The fire stirred up in each one of us comes screaming out in huge angry strides.  The seam of the undead stretches out in front of us, and a sight that usually spells death and retreat seems like a smiling challenge begging for our boot heels.  I clutch my crowbar tightly, each end sharpened and scarred, a part of me since the sun went down and never came back up.  In front of me, white headstones spread out in rows, identical in shape but not in content.  Thousands, all the way to a horizon flecked with the hulls of planes, great crushed airliners that failed to save us from the realization that each destination was more tainted than the last.  A jeep carrying The General screams past, guns blazing precious high caliber promises.  His megaphone screams, “THIS LIFE!  A FUCKING CAKEWALK.  MAKE THEM PAY!” (more…)

Sequel to UNTITLED PART 4

I liked the neighborhood because you could hear crickets.  Some people, it bugs them, but I liked following their rhythms.  When they came out it was time to go quiet, to calm down and let them do the talking.

The lamp stayed pretty close to me when I read.  I liked the heat from the bulb.  Me smirking with the thought of being part moth, her weight resting silently on my lap.  She looked up.  “Hey why don’t I feed her and put her down, you can keep reading,” she said, lamp glow reflecting from her eyes. (more…)

There is a point on the horizon.  Take that point and split it in two.  Split it again, and again, and again until you reach a space, one that cannot be split.  Within that space you’ll find the most immense horror you can imagine.  Oceans of pain, not just the type of pain that your flesh so poorly translates, but the actual essence of it.

A thing. (more…)

He steps slowly out of the subway. The first drop of a night’s soaking rain skips off an awning and smacks him right between the eyes. It runs the creases of his face down to his mouth. He tastes, swallows.

Deep breath. He wonders about the rain. It’s loaded with chemicals, saturated with death and decay. Yet it tastes so sweet, it falls into our pores. He thinks that the rain, with its chemicals and liquid rot, has become a part of us. We are the residue of this world, the waste along the rim. (more…)

Wet floors.

Open doors.

…A priest mounting a thrashing, made-up corpse from behind…her makeup smeared.  Her giant hoop earrings spinning in wild circles from her ear lobes.

…A legless, armless trunk of a woman is chained in midair by an “X” of chains.  She sits pelvis high.  A half-crazed traffic cop leers from the corner, not moving yet.

…short whacks of consciousness capitalized by the taste of bile, punctuated by the slam of gunshots into windowless rooms.

…A decomposed nurse’s outfit…no bottom jaw.  No way to say “no”.

Rooms full of money.  A hand covered in gold.  The stink of chugging generators.

Wet bodies hit the floor. (more…)

As I wandered back into the Hotel St. George, it was summer, and my mouth was still sticky from the wine tasting next door.  Pete, Pete, possibly the greatest human that had ever lived was there, in the doorway, holding his cart, his beads around his neck.

He did look a bit like a homeless person, but he was not.  He was so “not homeless” that it pissed me off when he was regarded as such.  He was old, weathered, educated, alive.  “Helooooo, Ryaaaaaan, how are you?, are you getting good maaarks in your school?”, he dragged every word out, each syllable passing through its own accent, French, Jamaican, English, erudite, academic, compelling.  This man could read the phone book to me and I would sit, glassy eyed and cross legged in front of him until the birds stopped singing. (more…)

Continued from Untitled part 2

I’m looking up, miles and miles away from anything.  Miles from the asphalt beneath me, miles from her teeth.  I’m looking down an extremely long soundproof tunnel.  The only thing I can hear is a heartbeat, some muffled noises…the sounds brain cells make when they die screaming. (more…)

You’d never believe it, but the true badasses, the real fucking heroes of this entire thing were not the soldiers (‘we are SO ready for the last war’), the police, the government, the “human spirit” or even Zack. No. The real fucking heroes are the pizza delivery guys. I shit you not. (more…)

I came to in a muddy stupor. Screaming, fucking screaming was my alarm clock, on the hood of my car, someone was being devoured. How I was still alive I had no idea, the G was picking Prick up and slamming him down on the hood by his ribs, I shook my head as clear as I could and grinned as the first thing I saw was the G’s greasy fingers dug completely into Prick’s ribs, to the first knuckle. His head cracked the windshield. He was still alive. (more…)

Ask anybody out here, they will tell you that I bring in money. Steadily. Godzilla could be wrecking shop around here stepping on buildings and shit, and I’d have him hitting me up for trim and blow on a Saturday night. I work. This is what I do. (more…)

–It was never clear where or how these patrons ended up going. The “how” was eventually taken care of first by a busboy, then a cop, then a coroner, then a bunch of people in green scrubs saying, “what the fuck?” quickly before they had their throats ripped out. (more…)