This is England

Words: David M. Brown

Art: D.N.S.

“Well, I suppose this is fucking England now”, Rob said as he stared out the apartment window. We’d moved all the way to the top floor of the building, barricaded the ground level doors shut and cut the elevator cord with these huge industrial bolt cutters I found outside. The bastard things almost got me killed…so goddamn heavy I couldn’t outrun the Things.. Thank Christ for Rob, his four years of university baseball and his aluminum bat.

Rob stands peering out the top story window, I notice the blood on his shirt has dried a deep raspberry jam. “It’s not getting any better. It’s not thinning out”.

I know in my heart he’s right but I’m not ready to admit it to myself yet. “C’mon, the Things are moving through. They will eventually all go to wherever they’re heading”.

“It’s been almost two weeks for fuck’s sake. We’ve got maybe three days of ravioli left. What happens when we need to go out there?”, Rob spits.

I don’t have an answer for him. I don’t have an answer for me. So I bite my lip, stand up and put my arm around him. Rob turns away from me and back to the window. He looks down at the Things with some mix of morbid fascination and utter, primal hate. They scuttle down the city street in between the buildings just rotting through their clothes. The sun bakes them and they don’t care. So many questions…why did this happen…what happened?

I wish Mrs. Martin was still with us. She was always so calm, so level headed. But she’s gone now. They’re all gone now. Now it’s only me and Rob. Hot-headed, unreasonable Rob. A guy I saw around the building for years before all this happened. A guy I’ve never liked. I’ve seen how he looks at me sometimes, he doesn’t know but I see him. But what would I do without him? Stay here alone? Chew on my finger nails until i’m left with bloody finger tips? Die alone in this hot fucking room?

Night came on slowly and the constant moan of the crowd of Things became more sinister the darker it got. I’ve almost become used to it. It’s like when you grow up around train tracks you can’t go to sleep without the sound of steel wheels grinding on the rails. As the hours wore on, Rob drifted to sleep sitting against the wall with a frustrated look on his face. I wasn’t far behind. I finished my ravioli and curled up on the kitchen floor using an old shirt we found as my pillow. Sleep was never restful, between the heat and the constant nightmares, I may as well have stayed awake…I wish I had.

When light finally did crack my eyelids, I woke up to blood.

Rob, slumped in the corner. Rob, his head hung at a strange angle. Rob, fresh gore running from his wrists onto the rickety wooden floor. Rob. Dead.

I get to my feet, strangely calm. I walk to the window and look down at the mess of Things still moving by in droves.

“This is England”, I say out loud. Whether or not I say it to myself or Rob, I don’t know.

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Come Suckle My Child – flash fiction inspired by Sean Seal

Come Suckle My Child

Written by: David M. Brown

Art and Inspiration by: Sean Seal

 

           IX   VI   III   VII

-Suffer onto me-

            A lone candle provided the dim light in the otherwise pitch black cellar. My cage was so tight, so restrictive that no matter what angle I managed, my neck was bent at a painful angle. Time lost meaning down there. It could have been days…it could have been years since I’d seen the sun.

With no clothes to cover my body, my ribs showed themselves, the faint candle light seemed to only illuminate my decay. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to twitch. Things that I could not see moved about me, scurrying things with many legs. Sometimes these things would crawl up my back and wake me from whatever fever induced madness I was lost too. More than once, these crawling mysteries became my meal.

Every so often, a beam of white light would appear and my eyes would explode with pain. A group of things…humans I think, would gather around my cage and chant. After their prayer, a hand would reach into my cage and two fingers would dig into my mouth until finally emerging with a trophy. It didn’t take long before my mouth was empty of teeth. The white light would leave and the chanting beings with it, leaving me to weep myself into unconsciousness.

More indiscriminate time passed, I ate more mysteries. The acrid smell of piss and shit was becoming too much to handle. I vomited bile onto my chest…there was nothing else in me. I prayed for death almost constantly. The part of me that relied on logic was dead and rotting. I was becoming some blind, alien animal. Back to the blackness.

A dull red light summoned me back from the void. My dry eyes peered out from two faint slits in my face. It took time for my eyes to adjust but they finally remembered what their purpose was. What I saw then, was worse than all the darkness had ever been. My cage was surrounded by hooded beings, chanting in monotones. Standing directly in front of me, a fat, naked man with dried blood flecked all over his body. His eyes remained closed as he unhinged the lock on my cage, the chanting never letting up.

Without seeing, a fat hand clutched my leg and in an instant, my own naked body was on the damp dirt floor of the cellar. My eyes adjusted even more and I could make out some shape carved into the ground…a weird, esoteric thing I did not recognize. The chanting increased in volume as I was pulled upwards by my brittle hair and set on my knees in front of the large, bloody man.

The man’s powerful hand shoved my face into the cold flesh of his sagging chest. I could feel the rough flecks of the dried blood from his chest scraping my lips. He maneuvered my head until my toothless mouth found his nipple. The chanting was now more screaming than anything else…inhuman voices, alien voices screeched from inside their hoods! My urge to vomit was great but there was nothing left to be expelled.

The naked man forced my cracked lips apart and his cold nipple slid into my mouth. Some instinctual remembrance moved my jaw of its own accord. Then, with a hideous realization, I tasted a semi-sweet fluid in my mouth. This man was feeding me…and I was complicit! I tugged and pumped at his nipple with the hunger of a newborn. I was ravenous…I felt strength returning to my rotted body!

Looking down as the naked man moved me from one nipple to the other, I discovered he was aroused. Somehow this didn’t strike me as troubling…whatever was happening to me began to feel natural. It’s like I’d done this before and had only forgotten the details.

The screams of the hooded turned to howls of animal agony as they moved closer…ever closer. I sucked at the tit of the fat man until it was empty of its sweet reward. The chanting hoods were so close; my arms brushed into their cloaks…and to my surprise, felt no occupying mass there. What were these things?

I looked into the face of the naked man and I took the last drop from him and it was clear to me what was to come next. He opened his mouth as if to speak but only teeth…my teeth dribbled from his lips like pieces of yellowed candy. My hand, as if guided by an unseen force, reached into his mouth and down his throat. Soon, my entire arm to my shoulder had entered the man. Inside of him, my hand clutched his heart…the howls of the hooded were deafening.

I squeezed.

Everything went black.

I wake up with vague memories. No matter, all that is important now is food. Kill the hunger. All thirty-five of my legs moved in unison as I go off to hunt in the dark cellar.