The oncology ward shared the floor with orthopedics. I passed through a locker room and put on some dirty scrubs, hiding the fact that I was a patient. I could feel Mister Smiles now, pulsating and oozing, freezing in the open air and already suffering from the absence of its sustenance. Nurses passed me in the hall as I turned the corner to orthopedics. I needed a few things, and I hoped I could dig them up. The ward housed mostly examine rooms, places to set broken bones. It had shut for the night, and I found a cart left out in the hall. I dug around in canisters of plaster, bandages and found a bottle of an industrial resin. It would serve my purpose. I hid myself in an empty exam room and undressed. The resin’s caustic fumes made me dizzy, and when my head cleared, I dabbed the thick fluid on some cotton balls then lifted up and stuck them in my anus. The glue dried fast. I did the same for my ears and pinched my nose shut, sealing any avenues of escape. I dressed, dropped the bottle of resin in my pocket and searched the oncology ward, trying not to walk oddly, getting used to my ass being glued shut.
I searched the ward, passing the odd nurse and grabbed a clipboard off the nurses’ desk to look less conspicuous. In the time I’d prepared, it had gotten further away, and I felt the creature through the ether, following its trail to the pediatrics ward on the next floor.
In the dim halls I searched, looking behind parked carts and empty gurneys. My self-inflicted deafness threw my senses, and I flinched whenever my eye caught movement. The children not in pain slept in their beds and the night nurses and few doctors tended to them, not noticing me. I sensed Mister Smiles near, and I stepped into a private room. A little girl slept with a plush bunny she called Max. How did I know that? I could feel things about her, perhaps remotely through Mister Smiles.
It slithered on the floor, pulsing and flexing fluid inside its body to move. I nearly slipped in the slime trail it oozed on the tiled floor. Mister Smiles sensed me and tried to move faster. Its protoplasm jigged and jumped, gliding for the little girl and her bunny. I snatched it by an appendage and forced it to my lips to give it a goodnight kiss. It struggled, nearly breaking my fingers. Its body mass tensed, and I pushed a portion into my mouth then gagged on the taste of sour meat and lemony floor cleanser. The moment it touched my lips, it spoke to me:
You’re a coward, boy-o. You don’t have the guts for this. Just stop it. You’re making me laugh. Oh gods. You’re a funny funny boy. We’ll have good times together. Oh yes.
I forced it into my mouth and swallowed hard, driving the creature into my throat. I choked down a tendril, and it pulsed and flailed in my throat, gagging me. Vomit convulsed, but the mass blocked it. I shut my eyes and focused, thinking of Warcraft, of the cute girls at school and getting laid for the first time. Its mass widened my esophagus, and my body responded kindly, no longer fighting to force it out. It belonged in me, a part of me, and in one last push, I forced the mass down, swelling my throat like a balloon. It twisted and whipped, throwing me to the floor, and I opened the glue, tilted my head and poured the thick fluid into my mouth, drizzling it on my lips then shutting my mouth into a fat pucker. The glue dried, and my mouth locked into place.
I’ll swallow them all whole. I’ll suck and slurp and chew. You’ll live forever!
I spoke in my throat: “I just wanted to get laid.”
The tumors popped up like mushrooms, swelling in my body even faster now. The clock started to tick. The frozen sun broke free its chains and spun around my world. I weakened, and so did Mister Smiles, our life draining. Its spirit dimmed, and it no longer struggled. My left hip snapped when the cancer grew into the bone, and the pain brought me to weep. It would be over soon. I shut my eyes to slumber. I longed for peaceful sleep.
LEUKEMIA IS FOOKIN’ STOOPID
‘Anna DeVine
‘Anna DeVine is an acquisition editor for Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and even writes the occasional poem or story. She has much love for the literary arts, but has only animosity for cancer.
Cancer vs. Poetry
Hmm . . . spinal tap at ten
On one hand I can count to five
The other (!) five again
Look! My creativity
Has only naught to say
This finds me more uninteresting
Than I was yesterday
Since chemo’s lost a lot of pounds
I’d never hoped to lose
My Poetry’s now sick insight
Through random thoughts I choose
Please note I am emotional
Thus focused well on me
As why my own psychosis
Mocks the who I used to be
See; lacking life’s reality
Means I just can’t decide
If tears are falling painfully
So crying’s justified
Look! I’m ‘bout to say some stuff
No, here’s where will reveal
These thoughts about leukemia
Are how I truly feel
Fookin’ dumb ass cancer
I hate yer stoopid name!
No sooner do I mention
Fookin’ dumb ass cancer
I hate yer stoopid name!
No sooner do I mention you
Reactions are the same
First the look of horror
And then the ‘sorry’ face
Pity’s really empathy
That’s faltered far from grace
Apart from my anxiety
With certainty I know
That lonely nights and cancer cells
Make way for me to grow
A hostile, pissed off, candy-ass
Aye, might be me today
But ask me in a few or two
Who knows what I will say
Well that was sort of ugly
But I ate my ‘sugar-coat’
Oh! I forgot to mention
In this rant I think I wrote
Doc said: ‘Pollyanna,
I’ve got just what you need
No, not the cure for cancer
Instead I offer weed’
1:54 AMTHC, cannabis
Ganja in a pill
Pot prescribed to remedy
What cancer’s yet to kill
Meh, seasoning adds flavoring
To any tired treat
But being stoned helps me to see
Food’s not so bad to eat
Ding, fries are done
See yer
~Pollyester
THE NIGHTLY DISEASE
Max Booth III
Max Booth III is the editor-in-chief of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, the assistant editor of Dark Moon Digest, and the fiction editor of Kraken Press. His two story collections, True Stories Told By a Liar and They Might Be Demons, are available right friggin’ now, and his debut novel, Toxicity, will be released with Post Mortem Press in the spring of 2014. Follow him on Twitter @GiveMeYourTeeth and visit his website www.TalesFromTheBooth.com.
He hopes this anthology punches cancer right in the balls.
It was Thursday, a payday. 6:30 came and went. Betty and the kids ate dinner alone. Neither of the boys asked her where their father was. Even though it was never discussed, they knew well enough. After dinner Betty allowed the boys to watch an hour of television, then gave them a bath and tucked them in to their beds. She gave each one of them a soft kiss on the cheek.
She waited on the couch twenty minutes to make sure neither of them were going to get out of bed, then she calmly walked into the bedroom and shut the door. It was raining outside. She could hear it from her bed. Lightning flashed through the window like a dying light bulb flickering for dear life.
Laying in bed, Betty imagined John driving home from the bar and sliding off the road. Maybe smashing into a tree. She wanted the thought to excite her, to make her happy, but it just made her cry. The fact that she wanted to want him to be dead and couldn’t was more depressing than anything, really.
She wondered when he would be home. Probably not unti
l way past midnight. She would be alone for a few hours still. Plenty of time to make love to her knife.
The knife in question was a small little razorblade she kept concealed underneath their mattress. She started keeping it there after the night John had come home and thrown a DVD player at her. She knew then there might come a time where he would go too far and she would have to defend herself. So she got the razorblade, and she kept it close to her at night. Only she never used it on him; the thought never even seriously crossed her mind. It was just an excuse to have something sharp in her hands when she was alone; like nights like these, where she could pull it out from the mattress and feel its cold steel caress her flesh.
In the beginning, it was just the dull side, but like most things bad for you, it had quickly progressed to the other side; the side that wasn’t afraid to act. She still didn’t know why she did this. Maybe it was a way to numb the inevitable pain and trauma her husband would issue later on. She didn’t know. It really wasn’t something she gave a lot of thought to.
The pain helped avoid thinking.
It always amazed her how calming the cutting actually made her. Some people smoked; Betty bled.
She liked to watch the blood drip down her leg. It was always her legs that she cut; her inner thighs, to be exact. She’d cover her bed with towels first, so she didn’t stain the mattress or anything, and then just sit there and destroy her flesh like she was slicing a stick of butter.
There was a deep sadness in her, and the razorblade helped wash it away.
As if she were a cancer patient, and this was her chemotherapy.
The rain became progressively louder and Betty didn’t hear her husband pull into the garage. She had no idea he was home at all until the bedroom door swung open and he came stumbling in.
He took one look at her naked body sitting on the bed, one hand holding a razorblade, the other hand rubbing streaks of blood against her skin, and grimaced.
“What in the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.
She threw a pile of bloody towels over her legs and tried to hide the razorblade in her hands. “Nothing,” she said, eyes wide and pleading. “Nothing, I’m not doing anything.”
He came toward her and pushed the towels off her lap, exposing her wounds. “Why the fuck are you bleeding? Were you . . . were you cutting yourself?”
She began crying. She couldn’t help it. “Please,” she said.
“Please what?” John shouted. “I come home from a long day and I find you doing this kind of stupid shit? Please what?” He reeked of whiskey. She could practically taste it. It made her feel sick.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He introduced his fist to her face and the back of her head slammed against the headboard. She was already expecting it; the pain was dull and repetitious. Unless the sensual thrill that the razorblade gave her.
“I didn’t ask you if you wanted to talk about it. I asked you what the fuck you were doing and why. I’m not taking your dumb ass to the hospital again, if that’s what you think. They are already suspicious as it is.”
Betty tried to stop herself, but it was useless; she started laughing. “Oh, and what do you think they suspect, John? That you’re a piece of shit husband who beats his wife? Nah, I don’t see that at all.”
She knew the next few minutes would be brutal and unforgiving, and she was not wrong. Afterward, she started down at her left wrist. The bone was shattered. Destroyed. She was on the floor and he was standing above her, panting like a dog after the kill.
“You bitch,” he said. “I love you.”
Bleeding and crying, Betty stared up at him and thought about everything she wanted to say to him. About how, when she married him, he was a decent man. A lovable man. A man who she was proud to call hers; who she wanted to grow old and raise children with. How he ruined it all with the drink. Thrown everything away, every single chance of happiness, in exchange for some booze.
She wanted to tell him how pathetic he was and how much he was ruining their family’s lives.
Instead, all she said was, “I . . . I love you too.”
Because it was the truth: she did love him, despite all his flaws. Despite the sickness he rotted from every payday.
John sighed. He lifted her up and placed her on the bed, then laid down next to her.
She told herself he couldn’t help it. It was beyond his control. The addiction was too strong to expect him to stop by himself. It would only get worse if she were to leave him. How could she even think about abandoning him? How selfish could she be? Her husband was ill; the man she had married and vow to live the rest of her life with was suffering from a disease and she wanted to solve it by leaving him in the dust? How pathetic. How truly awful.
She kissed him on the lips, and he kissed her back.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t cut yourself anymore,” he said. “It’s not good for you.”
Neither is the drink, she wanted to say, but bit her lip. She bit it hard enough to draw blood. It felt warm and comforting.
Her wrist was on fire.
So was her skull.
He fell asleep next to her, snoring loudly. His whiskey smell kept her wide awake. She stared at the bedroom window, counting the raindrops splatter against the glass. Her good hand felt around the sheets until it found the razorblade, and very discreetly she squeezed. The inside of her palm became hot and wet and erotic.
Even when she finally fell asleep, her fist did not loosen.
She knew in the morning she would regret it, but right now it did not matter. It was simply beyond her control. Like her husband, she suffered from a disease that could not be cured alone. There was no answer. No magic medicine that would make it all go away. Life just wasn’t that simple.
For now, this was a good enough solution as any.
SLUDGE
Stan Swanson
Stan Swanson is a Bram Stoker award finalist and author of eight books including Forever Zombie, Write of the Living Dead and Return of the Scream Queen. He is also editor/publisher of Dark Moon Books and Dark Moon Digest, a horror fiction quarterly. He is a cancer survivor.
“Sonny!”
Malcolm Brown glanced through the window over the kitchen sink as he waited for his two slices of Wonder Bread to pop up warm and crispy from the 12-year-old toaster. He knew exactly how old the toaster was as he had bought it for his grandmother for Christmas, the year after his grandfather had died.
Emma Brown stood in the backyard near her mutt’s doghouse.
Half-beagle and half who knows what, he thought. He couldn’t remember the dog’s name. It was Malcolm’s first visit to Kansas in over a year. He felt some guilt about not being able to visit her more often, but life got funny that way sometimes.
“Sonny,” his grandmother called again, her voice muffled by the bay window.
“My name’s not Sonny,” he said beneath his breath. His tone was not bitter, just resigned. Malcolm’s toast popped up, perfectly brown, proving he had made an excellent choice in toasters those many years ago. With knife and butter close at hand, he had to act fast. What good was toast when the butter wouldn’t melt into the bread?
“Sonny, Mr. Bojangles is gone!”
He sighed, buttering his toast. No wonder I can’t remember the stupid dog’s name. Why couldn’t she have named him Spot or Rover?
“Sonny, please. Something’s not right. He’s never been gone like this.”
Malcolm glanced at the remaining slice of toast (which he had still not buttered) and made a difficult decision. He left the second slice on the counter and walked toward the back door of the kitchen.
Maybe Mr. Bojangles will eat it after we find him off chasing cars or mailmen. He munched on the buttered toast as he crossed the covered porch, stepping out onto the lush green yard. The lawn was manicured to perfection. Guess it helps to have a handsome next door neighbor, Malcolm mused. Even if the old geezer in the house next door was appro
aching seventy, the man still managed to take care of his own yard as well as that of Malcolm’s grandmother.
“What is it, Grandma?”
“I told you already, Sonny; Mr. Bojangles is missing.”
Malcolm followed her pointing finger to the Snoopy-style dog house, which currently housed no dog. There was, however, a large pool of what appeared to be oil.
“Yep,” he said and found nothing more to say about it.
“Don’t you find it odd?” his grandmother asked.
Malcolm studied the scene. “Well, I wouldn’t hang around either, with all that gunk covering the floor of my dog house. What the hell is it?”
“Watch your language, young man,” she admonished. “You’re not too old to have your mouth washed out with soap.”
The image made him chuckle.
“You find this funny?” she asked, placing hands on broad hips.
“No, Grandma,” he replied. “But what is all that black stuff? It looks like oil. Hey, maybe Mr. Bojangles was digging for a bone and struck black gold. Maybe you’re rich. You can pack up and move to California.”
“Sure,” she replied. “And maybe I’m the Queen of England, too.”
He shrugged, bending down to examine the gunky liquid closer. He paused when he noticed the dog chain, collar still attached, laying in the center of the puddle. The bright red collar was still clasped shut. And partially submerged in the sludge were what looked like a set of doggie I. D. tags.
“Did you have Mr. Bojangles tied up?”
“Of course,” his grandmother snipped. “Do I look like a doddering old fool? I make sure he’s chained up every night. Otherwise he’d be chasing every female dog in town.”
“But his collar is still clasped,” Malcolm said. “Maybe he slipped out of it somehow. But it’s funny that with all of this gunk you don’t see any paw prints in the grass.”
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