Squigslayer!

Squigslayer!

Being a wholly unauthorized tale of Gotrek & Felix
by
Bobby Derie

“Behold, manling.” The slayer growled. “The abscess of the world.”

Felix Jaeger choked and gagged in response, burying his nose in his worn red Sudenland wool cloak. His nose had not been subjected to such abuse since he and Gotrek had been sewerjacks in the vaults of Nuln. Gotrek and he were hiding, as best they could, behind a mound of ancient caked and dried dung that had been molded into the likeness of one of the gods of Goblindom. Swallowing back a mouthful of bile, he chanced a glance around the idol.

Before them in the twilight lay the greatest orc cesspit in the Old World, a vast pool that lay at the bottom of sheer cliff that had served as an open latrine to the Greenskins of the Massif Orcal. Streaks of brown and green stained the rockface down to the pit of foulness that had received the foul, odorous tribute of hundreds of Greenskin tribes in the centuries. Idols of orc and goblin dung like the one Gotrek and Felix now hid behind ringed the pit sporadically, and Gotrek could make out the likeness of Mork, Gork, and other more obscure Greenskin deities.

Gotrek Gurnisson, trollslayer, had sought his down throughout the world, from Albion to Cathay. Felix had stood by the Slayer’s side as he fought orc, elf, and man; dragon, daemon, and giant in the search of his doom. Felix knew that Gotrek was driven to face off against the greatest monsters the world possessed, for nothing less would wipe away his shame. Now they had come here, following a Bretonnian peasant’s tale, and Felix cursed himself bitterly for his foolish oath to follow the Slayer and record his doom.

Felix knew Gotrek well and disliked the mad look in the slayer’s sole remaining eye. The dwarf assayed the cesspool carefully, running a callused thumb along the edge of his great starmetal runeaxe. A few filth-caked goblins and snotlings of the Brown Eye Tribe waded at the edges of the turgid brown mire, rooting for squigs. In the university at Altdorf, Felix had heard that squigs bred beneath the vicious pools and mounds of orc waste, and that the Greenskins relied on them as both a foodsource and as beasts of war. Felix had never known squigs came in as many different shapes and forms as he could see now—previously, he had only known the bouncing, bipedal war-squigs which goblin tribes ran into battle, the terrible squiggly beasts that seemed half teeth and all mad.

It had all been going so well. The local lord knew Gotrek of old and had agreed to put them up for the night, and shared his local wines. They were dining well on could mutton and deep in their cups of the local vinegary red, ensured of a warm and dry pile of hay in the barn to sleep for the night—as close as Felix figured they would get to civilization in Sigmar-be-damned Bretonnia.

Then the stableboy came in yelling about the squiggoth.

Felix remembered how Gotrek sat up at the word, and asked short, pointed questions. The lord had been more than quick to answer them, Felix had noticed, and placed particular emphasis on the dangers involved. He didn’t think the old man could have gotten the Slayer out of his lands quicker if he’d offered Gotrek a bag of gold. Shaking off his ruminations, Felix studied the sight before them.

A single great goblin rode around on the back of a great albino squig as big as an Imperial warhorse, surrounded by an honor guard of the biggest, meanest, best-armed and armored goblins in the camp. Undoubtedly this was Turdlick, shaman of the Brown Eye Tribe. By some unspoken signal, the squig bearing the shaman lurched forward toward the vast brown pool, and a strange hooting went up. Every goblin dropped whatever they were doing and began a procession, heading in the same general direction as Turdlick.

“Now, manling!” Gotrek growled quietly. “Follow me!”

Taking the opportunity of the goblin’s distraction, the duo made their way quietly to the next dung idol. Felix, with his longer legs, had little trouble keeping pace with Gotrek. Once safely hid behind the icon of filth, Gotrek waited a few moments, and then proceeded to scurry out for the next idol. In this way the two came by degrees closer and closer to the edge of the mire, and in a few minutes they had reached the marshy shores of the cesspool.

The shaman, by this time, was standing on the back of his great squig and exhorting his followers. Felix was too far away to make any sense of the goblin’s pronouncements, but he could hear the crowd thump and bellow in response to every line. Then the shaman turned back to gaze at the great cesspool and raised his arms. Licks of green fire seemed to dance around Turdlick’s hands, then shot into the night and land at the exact middle of the cesspool.

At first, nothing happened, and the brown slime was still. Then the crusty surface rippled slightly, as if by a strong wind, but Felix felt no such breeze. Finally, a vast green-black hump began to break the surface, the liquid waste rolling off of it, like the crocodiles of distant Araby. Felix squinted in the dark, hoping to get a better look at the thing as it emerged from the orc-pit. The hump continued to swell and grow larger, and the whole filthy surface of the pool was agitated. The goblins took up to hooting again, and as Felix looked out he saw other huger lumps emerging from the pool, small hillocks he had taken as submerged islets and other geographic features.

Then there was a vast squelch, and the squiggoth stood up. Felix stole a glance at Gotrek and even the Slayer seemed to be registering disbelief. It was if the entire cesspit had raised itself on four vast legs, each of which was larger than a Bretonnian warhorse. Mounds of orc-dirt and rancid waters ran off its back as the squiggoth raised itself from the muck in response to Turdlick’s call. Felix was reminded of an ancient story he had read from a book of Arabyan children’s tales that his father had given him on his naming-day, about an great fish or turtle whose broad back was mistaken for an island. Here could be the truth to that tale.

Now standing free of the cesspool, Felix could see the beast more clearly. It was certainly of squig stock, it had all the basic requirements: it was green and had big teeth. Beyond that, there was something reptilian in its gate, and the head was diminutive compared to the body, attached directly to the great humped mass of its body without any proper sort of neck. Between the vast fleshy columns of its legs, Felix could just discern its tail—or what he prayed fervently to Shallya was its tail.

Now, all of the Brown Eye Tribe save for Turdlick and his guard, surged forward with nets and long pointy sticks. The goblins ran quickly past its great gaping mouth—although not quite quickly enough, for an herd of snotlings were swallowed up by the squiggoth as they dallied too close to its maw—and between the vast forelegs, so that the belly of the great beast formed a roof over their heads. Pale things squirmed in the mud, and Felix realized that they bulk of the squiggoth must protect the largest and most favored squigs, which the goblins were now catching.

“Come manling! Now is the hour of my doom!” roared the Slayer.

Felix cursed and unsheathed his sword as Gotrek sprinted towards the great green thing, running to keep pace with the Slayer. Turdlick’s guards shouted a warning and surged forward to deal with the intruder. The first swing of Gotrek’s axe took split the face of the one goblin, sliced open a second from left shoulder to right hip, and cleaved the third in the groin, but the dwarf did not stop moving. Felix’s dragon-hilted sword stabbed and slashed at the wounded, finishing off those that were dying but not yet dead and were still dangerous.

The slaughter was mercifully brief, and soon Gotrek stood before Turdlick himself. The shaman was still seated on his great albino squig, but the thing seemed like the smallest of mice now compared to the vast green horror behind them. Turdlick stood at his full height atop the squig, green froth foaming at the corners of his mouth and sparks of green fire coming from eyes, ears, and nostrils.  Gotrek was running towards the Greenskin, but when he was still a few yards away the shaman gestured and a great green blazing fist tore from the sky and smashed into Gotrek, sending the dwarf to his knees.

Felix watched amazed, for the apparition of the fist disappeared almost as soon as it had come, and Gotrek rose immediately back to his feet, eyes blazing. The Slayer managed another two steps forward and the shaman gestured again, and again the vast green hand appeared from nowhere and crushed Gotrek into the marshy earth. The slayer jumped back to his feet, blood streaming from nose and ears. Turdlick for his part was laughing in devilish glee, and the great albino squid was slowly backing away from Gotrek, increasing the distance between them.

Now Felix had caught up with Gotrek, and the two advanced side-by-side, cautiously getting nearer and nearer to the mountainous squiggoth. Green fire licked at the shaman’s eyebrows as he gestured again, and this time both Gotrek leapt out of the way, flinging his axe in the shaman’s direction. Felix was less quick or less fortunate, and felt the massive hand of Mork crush down on him, pushing him into the wet earth. Searing pain filled his left shoulder and clods of foulness clogged his mouth and nose. In that moment Felix knew he was going to die, drowned in a bucket of orc "I swear too much".

A stout hand grabbed Felix’s lanky blond hair and drew him back aright. Gotrek took a moment to survey Felix’s condition, then grabbed his left arm in one hand, placed his massive right paw on Felix’s shoulder, and wrenched. Once again, Felix felt the indescribable pain as something inside him popped back into its accustomed socket. Leaving the dazed human where he was, the Slayer waded off into the pit.

Still in shock, Felix sat and stared at the milling goblin chaos in the shadow of the squiggoth. Through the haze of his pain-filled-brain Felix realized that the impact of the spell must have dislocated his shoulder, and the dwarf had re-set it before it had inflamed and the limb was rendered useless. The great albino riding-squig was some distance away, sinking into the mire. Gotrek’s thrown rune-axe had cleaved the thing deeply, splitting skull and brain and spine. Turdlick was still atop the thing, a haze of green smoke wisting from his charred neck-stump. Felix knew how dangerous the Greenskin magic was, and apparently the final spell had been too much for the shaman to safely handle.

Gotrek waded forward, now waste deep in the muck. Without his axe, bloodied and bruised from the shaman’s maltreatment, and caked in orc-filth, the Slayer was much less of an imposing sight. Even his great crest of hard was damp with green slime, and hung to one side of his head. Some of the nearest squig-hunters took this as an opportunity to attack. Gotrek caught the first sharp pointy stick in his left hand, pulled the goblin that had thrust it toward him, and brought his ham-like right fist down on its head. The skull smashed like an eggshell, spilling brains into the mire. A pair of goblins tried to net the Slayer, but only managed to incapacitate his right arm. Gotrek ignored them and continued toward the sinking albino squig and his axe, dragging the hapless squig-hunters behind him.

Felix managed to find the strength to stagger to his feet, leaning on his sword for support as he fixed his red Sudenland wool cloak into a makeshift sling for his arm. Gotrek would not be able to hold his own forever, he would need help. Even as Felix advanced, he saw that Gotrek was having a hard time of it. Besides the net caught around his right arm and the two goblins he was dragging behind him, a half-grown squig all was attached to his left leg, the vast toothy mouth closed up to the Slayer’s knee. Squelching with every step, Felix dove into the cesspool after Gotrek, stabbing and slashing at the squigs. Almost immediately he felt the putrescent liquid spill over the edge of his boots, felt the mud and mire at the bottom of the cesspool pull at them. By the time he had taken ten steps, Felix had lost both boots forever in the squig-nest and felt indescribable slime squish between his toes.

With a few slashes, Felix finished the goblins holding Gotrek. The dwarf was busy trying to dislodge his axe from the albino squig, the weight of the Slayer’s muscular body just causing it to sink deeper. With a roar of triumph Gotrek freed his axe, and ripped the remnants of the net away from him. Felix stepped forward and skewered the squig biting into Gotrek’s leg, twisting the blade a few times until the thing stopped moving.

“Careful there manling, I almost lost a toe!” the dwarf growled, then stalked for the nearest of the colossal legs. The Slayer surveyed the scaly green flesh with the eye of an engineer, then cast his single eye to gaze on the vast arch that the squiggoth’s forelimbs made.

“Give me a boost.” He commanded.

Felix stared at the mad dwarf in disbelief, but got down on his knees in the orc filth and offered his broad back to the Slayer. Gotrek clambered on top of the human as if he was no more than a footstool, and Felix gasped beneath the dwarf’s weight. With terrible calculation, Gotrek slashed his axe at the mighty leg, opening a vast chasm that wept a pale, horrible green ichor. Felix thought he could no longer discern terrible odors after his time in the miasma of the orc-marsh, but this new scent had him adding his own wretching offering to the pool in front of him. Gotrek grasped the cut in one hand and pulled, lifting himself free of Felix’s back. Felix watched, amazed, as Gotrek began to climb, using the mighty rune-axe to carve hand-and-footholds out of the squiggoth’s hide.

Eventually, the dim beast noticed the carnage being done to it, though Felix thought that surely the wounds Gotrek was inflicting, though terrible to most any other terrestrial creature, were no more than the bites of a mosquito to the mighty squig. It was like attacking a mountain, one strike at a time. The terrible hooting of the squiggoth changed in tone and, and suddenly Felix felt a warm, wet breeze blow behind him. He turned to see a forest of great teeth, each the size of a Bretonnian knight’s shield. The squiggoth had lowered itself as far as it could to inspect the slight pains that had finally arrived in its tiny brain, and what it saw there was Felix. The great mouth opened, and once again Felix feared he would die in this place. He held his sword in front of him, prepared to do what damage he could to this thing before it ate him.

“Oi, you!” the Slayer shouted above, and Felix looked up to see Gotrek take a flying leap from the squiggoth’s shoulder, his massive rune-axe held over his head in both hands. Whether or not the squiggoth actually heard him, Felix would never know, but a shaft of moonlight caught the edge of the starmetal axe, and it seemed to burn like fire as it came down into a perfect arc, ending on the squiggoth’s head, right between the eyes. The axe head buried itself ‘til no metal showed, and in another moment the Slayer’s hands and arms had disappeared into the wound. The weight and momentum of dwarf and axe had cleaved straight through the squiggoth’s skull, and some hideous suction was now pulling the dwarf inside as well.

The hooting stopped. All around in the shadow of the squiggoth, Felix saw the goblins of the Brown Eye Tribe stop their squig hunting and look up. A tiny shiver ran through the beast, and in that moment Felix rand, clambered, and crawled for the edge of the cesspit, out from under the beast’s shadow. The fall of the squiggoth was like the death of mountains and gods. Those goblins too stupid or afraid to run were caught beneath it as their vast squiggy shelter collapsed upon them. Felix swore that the Massif Orcal shook, and a black wave of liquid filth and dead goblins caught him from behind, propelling him into an ancient, half-crumbled dung idol, the soft center of which broke his fall.

Wrestling his way free of the orc-dirt, Felix looked on the vast squiggoth as it sank slowly into the mire. The beast was only so much carrion now, probably a meal for the hundreds of squigs its bulk once sheltered. Then, looking around, Felix realized Gotrek was nowhere to be seen. Felix called the Slayer’s name, circumnavigating the vast pit and shouting into the darkness. It had never dawned on him that the dwarf might actually perish here. For a brief moment, Felix wondered how the hell he’d write this up. Certainly he doubted that Gotrek wished to be remembered as having found his doom as a squigslayer, then drowned in the greatest cesspool in the world.

Felix chewed his lip, feeling the loss of the Slayer. He was sore, tired, filthy in a way he had never been before and hoped never to be again. His boots lay beneath a hundred tons of squig, and could still taste the rancid flavor of orc urine on his breath. Gotrek Gurnisson, his only true friend and companion these many years, lay here, a massive mound of squig-flesh his only monument. Felix started to laugh. He cackled. Something inside his stomach broke and he whooped and hollered and laughed until he was out of breath, and he laughed some more, clutching his stomach and unable to breath. His black depression over the final death of Gotrek had given way to the terrible thought that finally, at last, after so many terrible adventures he was free. Free of the Slayer, free of the oath he had sworn in that moment of drunken madness.

Felix was still giggling when Gotrek punched his way out of the squiggoth’s head.

“Oi, manling!” the Slayer yelled. “What are you laughing at?”

Felix’s chuckles died, something like relief and a terrible weariness flooding back into his soul.

“I’m just glad you’re alive, Gotrek.”

“Don’t see why there’s anything to be glad about.” The dwarf said dourly. “It would have been a mighty doom, to die slaying a squiggoth and an entire goblin tribe to boot.”

“Don’t worry Gotrek. I’m sure we can find you another doom.” Felix said with a sigh. “Now, let’s go teach the Bretonnians how to boil water. I need a bath.”

Gotrek’s nose twitched in a mighty sniff.

“Aye manling, that you do.”

###

That Constant Necromancy

That Constant Necromancy
by
Bobby Derie

Atomic light shone through the strange clouds of a burning sky, and all the fields on either side of the road were ashy dust and weeds; the still dun mounds showed where the cattle and horses had ceased their pasture to lay down and die. The cracked streets laid like an ancient empire, in whose fissures and potholes was built new kingdoms of ants and termites, vast series of mounds and structures raised up in the shadow of rusted street lamps blown over, houses knocked to kindling, their contents spilled and exposed to air and invisible fires that tanned and bleached and burned from the inside out.

A hush came and the wind died, as the audience before the song, and the baleful, bright sun darkened for a moment, and took on a softer flare.

There was something classical about the curve of the hood, the rounded headlamps, the strange face of the radiator grill; a perfect Euclidian parabola that had been realized on paper with blue pencil and drafter’s ink. It was the fresh-cut grey of dark, flat virgin stone, as if washed in the fresh-flowing wounds of granite mountains laid bare by pick and dynamite. Prim white gloves grasped the wheel, and the eyes that stared out from the windows were the antique blue of a long-forgotten sky.

The song hit the ruined town first.

There was something of a march in it, a military cadence as of a million men in step, shattered every now and again by thunderous percussion cannonades, and merged in with the rhythm were pieces and fragments of old anthems and songs, riffs and openings from tunes that had seen nations through war and peace and back again. The speakers of the ghostly grey car shouted and sang and blared, and it reverberated through air and wood and artificial stone, to be heard by whatever spirits there might be to hear.

A softer breeze picked up, and an empty swing began to sway again. Fallen telephone poles, street lamps, and trees righted themselves, to stand tall once more. The driving wind increased, and the skeletons of houses at the edge of town that had folded in on themselves from the blast put on again their ancient flesh of shingles and vinyl siding. Mounds of moldering, broken brick skittered over the vacant shell of the gas station, and the rust on the pumps blew off in a pale red dust to reveal a mirror shine.

In the street, the empire of the ants died in sudden cataclysm as old asphalt flowed as if new again, healing over the wounds where they had built.

By the time her tires hit the outskirts of town, the grass had fallen down as if it had been visited by the swathing blades of elder days. A thin thing with copper pigtails and a pink dress picked herself up from the earth and stepped backward into the waiting swing, to be carried again. Students emerged from beneath their desks to retake their seats, and men and women cowered no longer in basements and closets, or under beds. In the town jail a pickpocket stared out from behind stout bars, and across the tracks the black folk stirred and felt the familiar burden take them once again.

The music swelled as she drove through the old town square, with it small somber monuments of brass on cut stone, past two churches and a synagogue whose pews were packed but from which came no song, or sermon, or prayer. On the wall of the diner, two shadows broke a long kiss and stepped out into the world again.

As the music faded from the entrance of town, the weary cattle and horses laid down once again to their long rest. The rails fell from the fences and the weeds stood, as if waking from a strange delirium. A harsher wind followed on the soft breeze, and what had been the work of burnt years reclaimed the gas station in moments. The swing swished through the air, and a pile of old bones in faded and torn pink rags fell to earth, a small grey skull landing in a mound of copper pigtails.

A strange procession followed. Gaunt men and women with set faces rode thin horses that frothed at the mouth. A handful of automobiles lumbered in caravan; the leader a grim-faced man who clutched the wheel beside his silent, worried wife, their children in the back had ash-colored skin and receding black gums that revealed long toothy smiles. The front of the car was new, but long creeping tendrils of rust and dry rot streaked the back; the car behind it was worse. The last car in the line was a boxy thing on bicycle wheels that got caught in the spreading cracks in the road, the engine sputtered out a final cough and then the whole carriage collapsed as the music died.

The prisoner in the jail waited, and as the walls fell leapt free of the masonry; the hot breeze stripped him to bones within three steps, but this time they would lay outside his cell. Two lovers shared a kiss again, as their shared shadow etched itself onto the bricks of the wall behind them. The faces of the townspeople turned to the sky—the bright blue sky, as blue as the woman’s eyes—before the atomic sky returned again.

###

The Modern Changeling

The Modern Changeling
by
Bobby Derie

The door to the delivery room slammed shut behind him, cutting the child’s scream down to a wailing whisper.

When she woke, her second question for the hollow-eyed nurse was for her husband.

Half the books were gone from the shelves, half the closets empty, the kitchen table an orgy of empty photographs. She clung the baby to her breast, eyes resting on a wedding photo, the grain of the table showing through where the groom’s head had been.

The bell rang. A blue envelope delivered with a sad smile. She had been served.

In the motel, laptop open, surrounded by what was left of his life. All that could fit in the car, ownership indisputable. He tapped away on the free wi-fi, closing accounts, changing passwords.

“You should talk to her.” Mama said. “Let her explain.”

“Doesn’t have to.” He sighed over the phone. “It’s an old story.”

The lawyer’s office was cramped. Opposite ends of the table. Her mother was watching it, back at home. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, or address her directly.

“Both of you have expressed a desire to avoid going to court,” one of them said. “We believe this will be an amicable division of property.”

Two names, scribbled in ink. Like a wedding license, in reverse.

She caught him, outside. Grabbed his wrist. The big muscle in his forearm bunched, then slackened. His eyes drifted up to her stare, caught his own reflection.

“Do you hate me?”

“No.”

Silence. Somewhere, a child cried.

“I…”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Neither of them were willing to look away.

“You can hate me if you want to.” he said. “If it makes it easier.”

He broke her grip, and her stare, and walked away.

There was a letter, decades later. Asking for a father that wasn’t there.

###

Same Again, Please

Same Again, Please
by
Bobby Derie

Detective Jack Bastard rubbed the gritty residue into his gums, and pulled away a finger stained with blood.

The body was ensconced in a man-high pile of porn, the corpse curled up like a fetus, blood soaked into glossy breasts and vaginas, his rigid tumescence pointing proudly ahead.

All this Jack could understand and accept. Only a couple things bothered him.

"Where the fuck are his hands?" The pale brown arms on the body ended in curved, blunted metal hooks on plastic sleaves.

"Diabetes." One of the black-and-whites answered from the bathroom, and came out holding a tester and packet of lancets.

Crime scene photos snapped, the forensic guys waited taut and expectant, hounds waiting to pounce on the fox.

"Does anybody else see the problem with a guy with no hands trying to jerk off?" Jack asked aloud. When no one answered, he waved the crime scene techs forward.

Jack stalked the small house. Separated from the one next door by a wall of tissue paper and asbestos, but the skanky teenagers next door selling their asses for rent money hadn't heard anything.

The detective rumbled the book shelves, opened the boxes in the closets, rooted through the sock drawer and under the sink. He finally found what he was looking for when he tossed the mattress.

The dominant themes were smooth-skinned stumps and gaping assholes. Boys in wheelchairs. Homosexual amputee porn.

"Detective, the forensic guys think-"

"The body was moved." Jack said.

The crime scene was too pretty, too staged. A mountain of porn, yes - but straight porn, regular porn.

*

"Is like with dog, yes?" the whore told him, sucking on a hand-rolled cigarette that reminded Jack of a pale, syphilitic dick.

"What, with peanut butter?" Jack asked. "Nah, that doesn't fit. He didn't have a dog."

"Nyet. Like...dog with leg, or pillow, yes? Grab on, rub against. Is how double amputees do it. Yvanna watch. Yvanna like to watch."

Jack was itching in all the wrong places, but now was not the time or the place. He tapped the photo again.

"You've seen him, yes or no?"

"Da. Particular kink. Some things, not on internet. You go talk to Mr. Six."

**

Jack had the garden hose pissing on Six for about ten minutes before he sputtered to some semblance of life.

"Bastard!" The old whoremonger said, climbing back to consciousness from whiskey dreams.

"I come from a long line of bastards." Jack said. "Tell me a story, Six. This guy."

"Aw, fuck. Look Jack, all I did was make the introductions, nothing illegal or anything. Like craigslist for chrissake."

"What, who, when, and how. Don't tell me the why, I don't think I could stand it."

***

"Jesus had diabetes, Mr. Bastard." Dr. Patel told him. The office felt warm, but Jack shivered and sweated. "His occasional periods of rage, irritability, and belligerence were hypoglycemic episodes."

"That is fascinating." Jack said. "Really. But I'm more interested in why you were amputating limbs off perfectly healthy people."

"Because they asked me to, Mr. Bastard." Her eyes were wide and bright, like a fanatic, staring straight through him. "They felt incomplete. Their bodies did not match their image of themselves. They looked with envy at those who had lost limbs to diabetes, to industrial accidents, and wished to be the same - creatures beautiful for their flaws."

"And the sex angle?"

Her mouth drew into a line, skin around the knuckles whitened. "I am given to understand that Mr. Six arranged matters with those interested. I had nothing to do with that, I merely provided medical services. There are expenses to the disabled life, Mr. Bastard."

She rolled her skirt up to mid calf, and removed her lower right leg. The nylon hung off the stump like the half-shed skin of some ancient reptile.

****

Later, at the bar.

"It would be nice if it was all an insurance scam. People getting limbs lopped off to get their policies paid. There was a whole town full of them down in Florida at one point. The amputee porn could just have been a sideline."

The bar tender topped Jack up, and the detective stared into liquid that smelled like peat and gasoline, but the reflection caught the bartender's smile.

"So why did they kill him?" she asked.

"They didn't." He washed his teeth in whisky and set it back down, wishing for some ice to crunch. "Kids next door, thought he had a stash of money or drugs, spiked his insulin. They'd seen three seasons too many of CSI: Special Victims unit. Knew that corpse pricks got hard after a while - so they pooled their porn to make his little nest, let people think he'd done himself grievous self-harm while masturbating."

Jack laid his head on the bar, enjoying the feel of the cool wood mash into his cheek.

"One of them discovered he was diabetic, found Jesus, confessed to the whole thing. Probably have a book deal by Monday. Same again, please."

###

Take A Razor To Your Head & The Yellow Mass

Take A Razor To Your Head
by
Bobby Derie

Jesus locks hide the mirror from the eyes, the hinged blade at hand. Wicked straight curve gleams on dead porcelain, waiting waiting. Patient and hungry. One final look, to put the past away again, to take on the paint and the mask. No other way. A drop of oil, then thumb the lever, hear the buzz. Feel them catch and tangle, pull away from the scalp. Watch the months and years fall into the sink again. Smooth stubble all around. Click off.

Razor time, sharp as anything, the first scraping pass done more by touch and feel. Finish up with the mirror, mind the scratches, it’s only pain. Warm trickles down the back, clean the bloody blade. Fold it up again. The air conditioner rumbles to life, cool air pushed against bare skin.

Who stares back from the mirror?

The Yellow Mass
by
Bobby Derie

Silent and uncomfortable during the liturgy, trapped in the middle of the pew, I considered my means of escape—in the event of an emergency, to flail at old women and children, stampede over the crippled and elderly in the mad rush past the baptismal font and escape into the relative safety of the vestibule, where warm mud-colored coffee and powdered donuts awaited, perhaps crumbcake.

She anchored me there with a light touch on the crook of my arm.

We had never discussed religion, and I had never wanted to. Hers was one of those obscure faiths, more bizarre and counter-intuitive than the Anglican Catholics or the Christian Atheists, and she had snookered me in by appealing to my vanity. “You haven’t even tried it.” The theme to three childhood tattoos, twice as many scars, and the occasional flashback from long-dormant experiments with drugs that buried themselves deep in the grey matter and lingered for years and decades. “This is very different.” She insisted.

The liturgy of the Eucharist was brief, and mostly hidden by the altar. The minister turned his back on us and fiddled with something, saying a few words, and when he returned there was a pale golden chalice full of pale golden wine.

I don’t know what I was expecting as we shuffled up for the communion. The church was done up in yellow cloths that hid the images of saints and crucifixion of the windows; great billowing clouds of amber that reached up to the arching roof and hung in banners and flags to frame the altar, which was also of bright yellow—silk, perhaps. I followed the crowd past the rail with its golden cushions to stand before the altar itself in a circle. The acolytes carried the chalice around, and everyone took a sip.

“Don’t worry” she whispered to me, too low for the others to hear. “it’s sterile.”

That set it off, of course. The rising panic. I saw the golden chalice go to each set of lips in turn, to drink the pale yellow liquid, the rim wiped clean by a square yellow handkerchief. There was a reek now of ammonia and I thought of sober men and women at urology conferences  lining up for such communions, literally taking the piss into themselves with ritual satisfaction, the necessary preliminaries before an orgy of golden showers where pale, saggy flesh would be doused and renewed in yellow streams that exactly resembled the slightly off-color wine that supposedly filled that cup. The minister approached us, dressed informally in blue jeans and a long-sleeved yellow shirt. She took her sip without comment and apparent satisfaction, then turned to look at me. I noticed his zipper was undone.

The golden chalice was before me, only a few sips left, the smell tangy and familiar—but I had never tasted sacramental wine. All eyes upon me, I took my sip.

It was warm.

###

On Rape

On Rape
by
Bobby Derie

The bastard sat across from me, the table between us, the coffee grown cold and still. The lights burned my eyes.

“Is it worse, do you think, to commit a rape and not enjoy it?”

I allowed that I did not follow.

“The narrative of rape is lust. That’s what we tell ourselves: the rapist is horny. Wants it, needs it, so bad, but can’t get it—so they resort to violence, force, trickery, drugs, whatever. For some of them, it’s even a power thing, a dominance thing, not so much about the sex itself as lording it over someone, having them at your mercy, to do things to them, to force them to do things to you. That’s still just another way to get off though, you follow?”

I did, and could have said more, but only nodded.

“But sometimes it’s not about lust at all. Some people, they’re driven by something. They don’t like it, they don’t really enjoy it, rape is just something they do, something they are. They don’t like rape, they just do it. They have to do it. Have to rape.”

I shared that I did not care for the subject.

“What, rape? Rape rape rape? Nothing wrong with talking about rape is there? Not in this country, anyway. It’s in all the papers, all over the internet, there are entire books about nothing more than rape. Lots of talk of rape, all the time, in all the television shows and webisodes, rape in every form and fashion—you don’t need to go to the dirty sites for your daily dose of rape, not when you can turn on prime time and hear about some young boy getting sodomized almost in half—but not to worry, the handsome detectives will solve this case in an hour plus commercials!”

I repeated that I did not care for the subject, and added that whatever the unwashed masses indulged in, I found it objectionable how rape was sensationalized.

“That’s a good word. Sensationalized. Made appealing to the senses. Bright colors, loud sounds, bold headlines in active voice. Sex, even violent and unwanted sex, sells. But surely there’s some good in sensationalized rape. Gets the word out there. Victim advocacy groups. Get people to come forward and admit they’ve been raped, put pressure on the cops to find the rapists, show the people what happens to rapists, provide an outlet via rape-media for those potential rapists to get their fix without doing the deed themselves. You’ve heard about prison rape, right?”

I allowed that I had.

“Terrible thing, really. And true. It’s not that many of them are actually homosexual, mind, but when you’re locked up for a couple of years you just know that it’s a nice warm hole or lips wrapped around your cock—or pressing against your cunt, no reason to think women’s prisons have it any easier in that regard. See, prison rape is different from what I was talking about before—that’s almost entirely a crime of lust, of need, sometimes dominance. Just a limited population of victims is all, and we hardly feel sorry for them. Do you?”

I arched an eyebrow. Do I what?

“Do you feel sorry, for rape victims?”

I did. It was, I added, the most terrible violation next to murder.

“Even the prison rape victims?”

I nodded. Even them.

“It’s so good that we have so many tools to catch them now, don’t you agree? Fiber analysis. Cell phone data. DNA, processed from rapekits.”

I nodded again.

“Good as a fingerprint, DNA is, at least in court. Television has brainwashed all the juries to believe in it. They won’t often convict without it. No hard forensics from the crime scene investigation folks, no lasers and test tubes, and they’ll try to acquit. Judges have to train them off it.”

I allowed that this was a sad state of affairs, but surely it was better for a few to go free than an innocent person convicted of rape to be convicted.

“Words right out of my mouth. You would know, right? I mean, that’s what you do, when we find the bodies. Send them to you.”

I confirmed that as an assistant to the county medical examiner, I was often called upon to swab for such trace evidence.

“Rape on account of lust, those tend to be a bit spontaneous. Sloppy attacks. Leave a lot of traces. We try to process those damn quick. Of course, sometimes there’s a backlog in processing the rape kits, but we’ve gotten better at that lately. You seen all the new computers they’ve moved in?”

I had. I nodded.

“Murder-rape is the worst, of course. Get a body in there, violated, cum and shit leaking out of every hole, duck tape around the wrists and ankles—and that’s if it hasn’t been sitting out in a creek to ripen up for a couple days. You processed one like that a couple weeks ago, right?”

He took out a photograph, laying face up on a morgue tray, a dirty angel. Monique. Yes, I had. The lab had come back with a match to a registered sex offender, led to his arrest. I told him as much.

He took out another photograph.

“And her, a couple months back?”

Blonde hair framing a massive wound; head caved in with a blunt object, seminal fluid still leaking out of her mouth in a tiny dried white rivulet. Janice. Another success, another arrest—her biker boyfriend.

A third photograph was laid out.

The lower half of a young boy. We never found his upper torso. Jeremy. Retired schoolteacher hung himself before the cops broke down his door.

“Funny thing: before we got this new computer system in, sometimes the county medical examiner had bodies swabbed twice. Different lab techs each time. With the first kit off to get processed, they’d just file the second kit away in evidence. Seeing as you always did the first kit, you might not have known that.”

I did not know that. I said nothing.

“Now we’re catching up with the backlog, and those sloppy seconds that came after you? They all contain your semen. A judge gave us a warrant to search your car and apartment. We found your trophies.”

He took out a plastic envelope, with locks of hair.

I asked to call my lawyer. He nodded, stood up, looked me in the eye.

“I don’t know where your head is at. Whether you did it because they were there and you were horny, or whether you’re so sick it’s just a compulsion and you scrub yourself raw and bloody afterwards. Maybe you liked to think about what happened to them and reenact it. Maybe you just thought ‘what the fuck, it’s not like their virgins anymore.’ Believe me, I’ve heard worse from people that fucked the living. I’m damn sure you thought you’d gotten away with it.”

I repeated my request to call my lawyer. He nodded.

“First things first. Please stand up and turn around.”

I did. He grabbed my wrist.

“Walter Jaxson, you are under arrest for the crime of necrophilia…”

###

Coke Meditations

Coke Meditations
by
Bobby Derie

Captive cola shelved for collector’s craze, emblazoned with the bright colors commemorating some ancient Olympics, waiting to be valuable once again. Dark sticky acid sludge held in thermo-chemical stasis, the slow breakdown of light filtered through tinted glass, the seal will rot and expire before the solar energies finish the subtle transmutation, the carbonation gone out ages hence. Caramel-colored water waits past its fizzy date, the lost Mecca on the dusty shelf, sugar-sweet trove that could feed a hundred generations, impenetrable in its slick tomb, surrounded by the corpses of ants.

Entombed, forgotten, amid the detritus of years, the cool and damp and dark draw down to work their strange alchemy, which has shattered lesser things with the slow work of years.

The familiar clink of spade on glass, and eager hands clear away the dirt of human habitation and the ruin of cities and people and ages. Faded now are the five rings, weathered and chipped the ancient dietary facts, but raised and vibrant on the bottom in letters of glass, the original bottler.

The gavel falls, once, twice – a bid, a raise, the video feed registers a new spate of activity, numbers on the screen incrementing higher as users at their distant computer terminals raise their limits. The heat dies down, longer pauses between raises, the contest becomes a momentary news item, search engines register the slight uptick in hits. Commercial data is exchanged, addresses relinquished , advertisements planned and commenced, marketing nostalgia ware to the idly curious. The gavel falls, the ads are clicked, do you want to upgrade to next-day shipping? Sold.

In the lab, under sterile lights, the tumult of the crowd is lost. There were riots at the mad science plans, the cultural loss, petitions signed and legal actions filed to halt the grievous violation. Calm men and women spoke of scientific progress, lost wonders, promise of new stuffs and chemical miracles. In the lab, the technician readies the probe.

Nanotendril snakes it way along a badlands of scarred glass. At this scale, the scratches of years transform the smooth surface into a treacherous landscape. Initial circumspection shows the seal worn but intact, protected by the agglutination of sterile dust and dirt from the fungi and bacteria that would colonize such stuff. The sharpened head burrows in, dragging the body behind, pseudo-worm musculature digging through the seal to taste the trapped air with tech first developed for burrowing through Antarctic ice. Digital chatter fills databases, collecting every chemical impression as the snaky probe continues the slow crawl, now suspended over precious millimeters, to make contact with the dark brown lake below.

Glass wine, refined for ages, the acid slowly eating at the imperfections, gaining flavor as the walls slightly dissolve. Awash in unfamiliar chemicals, lost with parent species: the taste of kola nut and coca leaf, strange extracts still intact amid the carbonic acid and dissolved sugars. The lab room cheers, the chemical data of their prize secured: a new cola for a new generation.

In the museum, under soft lights, climate-controlled tomb, the violation sealed, the brown-black lake still once more. Commercially exploited but not discarded, rescued by the archaeologists, the anthropologists, the art collectors. Shuffled from auction block to galley, studied and measured, decrypted and decoded. The essays and articles fill volumes and wikis on speculation, facts, petty academic politics, and scandal. No one seriously tries to drink it. Then the lights go out.

A three-fingered claw lifts it from the crèche where it had been laid, the centerpiece of the tomb-complex, another artifact of a strange and forgotten race. Lights flash at the entrance, the sound of motorized vehicles, and the claw secures its prize. The penalty for looting is death.

###