pleasure. Many of them were watching her surreptitiously.

She turned to the woman on her right and introduced herself.

“Hettie,” the woman said, and put down her drumstick. She wiped her lips and took a sip of water. “You want to know how you got here, what is this place? Et cetera? Ask one of the men, they’ll be delighted to fill you in. I’m hungry.” She picked up the drumstick again.

Bill was sitting directly across from her. He smiled and brushed his hair out of his eyes. He poured some white wine into her glass from a carafe. “It’s the coin,” he said, “you read the spell aloud and it transported you here. This place is just … this room. There’s nothing else. No windows, no doors, no alcoves or vestibules. Nothing. We eat. Sometimes we throw food.” He took a drink. “Have some wine. It’s good.”

She sipped cautiously. The wine was almost tasteless. She set the glass down. “What do you do when you have to, um, relieve yourself,” she asked.

Hettie laughed shortly. “Did you see a bathroom on the coin?”

“Yeah, that’s what we have windows for,” called the fat man at the end of the table, “and we don’t have any windows.” He belched loudly and stuffed a dinner roll into his mouth.

“Come on guys, go easy on her.” Bill smiled at Sarah again. “You don’t have to … you know. You never get full either. And we don’t run out of food. I don’t know why. Want some chicken?”

Sarah shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“You will be,” the tall thin woman declaimed in a piercing voice. “You’ll spend eternity here, eating the same bland food day after day, getting hungrier and hungrier, never being satisfied. It’s Hell’s version of the Last Supper. We are all being punished. What did you do?” She pointed at Sarah with a bread stick.

‘Well, I don’t know,” Sarah replied, “as far as I know I didn’t even die.”

“Look,” an old man about half-way down the table said impatiently, “here’s how it works. You read the words aloud. You end up here. You stay here until you get ahold of a coin, which those of us with a little presence of mind bring with us. Someone else can use that coin to escape. We don’t know where they go, but they get the hell out of here. You’re going to be here a long time. Pass the beans.”

“Don’t mind him,” Roger whispered, “he’s been here a very long time and most of the food disagrees with him. Gives him terrible gas.”

“What about the phone booth?” Sarah asked. “Is there any way to get there?”

The old man snorted in disgust. “Obviously, you read the words on the other side, you go to the god-damn phone booth. And don’t pay any attention to those two love-struck mooncalves. They haven’t been here long. Soon enough they’ll be able to think of nothing but food, same as the rest of us. Pass me some more of that tasteless garbage.” He pointed at a plate of ribs.

“Trust me, you don’t want the phone booth,” Hettie said. “The guy in there is hung like a humpback whale.”

“Tell me about it!” added Roger. He picked up his fork and resumed eating.

END

 

Published in Gods and Monsters, a collection of speculative flash fiction published by Popcorn Press. Available there and from Amazon.

052816c

Baby Chicks from Hell


Solid black marble and a perfectly formed egg. Centerpiece in the new museum, it became. When it started rocking the rafters started knocking. Hatching cracked the floor. The museum was open when the chick hatched, which was a good thing, for it was born hungry. Spellbound visitors were easy pickings, but soon the spell broke and the survivors fled. Outside, the chick was momentarily stunned by the world's size.

CHEEP!

It was like the sky was falling.

111714

On That Note


Some of us boys bought it together

Woke up dead with all the flames
burning what was continually renewed

We first tried to break out of Hell
the simple way, using the red-hot picks they gave us
but that took us nowhere but down and in

The Needle suggested a prison revolt
old-school & in-your-face style
but after seeing how he fared
we all put heads down and looked busy

Doc had read this book, claimed
that going down was the only way
described what we'd go through
as we went along and along
made those hot picks seem pretty tame

Some said go, some stay, some wondered
was it too late to beg forgiveness
while they were wrangling I snuck off
with Doc cos he figured he knew the way

boiling lakes of blood and things
that make back-room boys seem like amateurs
I wish I could forget more of it

we reached the chained giant, climbed
till he licked Doc off his shoulder and swallowed

I worked my way around back and kept going



End of poem

feeling toasty yet?

We won't be cold again

as the wires before me and behind me
start to glow brighter red
and I feel myself almost ready
to shoot right out the top of
Nick's toaster
I wonder if I would have been
as comfortable upstairs
and I kind of doubt it

Gnu flash

The afterlife rears its ugly head http://www.dailycabal.com/2010/04/mr-smith-makes-a-complaint/