Image: Pixabay
Darla stands on the front porch, staring at her locked cottage. How stupid to have forgotten the key. It’s too late at night to call a locksmith or anyone. As she settles into her rocker chair to doze, the front door creaks open and a cloaked figure summons her inside.
Image: Pixabay
Though blest with wealth beyond need, Langdon Carlsberg lacks the basic measure to feel manly. One day at a public lavatory, he chances upon a well-endowed man urinating next to him. Langdon befriends him.
Nine months later, Langdon is seen jogging down a nude beach, sporting his well-healed, long schlong.
Image: Pixabay
Since working at the morgue, Elmer has learned to appreciate the dead. He looks at the clock and sighs. A few more hours until he can call it dawn.
“Okay, your move,” he says to the poker-faced corpse propped on a seat across from him, with a chessboard between them.
[NOTE: This short story was expanded by Matthew Tonks and posted in SlasherMonster Magazine.]
Image: Pixabay
Photographs of smiling family portraits in the guest bedroom seem to mock his failure to hold his own family together. Bitterness overwhelms him as he impulsively grabs the decorative sword from the wall and creeps inside his hosts’ bedroom. Soon after puncturing both their throats, he wails, “I’m so sorry.”
Image: Pixabay
She’s struck by his broad shoulders, but then catches herself. They found each other online, “Sex with a Twist.” As he steps inside, she asks, “Where’s your twin?” They’ve agreed to do a threesome.
“No worries.” He takes off his jacket and reveals a small head grinning on his shoulder.
Image: Pixabay
Evelyn goes to bed, a short-lived luxury because she has to get up in four hours to go to a third job. A relentless routine that grinds her down. She wishes to sleep for two days straight; a wish that’s granted. Endless dreams of being chased are wearing on her.
Undeterred from lacking funds, the four friends create their version of a CrossFit program, which they claim requires more sweat and guts. The challenge involves archery and lots of movement.
Used to being the point man, Derek harnesses onto his back the archery target with his friends in hot pursuit.
Image: Pixabay
Although poor, the four friends still have fun. With a six-pack, a deserted parking lot lit by a full moon, a radio, and a dart board game, they have created a makeshift outdoor pub.
“My turn tonight,” Derek says, as he straps the dartboard onto his butt and stoops over.
Image: Pixabay
Baby Toula is an ugly baby even her own mother can’t kiss, although she claims to love her, only because she came from her womb. That’s a womb its owner, Mama Lydia, did not know had become a receptacle to a hodgepodge of chemicals, such as synthetic fragrances she’s inhaled and the artificially preserved lotions her skin’s absorbed from the time she was a little girl to the mature fruit bearer she has now become.
As with any unsuspecting person, Lydia paid no heed to what her body was accumulating over time. How did she know the sweet, cloying Vanilla Ice cologne contained something that was also the lethal ingredient in a bug spray? Or a window cleaner? She isn’t one to question things like that. To her 20-something life, it’s more about fun stuff–like tasting those delicious bon bons that come in unnaturally vivid colors. She simply thought that if others bought them, they must be fine. The companies that churn them out are household names, so they can be trusted. Their packaging says they are mostly natural and good for you.
Now, she rocks on her chair looking at her baby from across the room, because Toula repulses her. She has pustules on a face that should be smooth-cheeked. And what should be shiny, baby fine hair is more like a patch of raised bumps. Where her lidded bright eyes would have been are unblinking dots filled in with odd-shaped cells. How she welcomes a loud cry. Instead, there’s only occasional bursts of heaves that raise her hackles.
Lydia thinks Toula is an unfortunate seed, though not a bad seed like her older sister Lizzie, who grew up to butcher their parents. Lydia will have to make sure Toula doesn’t have access to any axes.
You have restless legs, Felix recalls his doctor saying, as he finds himself walking around in his underwear in the middle of a busy street.
I have to be dreaming, Felix thinks because people seem to ignore him. He sees a woman approach him with a rictus that is supposed to pass off as a smile, but not quite successfully.
“Are you lost, dear? My husband used to fade out and wander off too. God rest his soul.” She takes his arm and guides him down the street. “Let me take you to my place; it’s just a short walk down to get you reoriented.”
Definitely a dream, Felix decides, as he plays along and allows the woman to help him. When he sees an uneven, worn looking building with missing bricks on its façade and a couple of windows with fine cracks like spider webs, he’s confident it’s all a dream. How can a lady who carries a Gucci purse and wears fine leather shoes live here?
But the woman acts like she’s right at home when she opens the door and leads him inside. The bright interior and clean spartan lines of the furniture cements his belief it’s all a dream. She leaves him thinking and reappears with a glistening cold glass of milk. “Here, you look thirsty to me.”
Felix drinks it quickly, not really tasting anything. He suddenly feels drowsy and again assures himself it’s only a dream, as he finds himself on a bed. His lids are weighing down.
He wakes, not knowing how much time has passed, and sees he’s now chained in bed, underwear removed. The same woman hovers nearby with the same thin smile. “You’re still dreaming, dear.”
Karina Pinella 
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