Blood & Gristle Read online

  Lisa shook her head in disgust. She couldn’t believe she let him stick his dick in her. But then, she couldn’t believe it about the last guy, or the guy before that, or the guy before that. She wasn’t a hoe, she just couldn’t seem to find the right flipping guy. She wished she could – that’s all she was looking for. Idealized love. A pair of big, brawny arms. A warm heart. Like Kyle’s parents.

  There was a strong urge to run, but it was quelled by sense. The dark would take her. No matter what. And if she darted out the door (nobody was paying her any attention at the moment), everybody would die. So then, what choice did she have? Lisa closed her eyes and put her hand out over the box.

  It flared an angry red and she pulled it back before the burn reduced her to a whimpering mess like Kyle.

  Howard noticed. He hugged Margret’s sobbing form tight and mouthed, Thank you. Lisa nodded at him.

  Kyle noticed too. He really didn’t give a crab about anything other then the ever-burn, so once the box rejected Lisa, he freed one of his sizzling hands and put it out there. Turn me to a fucking pig, he thought, shit, turn me into a horse or an elephant or a rat, I don’t give a flying fuck, just take away the fire!

  The box granted his wish. The humming began again and everybody froze and locked in. Howard and Margret held each other, emotionless, empty. Lisa stared, empty. Kyle tried to smile, the fire was gone, but he froze and his mind fell into the whirling black inside the box.

  Kyle was actually a saint compared to his little brother. He didn’t lie or steal or cheat or hurt others intentionally, but then, he didn’t care. That was his biggest problem. He was indifferent about nearly everything. If a girl dumped him, he shrugged it off and found another. If he dumped a girl, he shrugged it off and found another. If his parents grounded him, he shrugged it off and made the best of it in his room. When they gave him a car for his sixteenth birthday, he shrugged it off and thanked them with a meh smile. When crashed the car six months later he shrugged it off with a meh frown. He lacked heart. So when his body started seizing and every ambivalent moment of his life plagued his brain, his skin didn’t crack, or a pig didn’t grow from his heart, no, his heart simply grew.

  And grew.

  And grew.

  The tough, jolting muscle cracked his chest plate and thumped and inflated until his pectorals and breastbone fell around it. The heart pushed through in slimy, hot, red birth, speckling invisible walls with bits and pieces of Kyle’s meh-ness.

  Like with Timmy, Kyle disappeared, the box closed, and the hum died.

  Margret wasted no time. She didn’t give ideas or concerns or grief a chance to settle. She would not think about Kyle. She would not think about Timmy. She shrugged Howard off and jammed her hand over the box.

  The humming began again.

  The unending black caressed Margret’s soul and she felt a complete and total calm trickle in and over her fraying nerves.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  She relieved glorious moment after glorious moment. Baking cakes. Fixing dinner. Making lunches. A lifetime devoted to the preparation of food, but food was life, nourishment, and her boys, her man, thrived because of it, because of her. She felt tremendous love and the sense that everything she gave of herself, the zillions of hours spent worrying about her family and their needs and their wants and their satisfaction, was being repaid a thousand fold. She’d spent all of her life, or at least all of her married life, thinking outside of herself. Somewhere along the way she had lost herself. The box, whatever ancient, enigmatic mystery it contained, was giving everything back. Suddenly, for the first time in what felt like forever, Margret didn’t feel like honey, or mom, or mama, or sweetie, suddenly Margret felt like Margret – beautiful, fierce (like a diva), independent. Suddenly, she felt like herself, and she didn’t even feel the least bit guilty about it.

  Her body floated three feet off the ground and began to glow a golden white from the inside out. Her clothes disintegrated and she hung in the air, a model of feminine beauty, a goddess, an idol of worship. Her splendor and grace were so blinding that they forced Howard and Lisa to break from their trance and look down at their feet.

  Margret became pure love, pure warmth, pure innocence, pure good – the ultimate manifestation of everything humanity strived to be, but could never attain. She was so beyond them, that when Howard and Lisa were forced to look back up, all they saw was a shimmering, golden light. It filled their hearts with awe and made them feel lower than low.

  Before Margret disappeared into the ether, the box shared its secrets. It set each and every one of her concerns at ease with its primordial acumen and Margret moved from this realm to the next pulsing with contentment.

  And then there were two.

  Howard sighed, brushed away some pesky tears and stuck his hand out. The box rejected him. He withdrew and then sighed again, this time at Lisa.

  She smiled at him and nodded and began to put her hand out, but then stopped. “Um…Mr…”

  “Howard,” Howard helped.

  “Howard.” Lisa said his name once, held for a second, and then said it again, “Howard.”

  He nodded as if to say, yes?

  “Do we have to do this now?” Lisa asked. “I mean, is there a time limit? Can’t we just leave the box where it is and…I don’t know…live?”

  “We can’t leave, we–”

  “Kyle showed me the freezer in your garage. You have enough food here for a long time.” With Kyle, Timmy and Margret out of the picture, Lisa weighed her prospects. Would it be so terrible to live somewhat of a life, however abbreviated, with Howard? She sure as hell didn’t want to die now.

  “There is no point in denying the inevitable.” Howard smiled tenderly. “Not everybody…dies, you know. I’ve heard stories. Some people. Well, like Margret. That didn’t look…bad… And some people even survive. You’re not even part of my family. You might walk away from this.”

  “What is all of this, Howard?” Despite his assurances, Lisa still didn’t want to take her turn. Sure, she might survive, sure, she might turn into an angel or whatever happened to Margret, but then… She didn’t even want to think about Timmy or Kyle.

  “It’s life, kid.” Howard shrugged.

  “I’m nineteen.” Lisa defended. She hated it when people called her a kid.

  Howard simply nodded.

  They stood in silence for a bit and then Howard made eyes indicating for her to get on with it.

  “Okay. But what is it, really?” She felt she was owed some sort of explanation.

  Howard agreed. The girl didn’t sign up for this. “It’s ancient is what it is. It’s been happening…well, forever. Sometimes we make choices we regret. Sometimes we have to pay for things that our parents, or their parents, or their parents before them did. You know? Sometimes we have to pay for our humanity.”

  Lisa didn’t understand a word the man was saying and suddenly, Kyle’s handsome dad looked a million years old. He looked dead. Like history. Like time and space personified. Lisa blinked fast until Howard’s distinguished, handsome face returned. “We could spend some time together…Howard.” Lisa decided the only way to get through to him, to this man, was to use her best assets. She ran a suggestive finger over the neckline of her shirt and licked her lips slow and sensual. “We don’t have to de like the others.” She reached out and put a hand on Howard’s shoulder.

  He put his hand on her hand and smiled down into her lovely blue eyes. “But, I want to.” He kept smiling, sweetly, sadly, until she nodded, and then he gently picked up her hand, kissed her fingertips, and guided it toward the box. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

  Lisa nodded again and took a deep breath. She didn’t fight it, instead, she let Howard, probably the nicest man she had ever met, warmly lead her to destiny.

  The humming froze them, Howard standing close, Lisa leaning over the box, awaiting her fate.

  Visions bombarded and Lisa found herself sucking cock, stroking cock,
riding cock, getting down and dirty and feeling every kind of shame imaginable. Beneath the onslaught of pink, sweaty, sticky, smelly memory, she argued that this wasn’t fair. They weren’t all bad, they weren’t all dirty, there was a modicum of love and passion and tenderness in each and every act, but then the box wasn’t interested in such. Had the love and passion and tenderness, exceeded the guilt and humiliation and empty, futile gratification, things might have been different.

  While her insides revolted and lingered on every pornographic detail, her outsides shifted and stretched. Her clothes ripped and fell away from her distended body and her uterus turned itself inside out, pushing its fleshy, pink-red tip out through her labia on a tide of thick blood and chunky biology. The uterine walls elongated and paled and waved like a serpent from her ruined crotch. The flesh snake thing contoured and took on the shape of a male penis. It stood erect and then spurted blood and bits of her intestines. The rest of Lisa’s insides followed suit until her entire body, turned inside out and mangled, shot through the tip of her mutant phallus.

  Howard was on the verge of puking when Lisa’s transmogrification ended and she disappeared. The box closed, the humming died, and the invisible hold released him.

  In control of his own body, that redlining vomit settled, but then another flash of Lisa’s disgusting end played across his mind and he lost his cookies. Howard retched, got it all out, and then winced at the mess he made of the floor, his pant legs, and his boots.

  Not that any of it mattered.

  It was his turn.

  Howard wasn’t afraid.

  He was ashamed, but not afraid. This was all his fault and he expected to suffer. He hoped to suffer. This was all about choice, and for every decent, kind hearted choice he made, he could think of ten selfish, stupid decisions. To think back and review them would be foolish (and impossible as he couldn’t remember many beyond contracting for his family). Besides, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. His kind was made to suffer. Some got lucky. Some lived long, healthy lives and begot children that lived long, healthy lives and on and on, but most didn’t, and he knew the risks, and he took a chance anyway. He made a choice anyway.

  Howard sighed.

  Somebody had to pay.

  Somebody always had to pay.

  That was life, like it or not.

  When he put his hand in place, the box showed him all of the great moments of his life and allowed him to relive every triumph, every glorious cry, every heart melting moment, with his family. The instances flew by, but they felt good and for a second he thought he had a chance. He thought he might be able to follow Margret, but then, after a maddening taste of paradise, the box ripped everything away and sucked his soul into the cold, dark forever place where all fathers went when the box came for them, the fabled place he dreaded since he was a boy when his great grandfather explained to him how life worked and how the sins of man would not go unpunished.

  Unlike the others, unlike his bloody boys, or the bloody girl, unlike his wife gone to light, unlike their quick, violent, beautiful ends, his suffering would span the limits of time and space. His suffering would be eternal. His suffering would go on forever and ever.

  Brilliant beams of sunlight cut through the heavy clouds, riddling the storm with holes until it sulked away like a tantruming infant overcome by exhaustion. The house gleamed in the sunshine and dried in time with the rain swept land. Sunny days stretched on and on for many months, for many years, for many decades, for many centuries, for millennia, and somewhere within this deluge of perfect weather, the house’s front door unlatched and creaked inward.

  A family of five – Jeff and Samantha and their three kids, Jeff Jr., Stephen, and little Audrey – piled through the doorway in a happy rabble of noise and hope. Jeff Jr. and Stephen ran off to find their rooms. Samantha scooped up little Audrey and drifted into the kitchen where she was excited to make her new house a home. Jeff, or Hefe, or Ace, as his closest friends called him, smiled in the doorway and stood beneath the transom, sweeping his head from side to side. The house was beautiful. His family was beautiful. This was everything he ever hoped for and more. He turned around and took another look outside and then widened his smile at the pastoral summer that cocooned his family and their new home. He stared deeper and deeper, squinting into the still warmth. A tiny shudder rocked his spine when his eyes alit upon a teeny, tiny storm cloud millions upon million of miles in the distance. The shudder went up and down, up and down, and then he thought about the pain in his past and the potential for hurt upon the horizon.

  I have a good feeling about you.

  That’s what the man said. Despite Franklin Demon’s tooth smile and sweaty palms, Jeff believed him. He had faith.

  Giving the sunny day one last appreciative glance, he shut the door on uncertain promises and tenuous hope and went off to embrace the day to day journey of confident living.

  THE CURRENT

  The chair was of a heavy, solid, sound design.

  Thick metal arms.

  Thicker metal legs.

  Cracked vinyl padding.

  Durable as all hell and eternal heaven combined.

  It, along with cockroaches and disease, would surely survive until the very end of time. Paige Graham pictured the chair sitting amidst a war torn wasteland. She pictured it intact, as strong as ever, standing tall alongside melted toys and burnt out cars, defying the rubble, mocking the destruction, whole and solitary while everything else around it crumbled, broken and twisted, aping new, jaggedly joined forms in a desperate struggle to adapt and survive.

  But not the chair.

  No, the chair sat proud atop a world of powdered concrete and rampant, rusty, swoopy metal – even its ripped, vinyl seating pad, worse for the wear, cracked, torn, savaged for sure, managed to valiantly secure its cottony, white guts, keeping them in place and at the ready for some serious sitting action.

  Paige shifted (in futility) for comfort. Despite the chair’s impressive arrangement and impending legacy, it was anything but cozy. Hell, it was downright torturous, given her light, woolen sweater. The crunchy, static-hungry consistency of the wool was at continual war with the chair’s vinyl seatback. Paige squirmed and leaned, sat up and slouched, stood and sat, stood, sat, slouched, groaned.

  Hell is a hospital bedside.

  Not to be out done by the crackling, sticky, shifting of her ever settling (never settling), the humming, beeping whoosh of life support equipment raged on as steady and constant as a mechanical heartbeat. Less then a foot away, alive by the grace of science, respirators, blood-pumps, tubes, plastic, lay Miss Edelweiss Graham, she of bad heart, she of bad blood, she of bad brains, one foot in the grave and the other coming down fast, fast, fast.

  But not fast enough, and Paige was beginning to think the old woman would never die.

  Like the stupid chair, Edel would carry on and on, weathering impossible annihilation – solid, sturdy, immortal, thriving while the world around her died away. Paige stared at the woman’s withered, emaciated frame with teeth grinding impatience. Contempt even. Die, she thought.

  Just let go already, she pleaded.

  Old bitch, she mentally growled

  Paige pinched herself and swallowed back a lump of guilt. She promised that she wasn’t going to go there. Disrespect was unnecessary.

  Warranted?

  Maybe (for sure).

  But wholly unnecessary.

  She was an adult now, full grown and above the petty resentments that squeezed her heart and pumped her brain full of useless venom and nasty vinegar back when she was a stupid, reckless, needy teenager.

  She let a hunk of frustration go and blew out a gust of air.

  Looking around the small hospital room (for the umpteenth time), Paige’s eyes bounced from sterile corner, to sterile corner, to the dying bouquet of wild flowers she brought in last week, to the muted television running People’s Court reruns, before finally resting upon the source of Edel’s prolonged existenc
e. Paige regarded the beeping EKG with another sigh and then allowed her eyes to drift and travel the tubing and coils, the wiring and power cords that wormed their way into an electrical outlet and fed off the slow humming vitality as if suckling at the teat of a benevolent god.

  Snakes of life.

  Black sheaths, pumping electric goodwill and staving off the inevitable for one more second, one more minute, one more hour, one more day, one more eternity.

  A familiar thought dawned on her then (for the umpteenth time): all that stood between Edel and everlasting death was a singular current of unbroken power. All it would take to deliver her was a quick yank or an accidental snag or a freak electrical storm.

  Snakes of life beheaded.

  Black sheaths drained.

  Edelweiss Graham passing on.

  Chewing the inside of her cheek, Paige stared at the outlet until her vision fuzzed away. She pictured crawling on her knees, grabbing at the plugs, and freeing the woman. She pictured tripping over cords. She pictured salvation and peace and leaving the nightmare chair behind, but then her thoughts fell apart and visions of kicking wires gave way to an onslaught of swarming memory…

  …there she sat, always sitting, always smoking, always watching Judge Judy, always draped in her frumpy moo-moo with her frazzled hair and her blue-clear, consuming eyes. Stare long enough, squint a little, and it was like those eyes became port holes and you were gazing directly into the old woman’s head. Through the waves of salt and acid and pigment, Paige swore she could actually see Edel’s skull and her gray, rock brain throbbing and pulsing through a veil of transparent bone.

  She never got used to those eyes.