Decrypting the Wizard

The wizard arrived Tuesday with the new tide.

That is to say, something floated in: a medley of zigzags and straight lines, vaguely coffin-shaped.

Until the object could be properly identified, it was placed in a storage facility. There it was held for weeks. When fresh objects deposited themselves on the beach, the wizard was pushed further and further back into the storeroom behind town hall, there gathering dust. Because newer objects had more form and definition, the clerks were much quicker to begin the work of cataloging them. They trundled in boxes on hand carts filled with tackles and bright lures, the odd bottle with a message nobody could decipher (these bottles were arranged around the wizard), hand bones, toe bones and a whole assortment of reeking, waterlogged shoes.

This was a simple fishing village. Nobody had ever seen a wizard, at least that they were aware of. If asked to describe such a being, most of the inhabitants would shake their head and hold up a net, as if to indicate that time not spent fishing was time that could never be recouped. They had neither the inclination nor the background knowledge to verify if, in fact, the thing in the storeroom was capable of sorcery. Its apparent lack of gills notwithstanding.

Months after the wizard arrived, a new mayor was elected in the village. He had been educated in the big city, and found his fellow villagers’ lack of intellectual curiosity appalling.

The new mayor demanded an inventory of all unusual phenomena. The villagers muttered about his nerve, the sheer gall of it. “Sancho Tortillo used to be one of us,” was a line repeated in the cantina and elsewhere, in the middle of passionate lovemaking, in church—like a ritual chant—and even in the cemetery where generations of villagers were buried and new villagers created. They took their women over crypts, and the cries of passion echoed long into the night. Drops of comingled love juice splashed upon the crypts and oozed down through cracks in the stone to where the bodies lay. On occasion, a body long past dust revived, and melancholy dust-wraiths cut unexpectedly dashing figures as they danced their way through town.

The villagers held to tradition like a long-decayed funeral wreath.

Until Sancho took a wrecking ball to the old ways.

When the dust cleared, the mayor had their undivided attention. They stood knee-deep in the rubble, men, women and children, waiting for him to speak.

“I know how many of you feel,” he began.  “You’re asking, what happened to Sancho? We saw him grow up, a little boy who loved fish—the smell, the taste, fried, boiled, steamed, you name it, he would eat it. Later he developed a taste for wine with his fish. And, frankly, got pretty deep into the wine, at the expense of his better judgment. But I’m not here to make excuses for myself—the drunken rages, and the pyromania—or justify my parents’ decision to send me off to school. I studied Management, and Philosophy, and because of these two disciplines, I understood—the wine was for drunken oblivion, the vida loca; whereas the fish was for life. And fire was for cooking. Fish.

“I want the same thing you all do. And I’m sorry about the wrecking ball. But the thing is, changes are coming to our little village. You can’t help but see that the ocean is no longer clean. It’s rank, defiled. Sometimes it glows at night. That zesty iodine smell, the salty tonic winds, smell more like burning garbage. So yes, I did take radical initiative and send an iron sphere through the church, straight down the aisles. I did mash the old graveyard into marble angel bits and ancestral grue. But I did it for a reason. I did it…”

“Excuse me,” said Tortalini Masschechi, one of the most revered of village elders. “Pardon the hoary wisdom—I am an old man, and to the brisk forward motion of the big city I prefer a quiet snack of fish, my young mistress Chantale and the long, lapping waves of the ocean you say is tainted. My nose is not your nose, and perhaps you sniff of the future. But tell me truly, was it absolutely necessary to destroy what it took centuries to create, on a whim? We’re listening to you, Little Sancho. Tell us something our simple brains can grasp.”

Sancho grimaced, and his eyes grew dark and terrible.

“Little Sancho is dead!”

Cries of shock and disbelief came from the crowd. The Widow Panchito fainted dead away. Babies screamed.

“If you had shown any interest whatsoever in matters outside of your back yard, you wouldn’t have just shoved the zigzag coffin thingie into the back storeroom. You would have wondered, analyzed, acquired outside expertise. Now, it is far too late. The wizards are arriving on all the shores of the planet, and when forced to decrypt themselves, they become exceedingly wroth. Yes, you once called me Little Sancho, because I was small and knew nothing of the world. But then I escaped. I went away, and my mind was transformed. I studied with magicians, sorcerers, knowers of the occult. And I became…” Sancho paused, trembling…flames crackled over his body, scorched his clothes and blackened his skin. A tall conical hat rose directly from his skull. His new flesh was made of sterner stuff than that which is bequeathed to mere mortals. He grasped a long rod in one hand and unrolled a parchment with another. On the parchment was a map of interlocking grid lines that pulsed in the darkness that now consumed the village, the crowd and the wizard formerly known as Sanchito.

While some might adduce a moral that fits this little fable of mine, I myself cannot.

Last Chance Romance

Ike tried to get Bernie to stop fucking the corpse. His shouts had no effect. He wound up wrestling his buddy off of the body.

“What’s wrong with you? You don’t have protection.”

“With what I’ve got, it doesn’t matter,” Bernie answered. “Doc said I’ll be dead in less than a year. “

Both men were in their mid-twenties. They had been friends since high school.  They had been on crew together back then. In college they had been too busy partying and chasing skirts to try out for any sports.

“You trying to speed up the clock?” Ike said. “Look, it’s been a long time since I have seen a woman, living or dead, with all her parts, but I ain’t going bat shit like you are man.  Self-discipline. Remember what Doc taught us.”

“We make our choices,” Bernie said. “Might be months before we see another woman, living or dead, like you said. Might even be a year. Considering my situation, I’ll take what I can get.”

“You’re a sick man”

“I know,” Bernie said. He grinned with teeth clenched. It was a strange grin, possibly full of irony, maybe full of anger, maybe both and more. 

“I am not likely to get better,” Bernie said, trying to shake loose of his friend’s grip.  “Let me go.”

“You want to rape that corpse some more?” said Ike. His eyes were wide. Nostrils flared. It was not so much anger as disgust and disappointment.

“Yeah. I need to get back to business.  I’ve got nothing better to do. Not likely to get better opportunities either.”

Ike relaxed his grip. Bernie remounted the corpse. 

Ike turned his back. He didn’t want to watch. 

The sound of Ike going at it with his dead hook-up became too much for him. He decided to take a walk. 

Bernie’s grandmother had offered the boys a hundred bucks to clean out the basement of her house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. It was an old building dating back to before the Revolution. It required a lot of upkeep. Bernie’s grandmother had not been able to afford to pay for repairs anymore. No one else in the family wanted to take over the deed and be responsible for the taxes and constant maintenance. The decision had been made to prep the place for sale. 

While they were filling trash bags the two friends found a section of wall in the basement was hollow.  

“Probably where they hid runaways before the Civil War.” Bernie’s grandmother had told them. “ Family legend has it that the house was a stop on the Underground Railway.”

“They should turn the house into a museum,” Ike had told her.

“Too many houses like it around here,” she had said. “Can’t all be museums. Plenty of houses that were turned into museums around here in the past were turned back into private residences or torn down for new construction. There is not enough money in history. Not around here. We have too much history. Too much crime as well.”

The boys opened up the wall to see what was behind it. They found more than a hiding place. A tunnel went out towards the street. There it ended. Blocked by a wall of bricks.

“Must have been closed off when they put in water pipes and sewers,”  Bernie had postulated.

That was when IT happened. The unthinkable that had never really been unthinkable.  War is never impossible, and in war, every and any weapon can be used. 

Ike kept walking until he could no longer hear what was happening behind the burned out gas station. He paused for a while, then went on, not sure he was far enough away for his stomach.  When he felt safe, he stopped.

Ike looked around his world.  It was not the world he had been born into.

No clouds. No birds. Only gray clouds of smoke. 

The ground was no better. Not a blade of grass. Not a single insect.

Ike thought the only thoughts he could. They were not nice thoughts. He didn’t like that. It was better not to think. Better to be half dazed. 

Or maybe dead.

Doc has been the last sane person they had met, unless you counted the dead. 

The dead seemed to have it all together, until they fell apart.   

Occasionally there were maggots or tiny worms, parasites maybe, on the bodies they had come across. Ike took that as a good sign. Something would survive. Maybe a hidden seed would sprout somewhere. Maybe he would find it, something green growing in the dust. 

“Struggle on,” Doc had told them. “The strong and the lucky might have a chance. Even having the right genes, good health, and good luck might not be enough. We need to be smart. Practical. See the opportunities.”

Doc claimed to have been a real MD, before the end so to speak. Ike and Bernie found him near what had once been the University of Pennsylvania.

“I practiced medicine some,” Doc had told them. “Did research in a lab on the side. Tried to solve medical mysteries. Help make a better world and all that. What a waste.”

The three of them had traveled together for a few weeks.  They searched buildings that had already been gone through by other scavengers. Water and food were the top priorities. If they found anything else that could help them keep living, they took that as well. Ike and Barry built up a collection of tools that could double as weapons. Not everyone they had met had been friendly. Doc kept notes about where other potentially useful things were found, such as books on medicine and science,

Ike thought Doc was maybe forty or so. Looked like he had always kept fit. He seemed a good guy. In many ways he was. 

Doc had examined Ike and Bernie, checking them for all kinds of ailments. He patched them up best he could where patching was needed, and shared all the advice he had on how to survive.

It was Doc who had diagnosed what was wrong with Bernie. Part of it, maybe all of it, was due to radiation. Cancer is never great to have however you come by it.

One night Doc scampered away while Ike and Bernie were sleeping.  Doc took most of their accumulated supplies with him, including most of the water and food. It had taken Ike and Bernie months of scrounging to obtain everything they had. Now it was gone.

Survival.

What a nasty way to live.

Ike decided he had been away long enough for Bernie to have concluded his business. He started to walk back to where Bernie was. 

Broken concrete pillars were all that remained of an interstate highway. Fractured bricks lay among dots of glass and melted auto tires. Scavengers had already carried off everything metal in that area.  He wondered if they had lived long enough to do anything with all that metal. Had they made anything? Had they bartered it?  Where? With whom?

South, Ike thought. Or west. Maybe more had survived in Maryland or Chester County or elsewhere far from cities. 

When Ike got to where he had left Bernie, his buddy had finished and was wiping himself clean with a rag. The rag was filthy. It was caked with a bit of everything and anything. 

Bernie carried that rag everywhere with him. Rags were hard to come by. Rags had uses. Ike also had one.

“Next time we find a puddle we’ll have to wash up,” Ike said. “Bodies first. Then clothes, etc.”

“After we fill our water bottles,” said Bernie. “That is top priority.”

“Yes, of course.  After we fill our water bottles. “

Bernie gestured towards the corpse. “You want sloppy seconds?”

Survival. Struggle on.

Ike contemplated reality.  It was not a peaceful form of meditation. It brought him no tranquility. 

Ike looked at the corpse. She might have once been a good looking woman. That may have been wishful thinking. Now it was hard to tell what she had looked like really. At least you could tell she had been a woman. A woman without rot set in.

He wondered if anyone had gotten to the body before Bernie. Ike doubted it. He needed to feel a little optimism. That helps you survive, being optimistic. Doc had taught them that. 

But another part of his mind whispered to Ike, “This is it. Don’t pretend that you will make it much longer.”

He could not deny that he had needs.

He wrestled with his morals, what was left of what he had learned from his parents and in school. He wrestled. He fought hard against the reality he saw everywhere. In the end, morals lost. 

“Sure,” Ike said. “What the hell.”

Afterwards, they headed south.

A Night in the Life

Hank puts the book he is reading down and walks the few feet to his kitchen sideboard where he pours himself a large, a really large, glass of the cheapest wine any supermarket in this town by the edge of the sea has to offer.  In this town, hell in this life, that is all he has ever been able to afford, the cheapest anything… the cheapest wine, the cheapest room, hell it’s just been a cheap kinda life and certainly shows no sign of changing since he’d passed his half-century a few years before.  He takes a drink before walking the few feet over to his window, his world is so small almost everywhere he likes going is generally just a few feet away, and peers out.  Down below is an alleyway and that is the place Hank has grown almost obsessed by since he moved into this tiny one-room deal a few months previously.  A tiny one-room deal in an ever-growing list of one-room deals he’d experienced in this town before either eviction or just pure simple need to escape came a calling.  

The few months have seen Hank read a lot of books and drink a lot of wine and generally try and live his best life but somehow it was always that place just four floors beneath his window that always somehow managed to drag him in, somehow always managed to grab his attention.

Tonight he spies beautiful sultry Tatiana entertaining a mark as best she can in the condom and needle festooned hole she calls her work-place and all of a sudden he feels a pang of jealousy.  The lucky scumbag who’s enjoying himself with that super-fine piece of hotness is surely, Hank thinks, as he desperately tries to get a better view, one of the luckiest sons-of-bitches on the face of the whole god-damn planet right now as he hears her moans reach his open window.  

Hank reaches for his glass and drains a big long measure before moving back to his chair, the solitary chair in his room, where he’ll sit.  He’ll contemplate Tatiana and all her wondrous assets and skills, at least those he can imagine, and he’ll roll a smoke but just as he places the newly rolled smoke in his mouth a loud wailing sound emanates through the floorboards from one of the rooms downstairs.  The sound of a woman crying fills his room and as he sits there he knows there is only one thing he can do; he leans over and switches on the radio and suddenly the magnificently heroic sounds of Bruckner’s Third come to save him from the torture of having to listen to someone else’s misery.  Hell, he’s got enough of his own to deal with let alone having to endure anyone else’s!

He smokes his smoke and as it nears its end he drains his wine, another bottle gone in his ongoing lifelong war with reality, and as he gets back to his feet he moves first for another bottle before spying another view of the wondrous Tatiana in all her wild animalness going at it hard and heavy down below.  Hank doesn’t care if its the same guy, a new guy, hell all he knows is it ain’t him down there and that’s enough to make him almost want to start wailing his own sadness but right now he knows there is drinking to be done.  He picks up the fresh new bottle and pours it in large, really large, and gets straight into it and soon, he knows, it will be time to call an end to the insanity of his life for another day.  A day, like so many before, when even the idea of going out there, where the other people live their lives, simply fills him with revulsion at their pathetic existences, their pathetic so-called lives which show no sign of life at all.

‘Working the 9-5, the damn mortgage and car and family and pet, all it does is keep you a prisoner of the system you fools! What a ridiculous existence!’ he thinks as the sun blinks on the horizon and Hank knows it is almost time.  He returns from the toilet down the hall, drains the remnants of his wine in one fell swoop and as he climbs into his single bed he knows the squares are just beginning another of their damnable days.  One of those damnable days when they’ll work hard, in that searing heat, all to make a rich guy somehow even richer whilst, well, they’ll earn just about enough to keep them coming back.   It’s always just about enough for their pathetic lives, enough for their insane desires of cars and children and houses and total abject boredom as far as Hank can tell.  A life, an existence even, that is so far removed from the lives he encounters on those rare adventures out of his room or on those pages of everyday madness he so keenly reads he can barely understand let alone comprehend anyone wanting to live that way.  As he rolls the final smoke of his night he pulls his current book off his bedside cabinet; a collection of short stories from some degenerate across the pond, and as he turns to the back cover he takes in the author photo and the mad smiling face staring back at him is sure of someone who has lived, and as he lay in his pit he sparks his smoke alive and reads the back-cover blurb again.

‘A genius of the streets,’ one of the critic raves as Hank smokes all the way down to the roach before stubbing it out and after laying the book down he almost immediately falls to sleep, dreaming, as he has almost every damn day since he’d been priced out, of the mad swirling metropolis only sixty short miles up the road.  That seething hate-filled metropolis that had once been home but which now felt a lifetime away from his ramshackle room in this dilapidated madhouse by the sea he’d called many things but never ‘home’; it has never been that to him and it surely couldn’t now ever be, not in this lifetime almost certainly.

As the masses began to pour onto the streets later, escaping their retail and office-bound nightmares, Hank finally pulls himself out of his pit of a bed and is immediately back into his routine; the routine that has come to rule his life.  He wakes and immediately switches on his radio.  His room fills with the sound of Gustav Mahler and almost instantly the kettle is boiling as he prepares his first mug of tea, his first caffeinated hit, of the day.  The first of many and the perfect accompaniment to the ubiquitous smoke which he rolls and pops in his mouth as he allows the mug to cool.  Sparking it to life he begins to think of what needs doing that day, there is never much but, today, Hank knows, with his wine supply running dangerously low, he must somehow navigate his way to the damn supermarket down in the marina.  Only a twenty minute walk for sure but through some of the most crime-ridden and notoriously mad streets this town has to offer and Hank knows he, as usual, ain’t going to be able to do it on an empty stomach.  As the tea runs to its end he busies himself with preparations for a fry-up of epic proportions.  A fry-up and a large, a really large, glass of vin rouge he knows will help.

The fry-up sure does fills his stomach, one of the first things he learned upon leaving home was to never go food shopping whilst hungry, and he knows that once he’s rolled the ubiquitous smoke for the walk he’ll be ready to hit the street and sure enough moments later he is locking his room and is heading on down the stairs.  As he approaches the front door of the block of flats he spies Tatiana rocking up to her nightly show and as he pushes the door open he can hear a few voices call out.

“Hey lover,” a rather hopeful older blonde, around Hank’s own half-century, suggests as he walks past her and off into the night.  

‘So far, so good,’ Hank thinks as he, at last, hits the promenade but spying a few randoms, possible wreck-heads, lolling towards him, he steps over to the curb and with his head down just keeps on going remembering past run-ins with chancers like them.  The few random occasions when they had mistakenly taken him as being one of them, one of those derelict junkies who’d lost everything and somehow never seemed to care.

“Hey mate can you spare me some change?” a young guy in his early 20s asks him from within the confines of a sleeping bag but Hank, knowing he never has any spare anything, just walks on by.

“Hey mate,” another voice asks as he approaches the ramp that leads down into the marina, “can you spare me some change?” they ask and as Hank looks up he spies a 40-something guy dressed in a winter coat fit for the Arctic Circle and with his feet clad in a pair of trainers Hank would spend on a weeks’ rent on his feet.  As he always does Hank just walks on by knowing the place he is going could, although he certainly hopes isn’t, be even worse.  Walking down to the car-park that dominates the outside of the massive store Hank spies a few randoms, a few up to no good and as he walks he can feel a couple of sets of eyes piercing his back with a fury to suggest it ain’t going to be an easy homeward journey.

Finally walking in the main entrance Hank spies a lone security guard sitting in his little cubicle; he looks as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world right now than here and just that second Hank sees a gang of rogue drunks walking out carrying boxes of beer he knows exactly why.  A huge display just by the front door now standing empty and Hank knows exactly what has just gone down and as he walks in he spies several faces from down his end of town, it appears, helping themselves to whatever takes their fancy too.  Hank has always, for some reason, held himself higher than your average down-and-outer or your usual drink or drug casualty, and as he goes about his business, he knows he must never let himself get that low.

The shop done, the wine supply secured, he heads on back out there and the second he spies someone clearly making eyes at his bagful of wine bottles he knows he’s got to be quick, he needs to get off the street as soon as possible and despite the mild distraction of Tatiana on his corner, that is exactly what he does.  Twenty minutes later Hank is back in his room and the wine is flowing and everything, at last, seems back to normal or at least as normal as this life will ever get.  The crying woman from downstairs returns to haunt him as those with nothing in their lives beyond their work turn to their beds but as Tatiana goes at some lucky scumbag’s meat Hank knows he’ll somehow get on through.  He switches his radio on and as Ligeti’s non-harmonic sounds fill his room he rolls a smoke and reaches for his glass of wine and as he lifts his book off the bedside cupboard he knows that, right now, he wouldn’t live his life any other way.

The Giraffe That Jumped Over the Moon

Dr. Danny Quick used the last of his Jimi Hendrix stamps to mail off his manuscript to California. Maybe Jimi would bring his screenplay good luck, who knows. Or at least drench it in acid sunshine vibes and ripple it toward a psychedelic future already folded into vast ocean-front properties of all time. 

Either way, it was Ernest Hemingway’s birthday. Santiago, the Cuban fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea, never gave up. 

How he felt sometimes about his writing. Never give up. Or always. Life of suicide. 

Did Hemingway actually give up? Did Thompson? Did Brautigan? Or did they just need to catch up on some sleep?

Maybe a change of scenery. Live on the moon. All these rich people flying into outer space. All it took was greed, power, and money. Big money. 

Dr. Quick had degrees in astrophysics, mechanical engineering, and paleontology. He spoke four languages fluently, had lived in many different countries growing up and as an adult. He could fix anything and he was in excellent physical condition from Tai Chi and martial arts.

The meteorite ALH84001 from Mars was discovered with fossils of diatoms. Required further investigation. Dr. Quick was intrigued. Rumors in the scientific community that ancient giraffe fossils had been discovered on the moon. 

Quick had been studying the gaping theory in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species claiming that a horse-like animal converted into a giraffe due to the need to eat from higher tree branches. The Okapi was the ancestor and migrated to feed.

Paleontologists were split into many distinct groups on the theories about the Sivatherius fossils being from giraffes with a trunk like an elephant. Some scientists believed the giraffe came from a Samotherium from the late Miocene era or 14.6 million years ago. 

Dr. Quick had participated in isotope fractionation tests for fossils. Some thought the origins of life could be buried in lava flows on the moon. If a lunar regolith were conducted and organic molecules remained intact, there would be no reason fossils should not be found on the moon. 

Quick had studied the knowledge of the Babylonians, the Nubians, and the Chinese about dark matter and dark energy. His vast computer-like mind held information about gamma ray bursts, cosmic microwave radiation, the Magellanic Cloud, and the Andromeda Galaxy. Quick had flown airplanes, jets, and helicopters for many years. He had worked for NASA and had almost gone to space; he was overqualified if anything. He was just waiting for the next mission.

Dr. Quick arrived in Antarctica to aid in the examination of ALH84001, the Martian meteorite. Temperatures there could reach -129 Fahrenheit, it was 98% ice. It was the coldest, driest, windiest, highest average elevation continent on Earth and still considered a desert. There were no permanent residents. 

The research facility was in an old whaling building on Deception Island. There were glaciers, an active volcano, chinstrap penguins, and fossilized plants. 

The tests conducted there were inconclusive, therefore not considered successful. 

Quick’s next journey would take him to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia to continue his study of the ancestors of the giraffe. He had been there before and had many friends, Mongols, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs. 

Quick believed that the Aepycamelus or giraffe camel of the Gobi was the ancestor he sought, but he required scientific proof. 

The theory that the giraffe came from the Brachiosaurus did not seem realistic to him. 

In Australia he had a message from NASA, a new discovery. With the Keplar Space Telescope, they discovered an Earth-like planet: Keplar 452-b. It revolved around a sun much like ours. NASA wanted Quick to report to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas as soon as possible. 

Quick notified his crew and they were soon on their way. Quick communicated with NASA in flight, the International Space Center was now fully staffed with six crew members from Japan, Russia, and the United States. 

The success of this mission made the moon mission more viable and important. The moon launch was now being moved forward due to the discovery of Keplar 452-b. 

The settlement was planned for one of three places: the Imbrium, Nectaris, or Serenitatis basins. That would be determined upon a closer inspection of the moon’s surface. 

On Quick’s last visit to the Johnson Space Center, he and a team of experts designed the geodesic dome for six months’ habitation on the moon. It would be an icosahedron lattice shell on the surface of a sphere. 

Dr. Quick suggested they use a Buckminster Fuller design of continuous tension and discontinuous compression. With hardly any modifications, two of the six spaceships could be cannibalized into the material necessary for the construction of the dome. The remaining four ships could be fitted to carry the extra twelve crew members back to Earth once the mission was completed. 

Some Washington politicians did not want to fund exploration or the possibility that a space colony could be established on the moon. Others wanted to send unmanned spacecraft to Pluto and Mars, which would do nothing to alleviate overpopulation. 

NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. had leaked it to the press that they had received two donated telescopes that were superior in every way to the Hubble Space Telescope, and they were being kept in storage. Quick suggested they take them both to the moon and place them temporarily or permanently to investigate and research the galaxy.

Blast-off was scheduled from Japan, Russia, China, the United States, England, and France. The thirty-six astronauts chosen were highly educated in diverse scientific ways. 

Dr. Quick was chosen second in command of the Americans. 

Just before the launch, Quick heard that his science fiction adventure manuscript was being made into a big budget movie. 

The six moon landings were all perfect touchdowns. 

The Americans and Japanese moved in with the Russians and French. They lived in the four-space craft remaining until the dome was finished. 

Living in the dome was a luxury compared to spacecraft life. Once Quick got situated, he set up the two telescopes they had brought along. 

While anchoring the base of the telescope, he found some unusual rock formations. He carried them back to the dome, and upon further examination, he knew they were fossilized giraffe bones. Quick had been seeking these fossils all over Earth and now finding them on the moon was a most shocking discovery. He thought about his dream and about the script he had written that was now going to be a movie. 

The alien giraffes, Glorft and Guzal, looked down at the moon dome from their invisible cloaked spaceship. They spoke to each other telepathically.

“Should we let our human-looking son, Qetazq, know for sure about us?” 

“I think not, he could probably manage it, especially since you’ve been sending him dreams. But the rest of Earth is not ready for our advanced technology.” He paused. “Or intelligence.” 

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.”