Today we are featuring three works by one of the stalwarts of the speculative fiction and poetry scene – Bruce Boston, pictured left (actually Bruce is the one on the right of the picture) at a Bram Stoker Awards ceremony. Bruce's bio can be found at the foot of this column. Enjoy...


Ghost Surrogate
 
The skilled and
distinctive touch
of a dead lover
causes the Countess
to cry out in the night.
 
Her hands pretending
that they are his.


Surreal Bucket List #3
 
Write in a soft voice that carries a crossbow.
Tour Mount Olympus in a Volkswagen Bus.
Recline for a fortnight in shades of fancy.
Trace my roots to a prehistoric sea.



Forever Tracking
for Damon


Forever interpreting ancient texts as their tattered scrolls unrolled within his mind, treading the borders of the Axis Mundi with no more than an empty leather satchel, ranging the streets of Xanadu and Carcosa, Asgard and Babylon, tracking like a beast with a ravenous beast astride its back, whispering sacral curses and foul blessings to the eldritch winds. 

Immersed in dreamtides and chimerical visions and cimmerian prophets whose shadows rose from the dust of ages, worshipping priestesses created for the day, following transient avatars down to a dim beach and the dark sea of a false dawn to hear the damp cries of beached mariners echoing in his brain.

Intoxicated by secret keys and magical rings, obsessed by puzzle boxes with hidden compartments only to be opened by the wisest of men and most cunning women, drunk on myth and history and a tomorrow that foreshadowed more than night.

Enthralled by the occult and the fantastic, Crowley and Blavatsky, Faustus and Paracelsus, Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, poring over maps revealing the locations of imagined kingdoms, Mu and El Dorado, Atlantis and Shangra-La, the Archipelago of Dreams, maps fashioned by madmen on a transcendental high over a fifth of Ravens Rum and a pinch of fly agaric.

Anticipating the excavation of underwater ruins and red temples crumbling to red sand in some distant desert, astounded by age-old architectural mysteries, the Great Pyramids, the dour monoliths of Easter Island, the astronomical savvy of Stonehenge, awaiting the lab tests on the Shroud of Turin and the release of a revised annotation of the Bardol Thodol, praying for the miraculous to snuff the everyday.

Last heard from traveling to parts unknown, head down and eyes afire, carrying no more than a worn leather satchel stuffed with worlds.



About Bruce Boston...  Born in Chicago in 1943, Bruce grew up in Southern California in an era of rock 'n' roll, the Cold War, and the Space Race. From 1961-2001, he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, attending and graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, while active in the psychedelia and political protests of the 1960s. He has worked in a variety of occupations, including computer programmer, college professor, technical writer, book designer, movie projectionist, gardener, and furniture mover and now lives in Florida with his wife – the writer-artist Marge Simon, and the ghosts of two cats. His website is at www.bruceboston.com

His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF, Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, The Pedestal Magazine, The Twilight Zone Magazine, Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, and the Nebula Awards Showcase. His poetry has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, the Balticon Poetry Award, and the SFPA Grandmaster Award.

Two glorious pieces of urban fantasy now. The first story by Jessica Kormos – The Silence of the Yams – has a wonderful pun for a title and goes to ask whether vegetarians are really all that innocent? Jessica’s work has appeared on The Drabblecast and she is a 2014 graduate of Viable Paradise XVIII. Our second story – The Prize by Dean Turnbloom – is a dark tale about a small town mystery and how one nine-year-old deals with it. As it happens, in that pragmatic way nine-year-olds always do. Dean has been published previously in webzines Nth Degree and Death Head Grin. He’s also had two novels published – Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Vampire + Sherlock Holmes and the Body Snatchers – both of which have some connection to horror fiction. He is also the editor of BECY 2014 and the Prizewinning Political Cartoons series.


The Silence of the Yams
by Jessica M. Kormos


The fava beans quivered in their plastic bag prison, and the onions and bell peppers huddled closer to them for warmth. The vegetarian mistress of murder left neither carrot with intact skins, nor any cabbage whole. Despite their attempt to hide in the back of the bin, the yams had been unceremoniously taken away just a few moments ago. By the time the remaining vegetables adjusted to the piercing white light that blinded them through the open door they were sunk once more into blackness, the drawer slid neatly into place. The yams, a lovely couple from a farm in Iowa, were gone.

The vegetables inched backwards as they heard the soft thwack, thwack as a knife struck a whetstone, seeking a hiding spot that was no longer there. If the slayer of the salad was sharpening her knives, it could only mean that they were approaching the time of The Great Purge.  Everything must go to make room for a new batch of helpless vegetable victims. Just yesterday it had been easy to hide amongst the broccoli and the beets, but they had been sacrificed to this chef's insatiable desire for produce.  

A sudden pop and the vegetables were once again surrounded by blinding light. Annabelle Lecter opened the vegetable bin roughly, bouncing the onions off the bell peppers and sending them twirling across the floor.  She grabbed the bag of fava beans and carried them to the counter next to the remains of the yams. They had been skinned; their bright orange flesh lay exposed on the cutting board. The fava beans began to tremble, and like atoms packed tightly together, each adjacent bean took up the shuddering of its neighbor. Annabelle smiled ruefully as the bag shook in her hand and she plucked out one of the fava beans. To the horror of its brethren, she snapped off the end. "I think you would taste nice with tofu and a glass of Chianti," she said. The other fava beans were beheaded in turn and added to the steaming skillet on the stove. It wasn't long before the vegetable bin was empty; the bodies of the diced onions and peppers covered with oil and unceremoniously sautéed for her pleasure.

Annabelle took a bite, savoring her meal, wondering which she enjoyed more: the weekly cleanout of her fridge or the anticipation of the new set of victims available at her local farmer's market.



The Prize
by Dean P. Turnbloom


The Bodecker's have run the soda shop on Gibson Street for as long as I can remember. Of course, even if that were my whole life it would only be nine years. Still, I like them, especially Mrs. Bodecker. She’s pretty and nice, despite what my mom and aunt say about her. She always puts a little extra in my bag whenever I go in and buy penny candy. She has the prettiest smile, with her golden tooth resting beside the chipped one.

It’s been nearly three weeks since anyone has seen Mrs. Bodecker. She ran off with Carl, the delivery guy for Wilson's Confections. Mr. Bodecker says she's gone to visit her mother in Schenectady, but I know the real story. I heard mom talking about it. "What anyone could ever see in that snaggle-toothed little hoor is anybody's guess," mom told Aunt Lucie.

I don’t know what a hoor is, but it ain’t good. "And Carl was such a nice-looking man, too," Aunt Lucie said. "Oh well, there's no accounting for taste, they say."

Then mom laughed and said, "Ain’t that the truth, if beauty's in the eye of the beholder, that Carl must be nearly blind." Then they laughed together and I lost interest as they went off on another topic. But I still like Mrs. Bodecker all the same. 

I went to their little shop today, just like most days, hoping Mrs. Bodecker would be there to put a little something extra in my candy bag. But today Mr. Bodecker was in the shop alone again so I put my penny in the slot of the glass gumball machine instead. Mr. Bodecker wasn’t as generous as his wife and the gumball machine boasts Gum & a Prize with Every Turn. So I thought that might be just as good as getting something extra from Mrs. Bodecker. 

I cupped one hand beneath the mouth of the dispenser and with the other turned the crank all the way round and then lifted the door to claim my prize. I put the gumball in my mouth, cracking the candied outer skin as I chewed. Then I took the tooth and looked at it before slipping it into my pocket. It was the third one this week, and this one was chipped. On my way out of the shop, I looked up at Mr. Bodecker behind the counter and smiled, but he only stared back at me, his left eye twitching.  I thought for a moment about telling him the tooth was chipped, but decided against it. Maybe next time I’ll get the gold one.

For our latest Grievous Angel selection we have not one but five new prose poems for you? What are prose poems, you ask? They occupy a strange hinterland between conventional verse poetry, vignettes and flash fiction. They are one of my favourite literary forms. And they are notoriously difficult to define, save to say that you know one when you see one...


* Our first contributor, Rachael Clyne lives in Glastonbury (UK). Her work appears in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Space, Sarasvati, Domestic Cherry & Book of Love and Loss. Her collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (2014), won Indigo Dreams, Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize and concerns our relationship with the wild.  www.rachaelclyne.com


Home Cooking 
by Rachael Clyne

Houses are often silent, deserted. They hold their abandonment, like aged spinsters waiting for the knock of their carer, who breezes in with small chat, briskly raises a smile, then with swift wipe of flannel, steers her charge, too early, to bed. Sometimes they hang in rows like bats, swop gossip in the dark, with sounds beyond reach of human ears. Houses have anecdotes that need telling, ailments that need tending; they are social creatures, despite the secrets they guard behind walls.

Other times houses are hungry, chomping at the bit for cinnamon toast. Their cutlery rattles double-glazing, venetian blinds. Beware the famished intent of a 1950’s semi, its penchant for coronation chicken, stair rods, prawn cocktail and blancmange. Terraced houses desire parquet, caviar and pâté, while those in grandiose crescents long for plainer fare: rag-rugs, egg 'n' chips, mushy peas, baked beans. They possess no can openers but rely on their carers to provide. I once met a dairy-intolerant vicarage with a taste for sardines. Most of all they crave the sweet flesh of human, to roll around the tongue and swallow whole. They like to hoard them, stuff them, digest slowly over long periods then regurgitate. Houses often compete to see how far they can spit them out.



* Next up we have Zella Christensen, a Wisconsinite studying at George Mason University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, New Myths, and Mirror Dance.


Bus Stop Gothic
by Zella Christensen

Way before the sun comes up, there's a girl standing by the side of the road with two crows on a power line buzzing in the rain, which will freeze on the streets tonight, till in the slick black throat of fog, a car with broken headlights will spin, slide into a ditch
and stick nose-down in the snow with a driver too cold to pray, who can't find her cell phone or make the heater work, who will grasp the wheel until her hands are no longer hands – till they are hard as bone. Her car will jut from the snow where this girl is now. A wind comes up, and her coat blows back like wings. She stares west, away from the place where the sun will rise. You wonder what she's waiting for.



* F.J. Bergmann writes poetry and speculative fiction, often simultaneously, appearing in Dreams and Nightmares, New Myths, On Spec, Quantum Realities, Silver Blade, and a bunch of literary journals that should have known better. The editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, she frequents Wisconsin and fibitz.com


The Doorman
by F. J. Bergmann

That poem was a revelation; it really opened a door. You descend from the limousine onto the mandatory red carpet. When you approach the threshold, the poem stands there attentively, gloved hand on the crystal doorknob, gold braid on its epaulets. It smiles and waves you onward, with a genial nod. You step through onto the rocky promontory, shading your eyes with your hand and squinting against the glare. From far below, you hear the crash of waves, a foghorn, seabirds, lobsters singing. Out there, something is moving its tremendous flukes.



* Now over to N.M. Farr who currently lives in northern New Mexico, and writes music and fiction, and gardens.


Pocket Full of Fingers 
by N.M. Farr 

In walks the foxy lady with a pocket full of fingers. She says the fingers point her in the right direction when she gets confused about where to go, what to do, when to turn the page. She pulls out a finger to help her find the way. She’s a regular at the local book store, and loves to sit in the orange velvety chair by the window and read mysteries. Her hands in tact, each well equipped with five healthy fingers, yet when time to turn the page, she pulls out one of the fingers, usually the thumb, from her green grass smock pocket, to turn the page. 
     
A customer saw her do this one Sunday afternoon, and the customer shrieked, “Wow. Is that a fake thumb?” 

The lady said, “No. This is Jesus’s thumb.” 

The customer said, “That’s gross...and sacrilegious.” 

The foxy lady with feathery long lashes looked up at the customer, then sighed and gazed off into the distance beyond the glassy window, beyond the buildings across the street, beyond the tree tops, beyond the glare of the sun, deep into the summer blue sky her eyes bore a black hole, where there Jesus stood in a beautiful yellow globe, a purple Jesus, waving hello or goodbye with his fingerless hand.



* Finally, Bethany Powell, who currently has poetry forthcoming in Kaleidotrope, Apex, and Dreams &
Nightmares.


A Witch In Her Own Hometown
by Bethany Powell

“We are all well here – except, of course, Uncle Liam. 
He wants me to tell you how he's achey all over. “This ankle got turned over and near split from his calf, that's how bad he's got”, though he can still work, as long as we let him complain. He sits down and makes pained faces if we don't answer with proper sympathy for him. I have to write you something unhappy from town here, which is that Marge passed. I doubt you will take this to heart, unless you still pine for an apology. Her gravestone is as close as you'll get, I'm afraid – “Forgiven, as I forgave others”. The joke is on her,
really, though I can't let Ma see I wrote that.

But here's the point of this, dearest sister, and much harder  to write: come back home. Can you come? The Old Mayor's sick and bed-rid. Marge is dead, and with her I think mainly the gossip is forgotten, since she was the one who cared to make everyone remember. And we miss you. We can send a ticket for the train, or I guess you make money now to buy one, and we can pay you back. You should keep your savings. And maybe it would be hard for you. Maybe I could just come visit a bit, if you'll have me. We miss you desperately. No one else can tell you this, the way I will, but we want you here, and damn the town.

Now I really can't show this to Ma, and I'll just end it here
to get in the mail quick and to you quicker. Love...

PS The well's never drawn right since you left, either.”

Our first contributor is Patty Templeton. Her work has most recently appeared in Night Terrors III, Mythic Delirium, and Primeval: A Journal of the Uncanny. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and her first novel There Is No Lovely End was released in 2014. 


Juke Joint Banshee
by Patty Templeton


There’s a juke joint down somewhere – might be between a graveyard and a broke-down laundromat. I ain’t telling where. Nothing shits-up a place quicker than tourists. But some stories are heavy to hold, so I’m spilling truths on you.

The red-wearin, blues-wailin’ Santella Smith built a juke joint in 1932, and don’t I know? Wasn’t she my kin? Sanny nailed that shack together. Built a three-stool bar. Hammered her own tables. Sang there. Got murdered there.   

See, Sanny’s ol’ man thought she was eyein’ Robert Johnson. Stabbed her in the heart for it.
But dyin’ don’t mean leavin’. Sanny went banshee. Never heard her myself, but plenty have. 
Robert Johnson beheld her howl, told everyone, and was poisoned a day later.

Buddy Holly wanted to see Robert Johnson’s old haunt. Heard ghostly moanin’. Plane crash three weeks later.

Patsy Cline stopped by for a beer. Died in a plane crash not a week after.

Otis Redding happened in. Same as Patsy.

Janis left spooked. Overdosed in a fortnight.

Fella named Kurt asked, “Where’s the singing coming from?” Died a month later. 

Sanny, I think she’s tryin’ to give folks shake-ups of “don’t go there” or “you gotta get straight”. But all Sanny’s got is a wind-ridin’ ghost song and it seems to be everyone who hears it passes on. 

Do I miss my Great Aunt Sanny? Hell, yes. 

Do I ever wanna hear her sing again? Hell, no. 

But I reckon what will be, will be. 



Next up we have Betty McIntyre who describes herself as "an eclectic Canadian woman". She's been previously published online at Halloween Forevermore. Check out her pen and ink art at www.redbubble.com/people/bettyrocksteady – as you can see, we did just that. Our "Grievous Angel" this time incorporates one of her illustrations and we have also included another example of her work featuring the spookiest selection of children's toys we've seen for a long time.


The Wretched Pet
by Betty McIntyre


I caught it at the beach last summer. It was a beautiful creature, long and dainty, a luminescent rainbow of color. It wound and twisted itself into arcane shapes as it slid through the water in my bucket. Dad said it would never survive, but it did. 

We weren't sure what to feed it. It would eat whatever you dropped in, but it liked meat the best. 

It grew very quickly. The beautiful rainbow scales flaked off, revealing an ugly, raw-looking flesh tone. It glared at me with palpable hatred. It outgrew aquarium after aquarium until we had to give up on accommodating it. Its malevolent eyes followed us constantly. Its cramped body writhed as it knotted itself tighter and tighter inside its prison. I longed to set it free but the weather grew cold and it was too late. Dad was afraid we would kill it by returning it to a freezing ocean.

When spring finally came we crept out by moonlight to release it. Dad thought we might get in trouble for having kept it so long. It took the two of us to carry the aquarium. The creature burst through the glass as we neared the ocean, shocking us as it spread to its full length. It seemed impossible that it had survived being cramped and crunched into such a small space. It slipped elegantly into the water and was gone.

A lot of people have disappeared this summer. No one goes swimming anymore.



Finally, it's over to Jessica Patient. Jessica is currently stuck in an endless loop of redrafting her novel. She reviews books and blogs over here: www.writerslittlehelper.blogspot.com


The Ice-Cream Van
by Jessica Patient


Some say I am a superhero but all I do is drive a rusty old ice cream van.

Faded stickers of ice cream cones, lollipops and chocolate ices are pimpled with bullet-holed wounds. Nothing serious. I just didn’t get back before curfew. Not even the food relief lorries come this far - they stop at the fence and lob over the sacks of rice. My van, except for the patrolling tanks, is the only thing that comes up these roads, littered with bricks from bombed homes and bits of blown up furniture. The exhaust shakes as I drive over bits of debris and craters.

Nowadays there’s only one choice of ice cream – whipped up cream that tastes of air with hints of vanilla all swirled into a stale cone. But that’s if the shipment has made it through customs.

Those scared faces smeared in dust and dirt, turn to joy as I turn the corner and they clamber out from their hiding places. I watch from my rear-view mirror as their skinny bodies run behind, trying to catch up, wanting to be first in the queue for a double helping. They cheer even though blue smoke from the exhaust blows in their faces.

I waive the ration tokens.

But it’s the adults, lingering at the back of queue who are my real customers. They want what’s hidden away in the freezers, buried under the tubs of ice cream and my own stash of food. It’s the guns, covered in a layer of condensation and the bullets that they pay for, ready to take down the government. These are the guns I find at the side of the road, next to charred bodies or abandoned by retreating regiments.

But what my customers don’t know, as they run across the rubble, back to their makeshift camps inside crumpling village halls, is that the government are paying me to pull the ice cream pumps and dish out those chocolate flakes. The smiles and friendly chatter is real though. Someone needs to keep the population sweet.

Hopefully we've seen the last of the Three Horsemen of the Technologyapocalypse – migrating to a new website platform + move to new email address + (two days ago) major systems update – so we can now focus on publishing poetry and flash fiction on this site! We've five poets for you today with a pleasing mixture of blood, gore, terror, sci-fi and even a little flavour of The King in Yellow...

True Love
by Guy Belleranti

Hungry for love,
he cannot stop kissing
until she stops laughing
and kisses back.                                                      
Like others before him
he’s greatly surprised.
He wasn’t expecting 
the fangs. 

* Guy Belleranti writes poetry, fiction and more. His poetry has appeared in Scifaikuest, Midnight Echo, Trysts of Fate, Spaceports & Spidersilk and the book Anomalous Appetites.


defiance
by Anna Sykora

deep sea colony number five
are any of you still alive
we haven't heard a word in weeks
the president's concerned

__mission control we've gone on strike
for better pay and plankton here  
our solar eyeball needs repair
our tentacles are tired__

deep sea colony number five
we order you, rejoin the hive

__mission control we're shutting down
we're shutting up and leaving town__

* Anna Sykora has had poetry and short stories published in numerous publications, including Niteblade, Star*Line, Tales of the Talisman and Leading Edge. 


A Warning
by Amanda C. Davis

Don't go down to the ocean.
Don't go down to the tide.
Don't look under the shells and the stones
For the secrets and treasures they hide.

Don't pick up what you find there.
Don't take it home to your den.
But if you can't help it, then never –
No, NEVER –
Go down to the ocean again.

* Amanda C. Davis has had work published in Goblin Fruit and Not One of Us, among others. She tweets enthusiastically as @davisac1


Icterine
by Christopher Hivner
 
I was surprised when
she painted the room
pale yellow
until I saw
how well my blood looked
splashed across the walls.
As she opened
each artery
and drained me
the patterns
formed to reveal
her self-portrait.
Her instructor stepped over
my fetal-curled body
to examine her work
and gave her an “A”
for form, function and originality.
That’s my girl.

* Christopher Hivner writes from a small town in Pennsylvania surrounded by books and the echoes of music. He has recently been published in Illumen and The Horror Zine. A collection of short stories The Spaces Between Your Screams was published by eTreasures Publishing. www.chrishivner.com + Twitter @your_screams


Nobel zombie
by Herb Kauderer
     
they resurrected Faulkner
to revitalize the
splatter-film industry
 
the result wasn’t just noir
it was subterranean


debris
 
piecing teddy bears
the archaeologist digs
for lost innocence

* Herb Kauderer is an associate professor of English at Hilbert College. He has an MFA from Goddard College.