Puke Graveyard
Fog rolled in from the river, enshrouding the graves of the cemetery. The place had grown dilapidated with the new owners, part of a one-stop shop mortician/funeral director/plots franchise that cut corners on the local level as they ratcheted up prices on caskets, wax, makeup and hired mourners. Tombstones tilted at crazy angles, fresh-dug mounds stood abandoned, grass grew tall among the crypts, and empty soda bottles, crushed beer cans, cigarette butts and candy wrappers lay everywhere.
The Tamarin’s Folly Paranormal Meet-Up group had assembled at the cemetery at 10:30 pm to livestream podcast a Q & A session with the deceased, an idea the group’s founder and leader, self-described Retro-Goth Sandy Etchison, thought up during a coke binge with her lover, Magister Rawhead Hexx, lead singer of a mediocre British black metal band called 777.
The group’s treasurer and resident accountant Ross Seymour picked up the Maglite which he had set down next to the Spirit Box on top of the podcast rig, flicked it on and aimed its strong beam into the fog. “It feels like we’ve crossed a line, and I don’t mean just breaking and entering this time.”
He stepped carefully around a fallen headstone. “I’ve got bad feelings about this is all I’m saying.”
Sandy rolled her eyes, one green and one a robot silver contact, a nod to Marilyn Manson. “Your bad feelings are bad news, ‘Ross the Boss.’ And you’re wrong. This isn’t about corpse desecration or any dumbass shit like that, so don’t start up again preaching to me about what would Jesus do…and if we raise the dead, that’s exactly what Jesus would do. This is purely for science. Well, that, and a bit of fun besides.”
She set the Spirit Box down on the foldout table that held the podcast mixer box. “For the first time ever, we are going to livestream conversations with the dead. Connect with disembodied souls. Q&A with the departed.‘Who knows what secrets they might have to share?’ Or some bullshit like that.”
Ross shook his head in irritation.
“That’s not what you told me before. Ever since I joined the Paranormal Meet-Up, we’ve been up and down these crazy-ass roads. So many shocking sojourns. We’ve crashed funerals and terrified grieving loved ones. We’ve burst in on working morticians, video-bombed autopsies, just so you could get your ‘documentary footage.’ You keep repeating ‘there are no limits’ like Clive Barker was, I don’t know, the Pope. But you’ve gone quite beyond that.”
“Beyond? What do you mean? Those are legit enterprises. And don’t say you didn’t enjoy the mortician shenanigans. That pretty stiff with the big tits. Admit it, you got wood.”
Ross frowned and shook his head, too mad to speak.
“Well I think Clive was right, I mean back in the day at least, he was better than the Pope. Absolutely Splatterpunk rules. No limits. No mercy. No remorse.”
“But surely you would draw the line at, say, graphic sexual violence against children and animals….right?”
Sandy blinked rapidly three times.
“Right?”
“I guess. Shit, I don’t know. Never say never. I think that sometimes there is a place for graphic sexual violence against every fucking thing. If it’s fuckable, you cram its holes with cream and keep on going. If you run out of holes, you make new ones.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Don’t judge, dude. You of all people are hardly in the position to hold the moral high ground.”
Ross sputtered with indignation. “B-but that’s MONSTROUS.”
Sandy snorted. “Dude, I’m just KIDDING! Wait, you seriously thought I would go down that road? I may be depraved, but I’m not that…well…ya know some of these little bearzy weresies are hella cute. Wouldn’t mind…” She made an obscene gesture.
Ross threw his hands up. “It’s utterly unconscionable what you’ve made me do. I don’t know why I’m still here.”
“I don’t know,” said Sandy. “Why are you still here?”
“Death isn’t something to be exploited for views or clout or whatever. It’s a somber thing. Sacred even. And what’s even up with the party favors and the alcohol?”
Randall and Ross’s eyes met. Randall had his own history with Sandy. They’d recently broken up, and now Sandy was with the British metal vocalist. He was only there because she was so technically inept the podcast would implode if left entirely in her hands.
“The fuck is your problem, dude?” Sandy rolled her fingers through her choppy 80s punk rock-styled candy pink hair. “I mean yeah, we did bring a twelve-pack, some doobage, some ice, mushies, what-evs. We can do both. We will do it all, man. Hard work is thirsty work. And it’s not like the ghosts are going to complain.”
“That’s not the fucking point.”
“That is all of the points,” Sandy said, shrugging her shoulders. “Seriously, muh dude, you need to stop with the passive-aggressive bullshit. You never help, you’re always late, you always complain, we’re all still wondering what happened to those funds we earmarked for the Operation Live Organ Harvest podcast…as our treasurer, you must have at least some idea..and now…just look at you. Look at you. You’re fucking pathetic. Go home. No, before you go, I actually have a suggestion.”
“What is it?”
“I got a coupon for razors. You know those 100 razor pack jobbers? I’ll even throw in a couple of bucks. Now what you do, if you really want to do the thing right, remember…”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. You’re literally Lucifer in the flesh. Toying with me. You’re like something out of the Marquis De Sade. You’re wicked, beyond simply immoral.”
“Ahem, excuse me, but you’re not allowing me to finish my sentence.”
“What did you want to say? What could you possibly have to say to me at this point?” Ross’s voice was beginning to crack.
“Remember, it’s across the street, not down the block.” She mimed sliding a razor horizontally across her wrist. “You slice the radial artery, bleed out. Take some blood thinners, lie in warm bath. Get the job done, George.”
Ross gasped. Sandy turned her back on him.
“Wow, just wow,” said Ross, a catch in his voice. A single tear slid down his cheek. “This is what you say to someone you know has clinical depression and CPTSD? Have you no shame? I can’t believe you’re still accusing me of embezzlement. I told you it was an accounting error. We never had those funds in the first place. I went over the books in granular detail.”
Sandy’s middle finger shot up. “Whatever, dude. In the words of the immortal Nancy Downs, ‘Punk rock, let’s go.’”
Randall Spaulding, a burly muscular cameraman sporting a throwback mullet, checked the light, then his watch. “Enough drama-lama already guys. We’re going live in 15 minutes, right Sandy?”
Bill Martini, the group’s slightly pudgy podcast scriptwriter and planner, swept his fingers through his long, wavy reddish-blond hair and brought up the document he’d created for the cemetery livestream on his phone. “We-” he started to say before Sandy cut him off.
“Right, I just want to go over a few things. We can make it half an hour, 45 minutes. It’s not like anybody’s going anywhere. Particularly them.” She glanced around at the tombs, paused and then filled the uncomfortable silence with a bray of laughter at her own wit.
“So everybody knows how the Spirit Box works? It’s like a radio, is in fact a radio, but one that’s continuously scanning. It also records EVP, electronic voice phenomena. What we’re listening for and looking for is the white noise. That’s the channel they communicate through.
“They being the dead people,” she added after a pause.
Nobody spoke.
She turned on the machine. The inset window scrolled through channels. At first nothing, then a burst of static. Scattered words from a broadcast. A scrap of music, “Psycho Circus” by Kiss.
“It needs to warm up,” she said. “Establish a baseline, like that.”
“‘We’re in the Psy…’” The Spirit Box squawked. Sonic squiggles. Dead air. Then a loud crackling noise, followed by a low, barely audible male voice.
“Hel-”
Silence again.
“What was that?” asked Bobby Lansdale, who was working sound for the podcast. The jock of the crew, he was a former high school fullback and now devoted most of his time to studying audio engineering at the local JC. “Who’s there?”
“Hell…”
Crackle of static.
Much louder: “Hell is here.”
“Holy shit, I do not like the sound of that,” said Bobby. “Not at all.”
Sandy plucked a clove cigarette from a fresh pack and fired it up. “Personally I think it’s very fucking cool,” she said, exhaling with a tubercular cough.
Bill’s phone buzzed. “Hold on, I just got an alert…Fuck!!!”
“What happened?”
“There’s been some kind of toxic waste leak over at Romero Chemical, across the river. And it’s got into the water. It’s gotten into the fog…”
“Oh come on,” said Sandy. “Next you’re gonna say the toxic waste will bring the dead to life. No, I say that shit is silly. We need to calm down and regroup here.”
“I’m dead serious,” said Bill. “And look, you can see the fog is changing color…”
“Maybe we need to shut this down right now,” said Bobby. “I don’t mean because cemetery and, I don’t know, maybe zombies? I mean we could get sick. Seriously sick.”
“We could legit die,” pouted Ross.
“Oh for fuck’s sakes, stop being a bunch of pussies. Do you not see the golden opportunity Satan just presented to us on a silver platter?”
Sandy giggled, cleared her throat of phlegm, spat a yellow wad on the ground and took another drag at the clove. “We’re at ground zero for a potential reanimation scenario, we’ve got the equipment, we can livestream this shit, party with the dead like it’s 1985 all over again. Hell, party till we puke. Hey, can we get some tuneage up in this bish?”
“You’re insane,” said Ross. “No moral compass whatsoever.”
“Fuck off and die.”
The fog intensified. Sandy whipped out her phone, scrolled through her saved jams. “Her Ghost in the Fog” by Cradle of Filth blared out into the night through the Bluetooth speakers they’d set up for the podcast.
“The Moon, she hangs like a cruel portrait,” screeched Dani Filth. “Soft winds whisper the bidding of trees, as this tragedy starts with a shattered glass heart.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she said, throwing up the metal horns and wiggling her ass. “Shattered glass heart, motherfuckers! That’s some dark poetry right there. That’s art, baby! Did you know Dani holds two Master’s degrees in English Literature? He’s a modern-day Byron.”
“He’s a modern day Bozo the Clown,” said Ross. “Seriously though, let’s go home. Which way is the van?”
“No idea, Shaggy. I mean, you’re not going home anyway. None of us are. Oh c’mon, stop sulking.” She pushed her fingers against his lips, “C’mon guv, give us a smile then,” she said, mimicking her boyfriend’s bad imitation of a Victorian era Cockney whore.
Ross plucked her fingers from his face and pushed her hand away.
“Ok fine, be that way. Sandy bent down, ripped open the case of beers and chugged one down. “It’s time to par–tay” she hollered. “Whoot!!!”
“You’re not right,” said Ross. He picked up the Maglite again and headed off blindly into the fog.
“Fuck yeah I’m not right,” said Sandy. “I’m a wrong one, innit. Go on, take your whiny embezzling ass outta here.”
A few seconds later, she made a face and spit out her beer. “Fuuuck. There’s something wrong with this brew. It tastes like shit.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Roach spray or something.”
Suddenly Sandy’s fingers started to twitch. She began to spasm violently. Spittle formed on her lips and a line of thin acid green drool rolled down her cheek. She dropped the beer and held her stomach tight. “You guys might want to…step back a bit, I feel like L-l-inda Blair over here.”
“We’re co–” squawked the Spirit Box.
“What did you say?” asked Bobby. “Is this a direct communication from the dead?”
“We’re not…d-doing the p-podcast any more, fuck’s sakes…” said Sandy. “I am not feeling well!!!” she yowled.
Randall lifted the camera. “I say we film it,” he said. “I say we go live.”
“Oh my fucking God, what’s hap-pening to me,” said Sandy. One side of her mouth sagged as more foam bubbled from her lips and dripped down across her cheeks. She bent over and sprayed one of the older, cracked headstones. Chunky green slime slid down the final resting place of one Umberto Fulci, dead 50 years. She heaved, groaned and unleashed on Fulci once again.
“We’re coming up” squawked the Spirit Box, as did Sandy’s lunch.
Randall stabbed the “record” button on the podcast rig. Youtube viewers watched Sandy spew in extreme close-up, like a slobbering barfzarro version of The Blair Witch Project. Her body shook with uncontrollable violent tremors, her head shaking from side to side.
“Neuro toxins from the waste,” said Randall thoughtfully. “Psycho toxins, to be specific. I think maybe that’s what’s happening here. There was an environmental impact study on it a few years ago…it’s been steadily seeping into the groundwater…but that got shut down by Romero Chemical with a quickness. Sandy’s got a bad reaction.”
“Y-ya-ya think?” said Sandy, swatting at Randall like a cat. Randall dodged her clumsy blows.
“The toxins are everywhere. In the air, in the fog, in the water, in the ground, in the corpses. We are seriously fucked.” He paused. “Imma catch this all on video though. If we survive this thing, which is highly unlikely due to the unfolding critical situation, we’ll be totes internet famous. If we don’t, we’ll be totes internet famous too.”
Bobby placed a microphone on the ground, connecting it to the portable sound rig. He stumbled over the wires.
“Ser–” sputtered the Spirit Box. “Fucked,” a deeper voice growled, cutting in.
A yellow-green foam crested on top of the growing pool of Sandy’s upchuck, as a fissure in the earth cracked open. A skeletal hand with flaking vomit-slimed, blackened skin shot forth from the fissure and grabbed Randall by the ankle. Youtube viewers saw the camera lurch crazily.
“Oh my fucking God, zombies!” he screamed.
The zombie reared up out of the ground, eyes dank maggot-laden pits, face mostly eaten away, and advanced on Randall, who vainly attempted to keep filming. He stepped back and caught his heel on one of the fallen tombstones. Staggering, he tried to right himself, but fell backwards onto the grass.
More zombies began to claw their way out of the earth. Shambolic steps propelled them forward as the toxin-laden fog rolled in. They grabbed hold of Randall and began to rend him limb from limb. Blood from his slashed severed carotid jetted onto Sandy’s spew. His arms and legs spasmed until finally he lay still.
Sandy’s eyes clouded. She staggered, walking blindly through the fog, arms thrust in front of her.
“Bill, pick up the camera,” came a voice from the fog.
The Maglite’s beam cut through, revealing Ross’s face. He was holding a paper bag in his other hand. He set the Maglite down.
Bill hesitated.
“I said, pick up the fucking camera!”
Ross pulled a .45 from the paper bag.
“Dude, oh no,” said Bill. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Ultimate mash-up. R. Budd Dwyer meets Christine Chubbock meets Return of the Living Dead meets my revenge against a hateful hipster bitch. This will make internet history. They’ll call me the Andy Warhol of true gore. A fucking visionary. You gotta keep filming, man.”
With trembling hands, Bill picked up the camera.
“Good boy. Now where was I. This is Ross Seymour livestreaming to you from the site of the zombie massacre at Carver’s Folly Cemetery. This moment will never be repeated. What we are witnessing is the reanimation of the dead via toxic waste spill at Romero Chemical. The waste has leaked into the river, it’s gotten into the fog. Bill, I want you to turn the camera on that lying cunt. Keep your hands steady, man.”
“Wh-what?”
The zombies advanced towards them. The Youtube feed bobbed up and down as Bill tried to keep away from the walking dead and continue to film.
“Turn the camera on the perfidious whore. The Jezebel. The little snake.”
“But she’s sick! We’re all sick from the t-t-tox–” The zombies grabbed his legs and Bill went down, cut off mid-sentence as he smashed his head against a tombstone.
The camera rolled out of his hands. The zombies continued to bash Bill’s head against the marble until his skull cracked open. His eyeballs rolled out on their optic cords, smacking against the tomb as they ripped free from his brain. Blood splashed against the stone and dripped down over the name and dates. The zombies shoved brains into their ravenous rotting mouths, drooling and gibbering.
“Bobby, pick up the camera. We need continuous coverage. May I remind you this is live. The whole-ass internet is watching.”
“Oh my fucking God dude you are crazier than Sandy. We need to get to the van and get away from the zombies. We’re all going to die.”
“Yes, we’re all going to die one way or another. The question is, how? Do we do it righteously, artistically, memorably, with clout? Will our deaths reside forever on the dark web as a shining example of Splatterpunk for real? I say yes. I say fuck yes. Where’s the bitch?”
Sandy suddenly rose up from behind a tomb, yellow-green foam flecking her lips and dribbling down her nerve-damaged face. Her lower lip skewed sideways as she opened her mouth wide and projectile-vomited toward the zombies eating Bill’s brains. The glowing vomit mixed with the blood, slime and brain goo on the ground, forming little mounds–in the hills, something shitty.
The zombies began to jitter and shake more violently as the psycho toxins from the waste ate into what was left of their nervous systems. Then they too vomited, spraying the ground with luminous chunks.
As the zombies retched and spewed, the rainbow-yawned mass rippled and moved.
Then it moved again.
Pieces of the putrid sick began to wriggle like worms, separating from the mass, as the toxic waste infused it with an awful vigor. Incorporating Bill’s eyes, one of the chunks-worms lifted up from the ground and twisted around like a detective assessing a crime scene.
“Look at that!” Bobby burst out. “The vom is alive! And it’s got Bill’s eyes!”
“Yes, yes,” said Ross. “It’s alive, it’s alive, Colin Clive, etc. It’s a vom-zom. Film the cunt first though. Film our Auntie Crust Superstar.”
Bobby trained the camera on Sandy, who advanced towards the lens. “Okay, now what?”
“This is what,” said Ross. He pointed and aimed, a dead shot at her forehead.
“What the fuck, man…what are you doing? She’s not dead. She’s not dead, dude!!!”
“She is now,” his tone of voice eerily calm. He pulled the trigger and the top of Sandy’s head exploded into a cloud of pink mist.
“Oh Jesus…” Bobby sobbed, struggling to keep Sandy in the shot.
Blood drooled down her cheek, mingling with vomit flecks that resembled lumps of oatmeal stirred with egg yolk. Pieces of brain, skull bits and a shredded mass of hair rained down to rest among the shards of malt liquor bottles and used condoms littering the overgrown grass between the graves.
Bobby bent over and began to blow chunks, bringing the camera down as he did.
“Mercy killing,” said Ross. “Coup de grace. Bitch was bad news. But where was I? Dude, you gotta keep it together. Continuity, remember? Get that camera up. Up up up like a hot chick just peeled down to her bustier and thong underwear for your white ass.”
“I-I-I…”
“Y-y-you are going to focus the camera on me now,” said Ross mockingly. “Ready?”
Bobby raised the camera again and pointed it at Ross as directed.
“And now for the first time, a murder-suicide slash zombie massacre, captured in a podcast livestream. We’ve got the murder part out of the way and the zombie massacre is in progress, now for the suicide. Ahem. One moment please.” Kicking away zombies with his Doc Martens, he opened his mouth and closed it on the .45.
Ross fired, blowing out the back of his head. Blood geysered into the air. He staggered in a circle like a drunk mosher, twitching and jerking, before collapsing against a tombstone and slip-sliding down to the ground. The gun slipped from between his fingers.
After a few moments Sandy rose to her feet and advanced on Ross’s fresh corpse. She knelt and dug into his skull, scooping out his glistening brains, then began to roll the brains between her fingers like dough, bringing it to her lips. She licked them, drool running down her cheeks, before cramming her mouth with his sloppy gray matter.
Bobby set the camera down on the table with the podcast rig and the Spirit Box and made a dash for the .45.
Sandy dropped her feast and began to shamble rapidly towards Bobby. He picked up the gun, aimed at Sandy and squeezed the trigger. The rest of her skull exploded in a spray of blood and brain sludge.
As the other zombies moved in towards him, Bobby examined the gun, turned it over, pointed it experimentally at the ravening dead, then pressed it to his right temple.
“Well, here goes nothing,” he said with a crazed grin. And fired.
The zombies feasted on the fallen bodies, alternately eating and vomiting like undead bulimics.
The growing pools of vomit fused together. The vomit began to form human shapes, golems of irradiated emesis, as the resting camera recorded the birth of the cruel–unholy creations never seen before.
Legs formed, then torsos which sprouted arms. Necks jutted up and grew heads. Entire organ systems threaded themselves together from chunks, replicating stomachs, nervous systems, brains, adding to the exquisitely depraved corpus.
The vom-zombies in turn bent to the earth, sipping at the font of the sloppy muck that formed them, regurgitating spew unto the seventh generation and then some, as that vomit rose and made bodies of its own ad infinitem.
The corpse-zombies attacked their new-minted brethren, and the slamdance macabre morphed into a vomit-worm ouroboros machine. Corpse-zombies fed on their abjected vomitous selves, while the vom-dead devoured pieces of the chunky matrix that spawned them.
Vom-zombies fucked corpse-zombies, giving rise to hideous irradiated hybrids that burst out of rotten wombs only to be devoured in their turn.
At last all were subsumed into one indistinguishable, slimy shuddering mass, images of nightmare fuel for viral viewers now numbering in the thousands.
The podcast was tagged as the ultimate gore mixtape, downloaded and shared in the death hag community. Edited versions were mixed into random TikTok videos for a surprise burst of splattery goodness.
By the time Youtube took it offline three hours later, the podcast had been uploaded to the dark web in six different cuts. Ross was hailed as an artistic genius–as one commenter dubbed him, “the Andy Warhol of true gore.”
Horror Sleaze Trash 