Art/Comics, Fiction

‘TRUE LOVE OH BABY TRUE LOVE’ by Ashok Rajamani

6 Comments

 

 

"HIS LOVE" by ashok rajamani ink/paper/canvas,11" x 16," 2010

 

Lakhan knew he wasn’t supposed to fall for monsters anymore.  Well, not since that embarrassing incident of 1987, at least.  But he couldn’t help lusting after the one in front of him.  The beast was, he believed, obviously male, although there was no discernable bulge.  He was lusciously dark, the result of deep-chocolatey South Indian genetics, with, of course, long hours toiling in the hot Indian sun, Lakhan assumed.  His face was as delicious as his build, with full lips and wide-set black eyes framed by thick charcoal eyebrows. His nine arms were muscular, sexier than the arms of any two-armed man.  The horned tail was to die for.  With his lengthy nose and prominent chin, both geometric in their sharpness, the beast’s face was as angled as Lakhan’s was round.

 

Fiction

The Fifth Circle Of Hell By Ian Ayris

8 Comments

Monday. The doctors’ surgery on Bennett Street. The place is heaving with the ill and the frail, the skiving and the mad. The loud-mouthed receptionists keep order, spitting bile at anyone with the temerity to question their authority.

Coming out of one of the doctor’s rooms, inching his way towards the receptionist’s desk, Mr Henderson Flint, leaning on a zimmer. Henderson Flint. Five foot two of crumbling humanity. Henderson bloody Flint.

One of the whip-handed receptionists. Weary. Exasperated.

‘Can I help you, Mr Flint?’

This one, worse than the rest. The Dragon Lady.

‘Busy today?’ Henderson says, cheerily.

‘Yes, Mr Flint. Now what is it you want?’

A disdainful glare cuts him off at the knees. Henderson feels the tension in the air around him rise. He leans into it, resting on the front bar of his zimmer. Holds the glare of the Dragon Lady with one of his own.

‘I need you to phone me a ride home,’ he says.

Continue reading The Fifth Circle Of Hell By Ian Ayris →

Fiction

Chevy by Charlie Coleman

3 Comments

Carlos Thornton Williams squired his cherry red 1966 Chevy Impala down the Henry Hudson Parkway. The trip to Manhattan served as his weekly retreat. He was a Bronx baby and the Imp was his Bronx baby. Both were totally fueled. His octane of choice was Muscatel.

Cruising the highway he reserved one eye for the road and one for the cops. It was a fiscally sound principle to find cops before they found you. You didn’t need the Wall Street Journal to tell you that. He savored the last sweet drops of Muscatel licking the rim of the bottle neck as a man crossing the desert would if reduced to the last drops in his canteen. The drive to lower Manhattan was his pilgrimage to the altar of jazz, the Village Vanguard. As he breezed through the Bronx and Manhattan he would often glance at the apartment buildings that formed the urban shrubbery. He thought about the kids his age out there. They would never ever know what they were missing. They had their rock and roll and mod clothes. They had their rebellion. But were they really cool? No. They Continue reading Chevy by Charlie Coleman →

Fiction

My Miss Universe by 2010

Leave a comment

Who is my Miss Universe?  I once ran product from an office in the Gnash nebula, from Gnash to markets in the systems in the north.  We were shipping dollars, packaged with engineering, collateralised by the land rights.  There was a bit of a speculative boom going on around then, but not all of it dumb stuff.  People were paying enough.

The MI was done by this bored looking gal, who let slip she was the brains.  No looker but quite interesting, hair the colour of Mars.  We gave it a go in the lunchtimes before she trotted back to her childhood sweetheart who did something boring with funds on the other side of the zone.

Well, I was being bugged by the pricing.  We were covering ourselves but boom to bust is like day and night.  The MI was a bit dreamy, does not often happen that I do that to someone; so I asked her for a full conjecture on the pricing.

I asked her out of bed, she said nothing.  I asked her later in bed.  It had been okay, nothing special except she had clung to me a little tighter and looked a little dreamier.  So I brought it up, more as something to say.  I’m sometimes at a lost when it comes to romance.  She nods and says let’s do it.  I thought this might involve more action, so I looked encouraging.  She unclasped herself; Continue reading My Miss Universe by 2010 →

Fiction

Tough Way to Order Carry-Out by B.R. Stateham

4 Comments

The smell of hamburger, onions, and stale cooking oil was everywhere.  We, my partner and I, stood in the kitchen of an empty restaurant staring at him in mute silence.  Hanging out of the air duct above the fryers—one big bare ass.  Glaring white, almost glowing in a neon way, dangling like raw meat in the air above our heads.  The idiot tried to rob the till of a restaurant by taking clothes off and rubbing his body with oil so he could slide down an air duct above the deep fryer.  I thought I’d seen it all as my partner, Frank, frowned and grunted, “Tough way to order carry-out.”

But there was more.

How do you get a dead stiff out of an air duct?

Continue reading Tough Way to Order Carry-Out by B.R. Stateham →

Fiction

The Path That Does Not Stray by Christopher Ryan

3 Comments

” … Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.”

(There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.)

Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Richard entered the next room as the door locked behind him. A quick assessment of his surroundings produced two noteworthy observations. First, he could see an exit across the room, and second, he was not alone. In the center of the room an older man stood hunched over a bathtub, cutting into a pale mass with a circular saw. Blood streaked the shower curtain and floor. The resonating wails of the blade and the stale reek of old meat filled the confined space like an animal trapped in too small a cage. The man looked up, stared straight at the newcomer, and turned back to his work.

Richard could feel his resolve beginning to falter, but he had to keep going. Stopping now, even if that were an option, would render meaningless everything he had endured to get this far. He had to press forward. Forgoing fear and further deliberation, he moved. Having to turn sideways in the narrow space to pass behind the man, Richard made sure to avert his eyes from whatever gruesome labors were being performed. The pitch of the saw’s scream dipped sharply as if its blade were struggling through something especially dense. Richard lunged for the door, which upon opening remained ajar. It did not slam and lock behind him, as had all of the others.

Continue reading The Path That Does Not Stray by Christopher Ryan →

Art/Comics, Writer's Interviews

Harbor Moon: A Hairy interview with Ryan Colucci

5 Comments

by Jason Michel

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Q1: Ryan, without giving too much away, tell me a little about the inspiration for Harbor Moon.

While at USC’s grad school for film producing, I was determined to graduate and not have to be an assistant. So I aggressively pursued a wealth of material – books, comics, web comics – I must have read over 500 scripts in two years before one caught my eye. Titled ‘Bloodkin’ it was an X-Men type story about a man without a past who finds out Continue reading Harbor Moon: A Hairy interview with Ryan Colucci →

Fiction

The Lad on the Knoll. Part II by Chris Pollard

2 Comments

“Then how can I help you?” I asked the lad.
“Sometimes they send me to fish in the river, by the bridge.”
“So why don’t you just run away when you go there?”
“Would that it were so easy!  They have me under a powerful enchantment, so that I may only go to the river, and when my buckets of fish are full, return directly.”
“What can I do then?”
“At midnight on the full moon, come and look for me there by the bridge, and bring a horseshoe on an iron chain.  Hang it round my neck, and I will be able to escape.  And you’d best protect yourself in like manner too, or they’ll take you in my place!”

The full moon was only two days away, so the following morning I went to the ironmonger’s store, and bought two horseshoes and some iron chain, preparing the two ‘necklaces’ as the lad Angus had instructed me.

The appointed night arrived, and I made my way along the road to the bridge over the river.  There I waited in the moonlight for midnight to come around, wearing one of the horseshoes on its chain about my neck.

Sure enough, at the allotted time, Angus appeared nearby with two wooden pails and a fishing rod.  He was down on the rocky shore of a fishing pool, and he sat upon a large stone, casting his line into the water.

Continue reading The Lad on the Knoll. Part II by Chris Pollard →

Non-Fiction

Sue and the Explosive Wreck by Sue W

4 Comments

So. It’s 1979. The Boomtown Rats don’t care for Mondays, and Joe Jackson can’t believe she’s really going out with him. (She is, Joe, mate, sorry). It’s Summer. I have never been away from my own bed for more than two nights before. And I am faced with a week in a tent on my Uncle’s smallholding on the Isle of Sheppey.

I have an empty sweet jar saved from last year’s day trip to Margate, so I re-fill it with humbugs and sherbet lemons. Probably a)not a good mix and b) not a good idea as we are having quite a hot spell and they are all stuck together before we even leave the house.

On top of this, I have had a week of angst, because ITV have gone on strike and The Streets of San Francisco isn’t on. Now, cop shows with Karl Malden in them aren’t usually my thing, but I have developed a crush on the young bloke in it who replaced Michael Douglas. I particularly like it when someone shoots him. To this day I am not sure what that says about me as a 12 year old.

Continue reading Sue and the Explosive Wreck by Sue W →

Fiction

Whore House by Kevin Atherton

7 Comments

The job went smooth enough, we got the jewels, and Ed didn’t even kill anybody. I’ve spent a buncha time with the freak on the problems that creates. Figured I’d get him laid as a reward, but the only way that was happenin’ was a whore. Ed’s ugly as a boil on a leper’s ass.

Frank said it was the best whore house around, but that was like sayin’ diarrhea on your cheerios would lead to a lovely morning. You know how a whore will put on an act about likin’ it and you don’t give a shit whether they do or not? These girls seemed like they’d won the lottery and gettin’ a dick rammed up their ass was all part of some carnival-like atmosphere assigned to whoredom. Frank’s always been full of shit and now he fits the image. His mouth looks just like his asshole ‘cause I knocked out his front teeth and the stitched-up lips have a nice puckery effect.

The door was dark mahogany and had etchings of women doin’ weird crap to pigs. In one they were fuckin’ ‘em and in the next, they were eatin’ ‘em. This bothered me some, but the two twits saw it as some kind of good omen —like pig sex Continue reading Whore House by Kevin Atherton →

"Write What Thou Wilt"