Doctor Flesh- Director's Cut

by Alex Johnson

  Oroborus and Hymsaw piled into the back of the truck, zooming out of Sugar Valley High’s front parking lot just in time. It was only after they’d reached the town outskirts that Oroborus raised a note of dissent.

  “You’re way, way too young to have been in Vietnam,” he said.

  “I served in Special Forces, expeditionary team 23,” said Glide sternly. “They sent us in there to pull out the MIA’s. Only, we didn’t find no MIA’s. Instead, those things found us.”

  “You are so full of shit,” said Oroborus.

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Glide. “But I have seen me some Vampussy. Oh, it was years ago, before I met you…” The long, rambling story that then commenced fell on deaf ears, as Oroborus fell into a deep doze. Hymsaw took a final hit from the bottle and sagged against Oroborus.

  “Oh, you all way too sleepy,” said Glide when he finally noticed he had lost his audience. “Damn. Guess I’ll just have to save my fine-ass tale for another day.”

  ***

  At 4:30 am that morning, a Mazda minivan rolled down the driveway of a house in a suburb of East Sugar Valley. The Geek Squad was on board. Ravyn drove, a medallion of Santa Muerte hanging from the rearview mirror alongside a pair of fuzzy dice. A few light raindrops began to spatter the windshield as Ravyn eased the car onto the main drag.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” said Alice from the back seat. In the front passenger’s seat, Mintzy eagerly consulted a map. Paul, who sat next to Alice, was absorbed in a hand-held game.

  “Believe it or not,” exulted Ravyn, pressing firmly down on the accelerator. “We’re getting out of Dodge, now and forever.”

  ***

  Glide, Hymsaw and Oroborus high-tail it out of there, death jazz wailing from the speakers, headed for the off-ramp to Bone City and points north. Mutant globs still stick, wriggling, to the rear window.

  “Remind me,” says Glide.

  “Remind you of what?”

  “Never ever to listen to your white ass again.”

  Oroborus grips the steering wheel and turns up the death jazz. John Zorn, Naked City. He shakes a fist in the air. “But we made it this time, didn’t we? We made it!”

  “Barely escaped with our lives. That’s not making it, Joe. That’s just squeaking by.”

  “Care to drive?”

  “No man, you’re doing just fine. Just get us the fuck out of here.”

  Oroborus steps on the gas. The city scrambles past in a white blur.

  ***

  The four members of the Geek Squad were well on their way out of Bone City on the 552 Highway when the Ultibomb hit. Ravyn and Mintzy were still buzzing and sparking from the scene back at Flesh’s lab, while Paul and Alice nursed cases of mild post-traumatic stress. During her torture, as Flesh squeezed one orgasm after another from her trembling body, Ravyn’s mind had begun to spin out the tale of the Latina girl she’d spotted in Horrorweird. She was regaling the Geek Squad with the plot as it unspooled to her when a wall of blinding light appeared on the horizon and surged towards the car.

  First the Mazda’s engine stopped dead as the bomb disengaged its electronics, then the passengers were evaporated, melted into shadows on the upholstery. They didn’t even have time to say goodbye. Yet somehow, in the last flickers of consciousness, a warm framework seemed to envelop them all, their souls released as a troupe of glowing geek angels.

  Epilog:

  O’Clodder turned to Charnel, whose skin was now a vomitrocious shade of orange and covered with purulent boils, lesions, rips, tears, gouges and zippers. Charnel put his hands on his hips and nodded emphatically.

  “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

  O’Clodder’s tiny bowler hat popped off his head and tears welled in his eyes. Which he quickly dried. Turning towards Charnel, he stabbed his presidential finger in the man’s face.

  “Why you…I’ve got half a mind to...” he sputtered out. “Nah, what’s the point? We’re fucked silly this time.”

  They stood on the roof of a gutted building, surveying the landscape. O’Clodder raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes. For miles around them, nothing remained but rubble, accordioned cars, the fried remains of people and animals, noodles with eyes and a purpose, and an awful silence punctuated occasionally by the sound of bicycle horns. A thick stench hung in the air, like the odor of burnt balloons mingled with cotton candy.

  “Let me see those binoculars,” said Charnel.

  “Suit yourself.” O’Clodder handed them over. Charnel peered through them, adjusting the focal length. “What the hell are those things? Looks like…like that old cartoon cat, Felix, only he’s got bones outside his body, and he’s wearing some kind of mariachi jacket. And there’s a crow flying near his shoulder. For some reason, clouds are gathering over their heads, but only theirs. Like they’re generating…their own weather.”

  “Death Cat and Storm Crow,” said O’Clodder. “They’re more than friends. Now, they’re gods. According to the prophesies, they would rise to rule the earth when all else was ashes and dust. Maybe humanity’s only chance of defeating the carnyvores.”

  “Shit, really? I don’t think I can handle much more of this craziness. What are those creatures behind them?”

  “You wanted clowns, you got clowns,” said O’Clodder. “And they’re coming this way.”

  Charnel clasped his hands to his cheeks and sobbed, approximating Munch’s The Scream and Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone in one compressed, iconic gesture. “Maybe we still have time to use the drill…straight through the head, brother. Straight through the ear. If I hear another bicycle horn I’m gonna puke my guts out, probably for real.”

  “You never had any intestinal fortitude to begin with,” said the President. “Sure, it was okay to set off the UltiBomb as long as you thought we’d be safe, you and I, or maybe just you, the Shadow President going it alone, hiding out in your fucking concrete bunker as Armageddon buffets the outside world. Well, your dreams of zero-consequence evil have fallen away. Look at what you’ve wrought, my friend. Molten freeways, iridescent citizens, a whole new wave of tyranny and mutation, and now—oh, the irony, savor it as I might with a charred tongue—the Clown Apocalypse.”

  “Mistakes…were…made…said Charnel. “Forgive me.”

  “Forgive yourself,” said O’Clodder. “Just don’t imagine I’m going to give you the coup de grace, the old Fulci farewell.” He raised the battery-operated drill and put it down again. “Sure, the clowns will tear you apart and feast on your giblets, and you’ll scream for a merciful deliverance that never quite comes. But I’m Audi 5000.”

  From behind them came the sound of a helicopter descending. With a great gust of choppy wind, it set down on the roof. The President climbed on board and the helicopter lifted off again, leaving Charnel to face the clowns. Alone.

  Blood Ties:

  Elsa’s mother could tell something was wrong, and it wasn’t just the ear-bleeding blast of the post-goregrind band Alien Toilet Death coming from her room.

  She pounded at the door. “Are you okay, honey?” she shouted.

  There was no response. Elsa was immersed in the sounds of Necromantic Jissum Spew, ATD’s first, last and only release.

  Wrapping the bathrobe she had fashioned from the hide of an ex-lover tighter around her ample chest, Morgana Karloff braved Elsa’s inner sanctum. The door was already splintered in several places from zombie attacks internal and external, so all she had to do to enter the room was squeeze herself through one of the cracks.

  “Mom! Ermigerd! You could at least knock!” Crimson streaks radiated down her cheeks. She lay on her back, her stocking-clad legs spread wide, revealing her shaved pussy.

  “Ermigerd?”

  “Yeah, like that meme girl. You know, the Goosebumps chick.”

  “I thought you only read Clive Barker these days, honey.” She inhaled deeply, relishing the exquisite perfume from her daughter’s cootchie.

  Elsa
pushed the rotting skull off her lap. “I’m being, like, ironic.” She dug a fingernail into the left eye socket, nipped a maggot between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it down her throat.

  “Would you mind turning down your music a little bit? I’d like to talk. We haven’t had a good talk in ages.”

  “Get out,” Elsa growled.

  “What?”

  “Amityville Horror?”

  “Yes, I know. Old school horror reference. I’m not that out of it. Just thought you wanted me to leave.”

  “You can stick around for a while.” Elsa twisted the volume knob on her stereo a fraction lower. “Ok? What did you want to talk about?”

  Morgana sat down in a chair made from the skeleton of a six-year-old girl—Elsa’s dad has constructed it. Morgana sighed ruefully. Memories were painful. That relationship had held so much promise, until Bela had taken to dragging home the corpses and making her watch as he masturbated into their glassy dead eyes. She refused to hold the power drill while he worked with other tools. That was the beginning of the end. Bela’s head was tough, but relentless battery with a stiletto heel reduced it to a mass of red pulp. He had been still conscious when she planted him in the garden next to the radishes.

  “I just think…” Morgana paused. “I just feel that something has come between us. We used to share everything, like sisters. Lately you haven’t spoken a word. Not even when I kidnapped those virgins for you. You might have at least said ‘thanks, Mom,’ before you started the torture. Or invited me to play too, like the old days. What did you do with the bodies, anyway?”

  Elsa pointed at the closet. Her nails were long, sharp and glinted with black polish.

  “Do you mind if I…”

  “Help yourself.”

  Morgana eased open the closet door, stepping aside quickly as two freshly violated corpses fell to the floor, a gooey exudate dripping down their legs. “These smell brand new,” she said, savoring the waft of blood and thinking back to her wedding day—the spade work, the satisfying crunch of shovel hitting coffin lid, rubbery limbs wrapped around her in the cold heat of necrofuckery. She didn’t hold with the theory of some philistines that a stiff was just a stiff. There were differences. Essential ones.

  She lifted one of the corpses and placed it over her knee, proud of the intricate damage her daughter had done: carving, branding, elaborate sigils traced with pepper and lemon juice. One breast had been removed and replaced with the suction cup from a toilet plunger. The girl’s panties still clung to her ankles. Ah, details.

  “Oh honey,” she said. “Did she scream a lot while you were punishing her?”

  “Well yeah,” said Elsa. “It’s no fun if they’re quiet. Gotta have a little resistance.”

  Morgana lifted up the girl’s head. “I see you used the ball gag like I showed you. But you didn’t have to, you know. I would have enjoyed hearing her beg for mercy.” She slid her hand along the girl’s body, feeling the thick shaft of the rubber dildo impaled deep in her asshole. “I hope you made her cum right before you sliced her throat.”

  “Of course I made her cum. But I thought you were too busy with the castration,” said Elsa. “She was squealing like a stuck pig, and I know how delicate the sac-sewing can be. You need total concentration for that.”

  Morgana nodded. “I was. You’re right, and I’m sorry. That was very considerate of you.” She plucked at the ball gag’s strap and approved of the tight buckling technique. There wasn’t much more she could teach her daughter. “It always makes me wet when I cut them off mid-scream.”

  “Whatever,” said Elsa, rolling her eyes.

  “Have you been seeing any boys?”

  “Ok, Mom, you were doing so well, and then you had to trip over some ham-handed segue into conventional mother-daughter dialog. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Morgana reached out and took her daughter’s ice-cold hand. “It isn’t as easy as you think, being a polymorphously perverse vampiric necrophile single mom in this day and age. There are so many dangers. You don’t know how much I worry about you. I know you’re all grown up and everything, but I still have my motherly instincts. There is a boy, right? Boys?”

  Elsa remained silent.

  “I knew it.”

  “Okay, so there is a guy.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “No, he’s just this boy I met at this party.”

  “Your first gang bang? Sorry, I saw the invitation.”

  Elsa smiled, tossing back her raven hair and unconsciously pinching her own nipples beneath the filmy negligee. “Yeah, he was watching from his window with binoculars. I walked out into the back yard, bare-ass naked, and challenged him to come down and join us.”

  “Aw, that is so nice. Did he participate, or just watch?”

  “I think I tied his wrists to some ceiling hooks. He was hanging around for a while. He might have licked a little ass. Not sure. There was a lot of ketamine in the punch. And acid. And X.”

  “Oh, that takes me back. Only in your father’s and my day, it was just acid. Still, same concept. Right? And you’ve been seeing him?”

  “Off and on. He helps me sometimes with the blood sacrifices in the cemetery. You know, when the drugs wear off and they come to, it can be very, very unpleasant.”

  “I hope you don’t mind this question, but…”

  “Of course he’s macabre, Mom. God, you don’t think I would date just anybody.”

  “Oh come on, he must have some wholesome qualities. Maybe a few Boy Scout merit badges under his bed?”

  “Ewwww, no! Gross.”

  “I was just teasing you, sugar.”

  A blood-curdling shriek came from the room next door. Morgana hesitated.

  “Go on,” said Elsa. “I’ll be fine. Take care of Ludlow.”

  “It’s just…he’s been possessed so often…”

  “I’ll be fine!” Elsa shouted. “I’m not a child anymore. Ludlow needs your help.”

  Morgana pushed through the hole she had enlarged in Elsa’s door. Elsa leaned over and cranked up the music again. She was annoyed at her mother’s interruption just as the song, and she, were reaching their climax. She adjusted the severed head between her legs and yanked up the black satin sheets.

  Before she could finish, Morgana returned, covered in puke, blood and slime to which clung flakes of shiny metal.

  “Fucking hell!” screamed Elsa. “Could your timing be any worse?”

  “It was just a minor demon,” said Morgana.

  “It’s always a minor demon,” said Elsa. “That boy is a low-grade host. Unlike me. Astaroth himself was fucking me just the other night. Now that’s a demon. Filled all my holes nice and tight. I’ve still got his pure Satan stink on me.”

  “Ah yes,” said Morgana, reflecting. “I remember how he took me the night before I buried your father. I was walking funny for two weeks.”

  Elsa’s eyes misted over. “You know, when you say things like that, I almost think there’s hope for us.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean, I realize how for all the stuff that comes between us, we’re still family. We have horror in us. It’s our bond. And that’s what counts.”

  “Oh my baby girl,” said Morgana. “My sweet baby girl.”

  “Hey, do you think…”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Do you think you could use the crucifix on me, like old times?”

  “I never thought you’d ask. Of course, my little ghoul child.”

  Elsa braced herself, her hands tightening around the bedposts as the crucifix worked its magic. Within seconds she exploded, her entire body shuddering with the force of her orgasm.

  Morgana eased out the sticky cross and brought it to her mouth, licking her daughter’s oils from the base.

  For just that one moment, there was peace in the Karloff household.

  Bangkok Gunfighter Without Pointless Huck Finn

  Of all the trifling and useless monikers fobbed on
Larry Dumpkins in the past, Bangkok Gunfighter was perhaps the most serviceable. After all, he had been to Bangkok—once, on vacation, where he narrowly escaped evisceration by Buddhist demons—and although his gunfighting days were over, his hand was steady and still capable of squeezing off a shot, should such a thing be called for. Larry’s life in retirement might have been perfect, managing a comic book store in the hip downtown area of Bone City known as SoNoe, had he not been saddled with Pointless Huck Finn.

  Pointless Huck Finn announced his presence one slow Friday afternoon when Larry was about to close the shop and return to his dragon bong and collection of rare circus punks featuring characters from Peter Bagge’s Hate. Larry loved to set the circus punks up on top of his broken black and white TV set and topple them with a slingshot. His favorite target was George, the quasi-autistic African-American with a fluffy lion’s mane; he could imagine George’s screams of outrage as he flew off the TV, over and over. Larry was checking the day’s take against cash register receipts when Pointless Huck Finn charged through the door, demanding to see Larry’s famous trove of “Dirty Little Eight Pagers,” early porno comics from the Depression era.

  “Seriously?” said Larry, taking his time with the receipts.

  Pointless Huck Finn poked him in the chest with a pudgy, nicotine-stained forefinger. “Do you have them or not? My buddy Today’s Tom Sawyer tells me you’ve got a choice stash in the back rom and I’m not leaving until I see them. Your sign says ‘Open till 10:00 pm.’ I hope you’re not thinking of closing early.”

  “Wow,” said Larry. “Okay, I can show you the books, but lighten up, okay? It’s my store, after all.” Larry’s irritation at Pointless Huck Finn’s manners was salved by the knowledge that should his customer grow tiresome, he could easily blow the man-child’s brains out the back of his head, straight into the promised land. He felt the police .357 grow warm in its shoulder holster, where he kept it for just such an occasion.