Bleed

by Lori Michelle

  Perennial Peril Plagued

  The Enchanted Gardens—all around the world—Ontario to Tokyo, Brazil to Nottingham Hill, Nairobi to New Delhi, Moscow to Krakow, New York to County Cork were not so enchanted anymore. Parks and playgrounds, terraces and terrazos where gardens beckoned joy, were now nefarious . . . killing fields. Pokeweed parched breathing, surging spasms to death. The Damnation Critters of Pandy Orah’s botched box mulched over groundcover, phased out photosynthesis and crushed biological composition. The juxtaposition of danger to ‘a walk in the park’ became a human hazard to health and happiness when even the blue passion flowers on Lovers Lane broke down to cyanide. Sure, KEEP OUT signs were posted, but mysteriously disappeared. Evil ravaged the terrain. The deep green, menacing hands stretching from wedges of hedges in the Enchanted Gardens of the World knew no bounds. They angled like phantoms with thorny grappling hooks, right into the streets and walkways. They tripped or poked, even choked to pull their prey within.

  Past tremulous sighs, the good folk cried, “Give us back our Life again! Let us run and walk and ride. Back inside, safe inside, all the wonders of our Enchanted Gardens of the World. It was true, from Budapest to Kalamazoo, they yelped and sobbed their plaintive ‘BallyHoo’.

  ***

  The gossamer Goddess of the Moxie Moon kept still her nocturne watch. She saw toxic tendrils entwine. She viewed brambles on their poisonous climb. She waxed and she waned at evil’s takeover refrain. But it was not yet her time. And moons must do what moons must do.

  Hated Horrors Haunted

  Stranger things happened everyday, in all the Enchanted Gardens of the World. There were staggerings in the jaggers, blisterings beat out of the bushes. Mouths frothed, pupils dilated and no discussion necessary regarding diarrhea behind delphiniums. Burning sensations, uncontrolled defecations, heart palpitations—even the Christmas Rose gifted back gripping ulcerations. Vision distortions, delirium, immobility of the tongue, mouth and throat competed with comas for painful pitfalls pointing to the end of life. Neurotoxins, hepatotoxins, endotoxins and blue-greened the algae in the fish pond where fins just floated, bloated.

  ***

  The Goddess of the Moxie Moon thought Love was the saddest thing when it went away. Up til this day, that was the plentitude of her power, passion’s pull at sensual hours. A worthy job, making worlds go round. When two lovers asked, “Did the earth move for you?,” it was really her. Electric Erotics she dubbed it . . . whenever she sparked it on through.

  However, when Life itself, as the Celestial Supers knew it, faltered, failed and faded upon her lunar watch, excuses were eclipsed. Ol’ Sol had tried to burn away the beasts. West winds and Nor’easters had blown themselves silly. Still the Damnation Critters spread out, willy nilly.

  The Ancients knew what she deemed true—the Wisdom of the Earth connected primal to the soul of every Woman. Gods with little g’s come and go, go, go. The Goddesses mentally and mindfully, distinctly rule the show. Style and grace all over the place. Gentle Strength = the magnet of the ironies.

  Now a test of time, her time and talents was called for . . . to step up protective powers, pervade the Universe. But battle evil with moonbeams like kleigs scanning Earth? Not enough—justholy light turning darkness bright wouldn’t pull the plug on devastation. To eradicate the destructive elements, tender forth rebirth and renewal, a divine plan must be defined.

  Moxie is what moxie does—It’s pluck and courage, vision past where inner-seeing parlays speak. It’s hearing quiet dreams on quiet nights—within and without—past the speed of lunar light, then spiraling a benevolent vixen’s victory lap, so whisper’s sonar rouses right. Moxie recalls rhythms, changes pace. The sixth sense attunes. Intuition reaps Fruition. Basic Goddess training, especially the Moon’s.

  Moxie’s a rugged belief that we own within us the ability to call forth Best Outcomes coming true. A Moxie Moon can manifest destiny as a mandela bypasses the intrinsic spirals of spiritual DNA, right out of the deep dark blue.

  And that is what the Goddess of the Moxie Moon set out to do. She tilted the tides, brought near the afar. She bright-blessed day and made sacred dark, nights.

  And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world.

  She realigned the stars. She danced in the buff until she had enough. She came ‘round full-cycle, a full Moxie Moon. She knew what music to subconsciously play. Psyche? Indeed that was her way. She aimed and squirted perfume of Higher Ethers at disgusting base reactions. It scattershot like shrapnel at deleterious Damnation Critters. But she wouldn’t look their way. To acknowledge their lower demonic existence was to give them power over her broader view. Hah! Something she would never do.

  And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world.

  The Goddess of the Moxie Moon knew all, sensed all. She knew Pandy Orah’s exploitation of the locked lapis lazuli box for her own reward was not child’s play but the beguine of hubris, which heeds only its self-serving way. That was why wicked weeds usurped what was growing as it should be growing. Disease and sickness, envy and hate, death over life, the extinction of fate—Deduction of that destruction was plain easy.

  But the legendary little bug inside, off to one side of all the big Bad Guys? No, not the rust that blinded Pandy’s eyes, but a cute, small bug who also flew alongside the slew of Damnation Critters hellbent to cause havoc in the Enchanted Gardens of the World. Fancified folks told their versions of the story, naming that little bug, “Hope”. They wrung their hands and looked skyward with their eyes. Wished it to whisk off yuck and muck, flotsam and jetsam, detritis and destruction. Hope was their tenuous lifeline.

  The Goddess of the Moxie Moon laughed hearty at the knucklehead notion of that. Hope over weakness is a mere, mild cope. Only to TRUST is to EMPOWER. That was always the Universe’s real silver key. Well, that’s how she explained it simply, thus strongly, to me.

  “Universal Truths are akin to energies of vibrations,” the Goddess of the Moxie Moon patiently explained. “Tripping up the tides floods what cannot take hold. Replanting will gut away what evils, demons, negative energies have been able to seep in. To deny destruction is where we begin. When we rebuild—anything is possible, but we must hold multiple solutions simultaneously in our mind’s eye. Adjust at will, fine-tune . . . tweak!”

  And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world.

  She continued, a vivacious version of a spiritual guru, this bella luna, Goddess of the Moxie Moon. She held high the standards of Good vs evil, giving free will a higher standing still. “We, the World, and all the Enchanted Gardens within, must come to understand that black energies carried and passed on are deadlier than any poisonous gas. What we open for or what overtakes us has genesis of our own Resolve.”

  At that exact moment, she drew in the four tides around the planet, colluding with the Sun to exert gravitational pull. This action had an opposite reaction, creating a thick atmospheric tide on the Sun’s side, from which the Earth could easily rotate. By a knowing nod of agreement, they communicated without words for the better nature of the world.

  The Sun evaporated moisture to a huge and splendiferous cloud. It billowed post-cumulous blocking Earth with the Sun holding light. Though Earth saw not the light, the Sun still had the capacity to warm it. The massive cloud soaked up much of the waters from Earth’s surface, spreading evenly a shallow sea, over all the landmass. With lunar tides withheld for these time-out-of-time moments, tectonic activity could not build mountains or gouge deep crevasses under such a land-under-sea.

  All went back to even. Days were clouded, nights were freezing. Strong winds had their way, both from the wild West’s and the Nor’easters o’er the sea. The hell on Earth froze over . . . in all the Gardens of Enchantment of the World. With the Sun’s light blocked, plant-life could not exist and run wild. There was little air. And odds died off to even.

  There, at what looked like a rotation of no return, the Goddess of the Moxie Moon turned the 5th lunar tide, with sure fine
sse of a woman’s deft touch. The 5th lunar tide acclaimed Biology and Reproduction, and the Goddess of the Moxie Moon replanted the Earth and all the Enchanted Gardens right.

  And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world.

  Only the moon could give Rise to Life.

  Only the Goddess of the Moxie Moon could conquer inner strife.

  Me? I’m Satchmo, the jazzed up Man in the Moon.

  I believe I’ll charm her, court her—perhaps ask her to be my wife.

  FINDING PEACE BY WRITING ABOUT CANCER

  an essay by T. Fox Dunham

  When I write about cancer, especially my horror work, I employ metaphors. These metaphors explore the various forces a cancer patient must endure through treatment and life after remission. I have used my writing to heal, writing such work as my novella New World for May December Books or my new novel, Mercy—a horror novel about the life of a cancer patient in hospital. The many stories and novellas I’ve written about cancer have served as a catharsis, a way to process my experience and understand it. I work to explore the emotions I’ve felt and to share those emotions with other patients and their family members. In my story, “Welcome to the World, Mister Smiles”, I cover these component themes of living with cancer. “Welcome to the World, Mr. Smiles” is a means for me to heal and to help myself and others find expression through symbol, theme and metaphor.

  First, we start with the story conflict. Jai Chropra is a young man facing a death sentence. For all of his life, he believed that cancer happened to other people; and he’d be immune. Now it’s happened to him, as it did with me. It shifts his perspective to a state of spurious reality. The world no longer feels. The laws of physics don’t make sense, yet he’s under constant threat of death. To endure this mind state, he detaches from reality and numbs himself.

  He begins undergoing preliminary treatment testing, including a Gallium scan. The technician injects you with a radioactive isotope dye that is absorbed into cancer cells, then scans the body with a receptor plate. This is a way to determine if you have tumors in your body, and they show up as white blobs on the monitor. When I had to go through this test, I thought the white blobs looked like clouds, nebulous and formless; and the mind sees patterns. I saw faces swirling in the hoary masses, and I realized that the cancer was alive, and possessed a dark spirit. I had assigned it vindictiveness; darkness, evil, yet these were human qualities I personified the cancer with. It felt easier being a menace, something with an evil plot, because then I could fight it. Really, it’s just a disease, and there’s nothing I could personally do to fight it. But I needed to feel some kind of control, some way I could influence. In the story, the cancer begins to talk to Jai, and he responds. The cancer has a face. It has a name. And it can be killed. He no longer feels out of control. Cancer patients need to feel they have some kind of control of their disease, and they often trick themselves into believing it. Really, it’s entirely out of our hands.

  And it is alive. We personify things, contribute spirit and animation and personality to forces like disease. This too is about control. What can be controlled can’t hurt us. The reality is that almost everything in this universe is out of human control, so we live in this fantasy that somehow we can affect reality, change the course of events, even stop our death. This story is not so much a horror as it is a fantasy. I would love to give my disease a face and hands and a heart in which I could stab it. I want to be able to fight it on my terms, to argue with it. In my story, the cancer has will and a soul—and an appetite. Its nature is to feed. Even though it is horror, this element gives me some peace. Jai finds a way to evict the offending appendage from his body. It wants to be free. It speaks to him and demands to be free, to feed on life, to hunt. They make a deal, and Jai cuts his body wide and releases it. Their deal made, he goes off to try to live a normal life, but it haunts him. This is another reality for the cancer patient. Even if the cancer is defeated, it sleeps, it waits, never too far from the mind of the patient. We don’t stop thinking about it. It never gets easier. We just find a new way to live with it, but always it’s never far. In Jai’s situation, he learns that the tumor he shed from his body is now killing and eating children. It is his responsibility. He birthed the monster. He gave it away, even though he knew what it would do. It wasn’t wrong of him. He wanted to live. He wanted his life, his chance. It may not have been noble, but we can forgive him that.

  And then he’s haunted. Oh yes. I had my radiation at Penn. They had many of the severe cases down there, especially children suffering this disease. I saw many of them. I played with them. And so many didn’t survive. And it haunts me. I feel guilty for living. Survivor’s guilt, as if I shed my cancer, and it killed them. Survivor’s guilt compels so much of my life, and whatever I do is never enough. The ghosts haunt him. They ask him why? And they intrude on the spurious security he’s created as he goes on with his life. No matter what he does, the children return night after night, and he’s going insane.

  Finally, he decides to take action. This is another fantasy for me, something for which I wish I had remedy. The cancer is alive. It has a soul. He determines to trap it, using a mechanism he learned of in their encounter. They’re both living on borrowed time. This too is a metaphor. I was never supposed to survive my rare cell types of lymphoma, and I can’t help feeling like this is extra time—time that’s running out. If he can bring the monster back into his body, time will catch up, and they’ll both sicken and die. He can’t endure the guilt anymore, and the burden of the fantasy of his long life is too much to live with. He decides to give himself peace and take the monster with him.

  This too is my desire. I long for the peace of ignorance. I’m tired of carrying this monster, and I wish I could do something to resolve the guilt. I have poured these emotions into a metaphysical script. That’s the heart of modern magick, and it doesn’t give me peace; however, at least it helps the pain for a little while.

  And I keep writing and running from it.

  THE LUCKY MOUTH

  Gerry Huntman

  Gerry Huntman is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia, living with his wife and young daughter. He writes in all genres of speculative fiction, and most sub-genres, but his stories tend toward the dark. Recent publications include Stupefying Stories, Lovecraft eZine, Aurealis Magazine, and Night Terrors III anthology (Blood Bound Books). He has also published a young teen fantasy novel, Guardian of the Sky Realms (IFWG, 2010). He is a current judge on the long fiction panel of the Australian Shadow Awards

  My name is Ping. It means ‘water plant’ but it also means ‘fair’, and that is because I have light skin, much like a Westerner. Papa said that when I was born Ping was the obvious name for me. Granma also has pale skin and she says that my mother had it too. She says it makes us special.

  I am eleven years old, but smarter than most kids. I know this, and they do too. They usually leave me alone. There are only four Chinese families here, and most people don’t take too kindly to foreigners. This was regardless of the fact that my family has lived in Arkham as well as Innsmouth for four generations. Granma says that we came from China when the sea trading and fishing was good and because we would be able to find the Lucky Mouth.

  We all live in Fisheries Lane. That’s the one that runs off River Street near Garrison, which crosses the Miskatonic. The river is dark and murky like the town, but that is all right with me. My family is my life, and serving them is my duty. This also honors our ancestors. I sometimes think that my family is like the Miskatonic, slow moving, mysterious, and eternal. They both soothe me.

  When I lie in bed next to Second Youngest Daughter and Oldest Daughter, and count my heartbeats with the breathing of my sisters, I sometimes notice the faint acrid smells of the town and river. I imagine creatures creeping up from the muddy waters, with heaving breaths, and scampering on River Street. I see them sniffing for food—fresh meat and blood, snarling with their bright white fangs. They bound around with their scaled leg
s into the town, looking for prey. I know that our ancestors protect us, along with the magical symbols inscribed on our doors. More importantly, we are defended by the Lucky Mouth.

  Papa is a clever man and works hard to feed his family. He and Old Uncle and Middle Uncle run a laundry business, which still has the steam machine that was used over fifty years ago. Now they have a car, though, and it makes it easier to deliver the laundered clothes than with the horse and cart. Papa also works with Oldest Son and Second Youngest Son repairing shoes, and he is the landlord of two rooms above our laundry and home.

  I am normally called Youngest Daughter.

  When I sit quietly and listen to the chug-chugging of the steam engine that drives the hot water into our laundry as well as our heaters in winter, I have visions. This large machine made by my great grandfather seems otherworldly to me. Like a huge animal, too fat to walk. Is it a coincidence that in the cellar immediately below there is the Lucky Mouth? I have decided that it is not the case. I think the steam engine is its belly.

  The Lucky Mouth isn’t just our protector; it is the source of our prosperity. That is why it is called ‘lucky’.

  When I can, I like to talk to the lodgers. They don’t usually stay long, and are mostly students at Miskatonic University in need of cheap room and board. The University is only a few blocks away from our home, between Church and College Streets. Some tenants don’t say much, not wanting to talk to the ‘yellers’, but others are real nice. Only a few months ago, I got to talk to Winston Baker, from Connecticut, who was on what he called a ‘sabbata’-something. He was old, maybe in his late twenties, but nothing like my Granma, who is over a hundred. I liked him because he took the time to explain things to me. I always have a lot of questions, so this was enjoyable.