He hadn’t time to finish it off. Soon he could wipe them all out with a single blow.
Aves made his way to the third and final oven and swung down at the copper pipe splitting it away from the joint that snaked inside.
More heady gas filled the room. The clucking, screeching and squawking reached a crescendo as they all hungered after him. Even without eyes or mouths they hungered after him. At the other end of the room Tomas lay still, covered in blood and feathers, they had done with him. Soon he would be done with them.
He slumped to the floor, dropping the club. It might have been his trick knee that blazed with pain from all the activity or it might have been the amount of noxious fumes that had now flooded into his bloodstream. The hard hat fell from his head, he pulled the misted goggles from his face and crawled into the corner beside the last broken pipe, letting the devil birds advance, getting them all close.
“Hello Harry,” she said.
A fat and heavily mutated Shire White jumped on his chest and began pecking at his face, he was beyond caring now. He felt no pain, the gas took care of that, dreamily lifting him up to light headedness. He felt pleasant though nauseous; a column of bile rose up his throat. He held it down, clenching his mouth shut, saving his last breath for a couple more thoughts.
He could see Daisy on their wedding day. God she was beautiful. The dress hadn’t cost them much but with her in it she sparkled like all the diamonds in the universe. Their wedding night had been the highlight of his life. That little hotel room in the Lake District, when she finally slipped off the pearly dress, letting it drop elegantly to the floor. Her words had made his day.
No, his entire life.
“I’ve been waiting for you Harry.”
Now she said those words to him again and they still meant as much.
The rest of the Shire Whites arrived; the first had started pecking out his eyes, yet he concentrated through the distraction of pain. It’ll be worth it.
The ‘Chicken in Black’ up against the ‘Chickens in White’.
Good versus Evil.
He was blind now, he could taste nothing but his own vomit, could hear only the hiss of rapidly escaping gas close to his ear and the tremendous cluckophony of the chickens pecking and darting randomly at his face.
Time for Zombiefried Chicken.
From his clenched hand he thumbed the flint wheel of Tomas’s lighter, ignited Butane met and ignited Propane.
A warm and pleasant wind kissed his face with a deafening hiss.
Tickled him
Embraced him.
Engulfed him.
“Hello Daisy.”
How Do You Like Yours?
By Tony Walsworth
My name is Julia Smedly. Well, it’s not my real name obviously, but then I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let me begin by asking you a few questions.
How do you like your potatoes? Mashed? Boiled? Chipped and fried perhaps?
What about your ideal car? Is it curved and sporty or boxy and reliable?
Do you prefer a holiday in the African sun, or skiing in the Pyrenees?
In the end does it really matter? It’d be a poor state of affairs if we all liked the same things.
What about sex then? Do you like yours with a man or a woman? Both perhaps? Or God forbid, with animals, minerals or vegetables?
The point I’m making is that no-one can help the way they feel, the way that they’re designed. It’s all a part of nature’s limitless abundance and rich variety. We can of course, depending on the strength of our urges and the opposing force of our moral convictions, choose whether or not to act upon those feelings. But we cannot help having them.
As the world of human endeavour broadens, the scope of our sexuality is never far behind, although it can’t be compared to how it was say, two thousand years ago when the Romans were in charge. They really knew how to throw a party! Then the emergence of Christianity brought us headlong into the sexual dark ages, choking off any possibility of the use of sex as a recreational activity. You couldn’t have a good hard shag all through the middle ages unless you were prepared to accept that an omniscient father figure was sitting at the bottom of the bed watching your arse bobbing up and down, and that he could give it a good hard slap if you looked as if you were enjoying it too much. The Victorians? Numb from the waist down! Then at last the swinging sixties. No risk of pregnancy, a pill to cure all known venereal disease and plenty of willing sexual scientists to experiment with. Thus the field of human eroticism grows ever wider.
Some things though, will never be accepted. Despite the fact that certain ‘practices’ have always been with us, flitting through the tempting velvet darkness that lies beyond the horizons of sexual normalcy they are, although generally quite harmless, regarded with great distaste.
Yes, I’m normal in virtually every respect. I’m a young and healthy female. I’ve had a good upbringing, enjoying the attention of loving parents. I have several siblings who have beautiful families of their own. I’m heterosexual, as if that matters at all, and I go for the standard male characteristics. I like a tall, firmly set man of approximately my age with a full head of thick hair; dark and wavy preferably. I like good musculature and straight white teeth and I’m a sucker for the strong, silent type. So you see I really am quite normal… apart from the fact that they also have to be dead.
I mean, it’s not like they’re in short supply is it? Just hard to actually meet, that’s the problem. That’s why I worked as a mortician, to improve my romantic opportunities. But I’m leaping ahead again.
I was fifteen when I realised my predilection for ‘post mortem relationships’ as I call them. An interest in the opposite sex had kicked off in the usual way and at the right age. There was the girlish giggling between friends as the boys walked past in the school corridors and the secret exploratory fumbling when the lights went out at the extracurricular drama club. I did my fair share of kissing, but no tongues please, and of course I became aroused. But in retrospect, glorious as these sensations were, they were nothing compared to what happened the day that I discovered my true self.
Kevin Washby – corpse number three. That’s what it said on the program, I’ve still got it stashed away with other mementos in my bedroom drawer. As I said, I was a member of the school drama club and we were putting on a pantomime loosely based on Robinson Crusoe except that it had Dracula in it and the Easter bunny. I was in the chorus.
We had this scene where Count Dracula had just finished off three peasants to the tune of ‘food glorious food’ when I saw him, Kevin that is, lying on the stage motionless with his throat raised and lashings of fake blood soaked into his ragged clothes.
It was like being kissed between my legs; a sort of hot fluttering. I’m no poet and I’ve yet to read a poem that adequately describes what it’s like to be turned on like a firework display on New Year’s Eve, but I think you know what I’m talking about. It was maybe an hour later that I finally got to be alone. I ran to the girls toilets and sat in a cubicle in darkness with my hands down my panties. After five minutes of frenzied finger action I threw a massive, bone shaking gusher of an orgasm. Honestly, I almost fell off the fucking pot! When I got home I must have masturbated almost continuously for the rest of the night. The image just kept coming back at me for days after.
I didn’t fully realise at first what it was that had sent me over the top. I thought that maybe I just fancied Kevin Washby so I made a point of chatting him up over the next few weeks and when I did finally get to give him a good snogging I realised that I’d made a mistake. Oh it was okay, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t until I saw him in my mind’s eye, cold and immobile, that my loins freaked.
That’s how it was for a few years until university. I fell in with a group of Goths, probably because most of them looked like they were dead, but you can’t fool yourself. I needed the real thing. When I left uni I went to work for a local funeral director. I was twenty four when true l
ove finally came along. Alex Dawson, that was his name, I have a picture of the two of us together, would you like to see it? Well, perhaps not.
Anyway, I went into work one day and there he was; my soul mate, my perfect man. God he was seriously lush, dead as a doornail and not a mark on him. It was love at first sight, not that I’m into all that romantic slush, but he loved me too, I could tell.
He was the son of a local councillor and aspiring commons backbencher. He was well educated and witty. We never argued. We just fitted together. We had deep and meaningful conversations about every conceivable subject and we wanted to be together forever. It would have been nice, just him and me, in a timeless bubble of love with nothing but sex and chocolate. But it can’t ever be that way. I’m not stupid. I know I have to deal with the real world. Sooner or later his family would want him back. We spent a couple of hours in tearful torment until we made our decision to elope.
The night before Alex’s funeral I sneaked in through the back door of the funeral parlour. I’d already managed to get a key cut earlier that day. Alex was there in the semi-darkness waiting for me just like we’d agreed. He’d never let me down. We were in love.
We both knew that he couldn’t sit in the front seat of the hearse; he had to hide in the back. It all went so smoothly until the alarms went off. Apparently there were two alarm systems, one for the main building and one for the garage. We tripped the garage alarm so we had to leave quickly before the police arrived. We sped off into the night, screaming and giggling. We must have driven for about an hour, completely absorbed in the rush. I eventually pulled over into some trees and breathed a deep sigh of relief. I clambered into the back of the hearse and we lay together in silence for a while trying to take in the enormity of what we’d done. Like I said, I’m no romantic but even I know when the time is right.
There was no fumbling or clumsiness despite the lack of room. It was a lingering kiss followed by slow deliberation. Once we were both naked I climbed aboard and straddled him. It was all so easy, like it was meant to be. I was getting into rhythm, pushing slowly back and forth, working us both up into a lather. That’s when the back doors suddenly flew open and half a dozen police officers stared in on us, picking out our nakedness with torchlight.
Our love was doomed from then on. Alex’s parents refused to let us see each other, (although for some reason they managed to avoid any further involvement from the police), and I was fired from my job. I hit a little depression for a few months. Heartbroken I suppose. Anyway the long and the short of it is that I decided that from then on I’d never waste time again. Why should love wait? If it’s right, it’s right.
A year or so later I met James. I’d gone to a nightclub with friends and we accidentally bumped asses on the dance floor. Yes, yes I know what you’re thinking, what happened to the dead guy thing? Well I’m coming to that. So James and I, we really hit it off. After a couple of months we were inseparable. He was something of a gentleman and it took a little while before we got ‘down and dirty’ if you get my drift.
In the end, (I had to push him a little) he finally admitted that he loved me and that he wanted me to love him. I tried to explain to him that each time I thought that I’d found true love the relationship had turned out to be somewhat short lived. He seemed confident that our love would be different and that we shouldn’t wait to be together forever.
I hardly have to tell you that this was just music to my ears. We were the same, James and I. We had an understanding. I wanted to make our first time special so one day, when I knew he was at work, I went to his flat. I pushed back the furniture and made the living room a little cosier by putting coloured veils over the lamps. I put scented candles in each corner and then hit the kitchen to make my special spaghetti Bolognese.
James arrived home a little late. This was good because I had to put together a few finishing touches. Let’s just say he looked a little surprised when he did turn up. I ran him a nice hot bath.
We had a cosy candle lit meal and then we were at it. It started out soft but then turned rapid fire, you know, all mouth and trousers. I have to say that James was an impressive lover. He was either very experienced or extremely talented. He must have had the constitution of a horse because it took perhaps an hour before the Valium kicked in. He went off to sleep, dozing in the musky scents of sexual aftermath. I waited quietly; the tension crowding into my loins and making me ache. Twenty minutes I waited before I put the plastic bag over his head and pulled it tight. Then it was my turn to rattle his bones.
It’s been about two months now and the dim lighting and scented candles are still working a treat. James was right. We are meant to be together.
Why should love wait?
Back Into Hell
By Tracey Goodwin
It was the start of Student Exchange Week, when all the innocent student angels came down to Hell to learn how it worked, and all the not so innocent student devils went up to Heaven to cause some chaos. Baal hated Student Exchange Week, although possibly he didn’t hate it quite as much as God did.
In fact, following the last student exchange, God had written Lucifer a very irate note on his pretentious gilt-edged stationery with the linked haloes in the corner. It had catalogued all the things the devils had been up to in their week upstairs, and included the following: Five stolen harps, several dented haloes, signs saying; ‘kick me’ being attached to robes, rude words added to hymn books, a stack of ‘gentleman’s literature’ appearing in the toilets, the word ‘bread’ in the Lord’s Prayer being replaced with ‘cake’ and the word ‘not’ being crossed out of ‘lead us not into temptation’.
The communion wine had been spiked with vodka, crosses had been hung upside down and horns and spectacles had been drawn on every depiction of Jesus. A commode had been added to the main confessional, a ‘vacant’ and ‘engaged’ sign added to the door and a toilet sign put up outside. The font contents had been replaced with gin. Angels’ wings had been clipped while they were asleep so that they could only fly in circles. The devil assigned to the laundry which kept those pure white robes dazzling white had added a red sock so that all the angels were clad in pink.
It had done little to improve relations when Lucifer had scrawled back a note saying. ‘To err is human; to forgive is divine,’ accompanied by a drawing of a smiley face with horns. Irate notices had then appeared on every college notice board in Heaven warning that any visitors caught misbehaving could expect to be Smote with the Righteous Staff. God didn’t do a lot of Smiting, but when He was in the mood for it, it was as well to stay out of the way as He had a heavy Right Hand.
Personally, Baal couldn’t see what the problem was. Nobody had died, and even if they had, as they were already inhabitants of Heaven anyway, then they’d just have been recycled to end up back on the same cloud a few days later. The only inconvenience would be having to sit through the ‘Welcome to Heaven’ induction course again. That was a yawn fest and a half – Baal had been subjected to it a long time ago during his own student exchange week. It was full of do’s and don’ts, but all the do’s were things that no-one in their right mind would want to do (do ensure that your halo is straight; do be early for prayers) and all the don’ts were things that sounded quite fun (don’t smoke weed; don’t slide down the banister of the Stairway to Heaven)
Bang on time, a gaggle of angels stepped out of the lift. They were on their summer break following the completion of their exams. Baal wondered what exactly angels had to learn for their exams. Halo polishing and good-doing? How to tune a harp and refluff a cloud? That sort of thing must be very tiresome. Demon exams were far better. You could do exams in Being Really, Really Naughty, Creative Lying, Development of a Blood Curdling Laugh and Use of a Pitchfork. Only, you weren’t allowed to call them pitchforks any more - since Hell had gone all Euro, you had to call them ‘two pronged stimulators.’ And after the last visit from the Health & Safety Department, you were required to have safety corks on the end o
f the prongs. As the Health and Safety inspector had pointed out, two pronged stimulators were ‘jolly dangerous,’ and Baal could have someone’s eye out with one, or at the very least do them a mischief.
The inspector had been thinking about making all the devils wear safety corks on their horns too, and loop up their tails for work as apparently they were a trip hazard. Sadly for the inspector, he’d had an unfortunate accident when testing the safety rails surrounding Hell’s sole remaining pit of molten lava. All the most dangerous bits had been fenced off following the inspector’s previous recommendations, and signs saying ‘Danger – molten lava may be hot’ had been erected as if the lava pit were a fast food outlet hot apple pie. After the railings had given way and the inspector had fallen in, his ghost had last been seen trying to run back down the mighty escalator that led to Heaven complaining that he still had another five checklists to fill in.
“Okay, guys,” Baal said. “Let’s start at the beginning with Admissions.” He led the way, with the angels following behind in a neat and orderly crocodile.
Admissions had historically been a bit on the warm side, to give the prospective residents some idea of what they were in for. As the little angels were not accustomed to the heat, they tended to sweat through their robes, with the result being an impromptu ‘wet robe’ competition. Accordingly there were often photographers to record this start of Student Exchange Week – no shortage of paparazzi in Hell - and the angels had assumed that it was for the university magazine and not for the ‘Angel Special’ edition of ‘Loaded’. All had been well until God had somehow got hold of a copy and had spoiled the fun by issuing all the angels with overalls.
“This is Admissions,” he said. The angels looked around. It resembled the foyer of a very busy, multi-storey office block, with a bank of eight lifts. A lift arrived every few minutes, and those inside were herded out by a demon wielding a corked stimulator; only all the demons had worked out long ago that a quick whack with the handle worked nearly as well as the prongs.
The Spinetinglers Anthology 2011 Page 27