FENDRIX

Fendrix was called a wierdo at school.

Wierdo, wierdo went the chant, all day long.

In the end he began to think it was his proper name. Wierdo.

Every day the other kids ignored who he really was and just saw the outside, his spots, his specs, his baby face.

Even the Year 6 teacher seemed to join in, always asking him stuff in front of the others, embarrassing him.

He went home with their name-calling ringing in his ears, only stopping when he slammed the front door shut on the world and saw his Mum, who always met him in the hallway.

He looked at her. He’d stopped taking his medication for a few weeks now but his Mum had no idea. He was sick of feeling like a zombie, but his moods seemed to be getting worse.

Fendrix didn’t say a lot to his Mum when he got in. She had learnt to leave him alone most of the time and just be there for him when he needed it. Mealtimes. Getting ready for school and briefly when he got home. 

The rest of the time he spent alone in his room. She had tried to get him to go outside in the sun but had given up long ago. Fendrix was happiest with just himself and life was easier that way.

As normal he went upstairs to his room, locked his door from the inside and sat down on the carpet to admire his Action Men. He had a lot of Action Men and had arranged them in the same way as his school class in year 6.

Each Action Man represented a kid in the class and he’d managed to get hold of some Sindy’s for the handful of girls. They sat on chairs in front of tables. Some he’d made and some were toys.

Fendrix was the teacher of this plastic rabble and it was he who decided who to embarrass or not.

This was his class.

“Ratton, you rodent, tell me the name of your mother”

“Barbie” replied the Action Man Ratton.

“Wrong Ratton! She’s called bitch! Slut bitch! What’s she called Ratton?” 

boomed Mr. Fendrix prodding the doll-boy firmly with his wooden ruler.

“Slut Bitch, Sir”.

“Correct! And Arbuckle, you great thick pudding, am I in charge of this class and all the horrible scrotes in it?”

Leaning over, Fendrix pulled the cord at the back of the Talking Action Man.

“Yes Sir!” “Yes Sir!” “Yes Sir!” …….

The cord must have jammed as Arbuckle-man didn’t stop talking.

“Stop talking boy!” screamed Fendrix.

“No!” blurted the doll and suddenly stood up out of its chair. It raised its articulated arms and shrieked:

“No! You wierdo!”

Fendrix stared at the doll and stood up, towering over it with his ruler. The doll craned its neck backwards and stared upwards at him.

“You fuckin’ wierdo!” it said again.

Suddenly all the dolls got up out of their chairs and began to chant in unison as they moved closer to the front;

“Weird! Weirdo! Weirdo! Weirdo!”

Fendrix was dumbfounded: uncontrollably furious and frightened in equal measure and ran out of his bedroom panting. He stood on the landing in his school shorts trying to catch his breath, large tears of rage forming in his eyes.

They were just as bad as the kids at school, those fuckin dolls.

His Mum had been decorating the bathroom and had left a box of tools outside. Fendrix noticed the big box of beige masking tape rolls and picked one out. 

He nailed the end of it and pulled a long piece from the roll. It made a satisfying ripping sound as he tore it off and Fendrix smiled.

He returned to his ‘class’, where all the toy children were sat back in their seats silent and still.

Fendrix walked round the back of the group with the masking tape hidden behind his back.

Arbuckle.

He would pay, the little bastard.

Fendrix grabbed hold of the Talking Action Man. It struggled in his hands and mumbled as the boy smothered its loose mouth.

“Mm”, “Mm”, “Mm” it stuttered through Fendrix’s fingers tightening round its velvety head.

“I’ll show you Arbuckle! I’ll show you, you fuckin ingrate! You won’t be saying much after this!”

Clasping the writhing doll, Fendrix began to bind the masking tape around it’s legs. First its boots and khaki trousers were completely bound, then its ammo belt, arms, camo jacket and finally its chin.

To finish its head off Fendrix had to uncover the mouth, at which point the doll, glaring at the boy with eagle eyes, blurted out “We’re  gonna fuckin get you for this wierdo, you just wait till tomorrow, we’re gonna fuckin have you!”

Fendrix taped his mouth finally shut and viewed his handiwork.

He’d done a good job. None of Arbuckle’s body was showing at all. He’d mummified him like King Tut! The boy chuckled at the thought and placed the taped doll back in its place, straight and stiff.

By midnight he had taped up his entire class of Action Men and Sindys. They leant against their chairs erect like the dead. Fendrix was thrilled. There was no more back chat and no more name calling.

He went to bed happy clutching Arbuckle.

In the morning Fendrix was unusually sunny thought his Mum. He wolfed down his reddy brek, pretended to take his meds and got ready for school, the last day before Summer when kids could take in any food, games and music they wanted.

Freedom beckoned and the prospect of a long carefree holiday shone like a jar of new scissors.

He gave his Mum a kiss and headed out of the door carrying a large shoulder bag.

“What have you got in the bag son?” she asked.

“Tapes Mum. Just tapes.” Said Fendrix smiling.

THE EGG

They sat at the kitchen table staring at the egg.

They’ d found it in the garden.

It was pale blue and quite small. It was placed between the toast rack and the marmalade.

“What is it dear?”

“I don’t know. I think its an egg”.

They sat quietly munching toast and drinking tea, all the while looking at the turquoise shell that had now joined them.

They finished their toast and read the morning papers. Now and then they peered over the local news at the blue egg.

The headline read “Blown to Smithereens: Landmine kills Local Girl”

“She would have liked this egg dear”

“I know. She was a keen naturalist wasn’t she.”

On the mantelpiece was a photograph of a young female soldier, proud and resolute in the sunshine of her life. Next to her was a folded letter from the Ministry explaining how she’d been protecting children when a mine had gone off. She was killed instantly and they should be very proud. She was a hero.

The breakfast table had carried on being set for three as usual since they’d got the letter two weeks ago. Plate, knife, spoon, cup and saucer, egg cup and a folded napkin. Like they’d always done.

The elderly couple both gazed at the space behind their daughter’s chair, a space stretching into the endless infinite of nothing. It would go on forever if they could have seen that far.

They looked at each other, smiled and held hands. There was nothing more to say. They had cried and cried the weeks before, a tidal wave of sorrow engulfing them and their whole world. It seemed smaller, the world and as if on an empty beach on the last day of Earth they peered into the future where they saw a blank hole filling with darkness.

“It’ll be alright dear.”

“We’ll make do and carry on.”

“She would have wanted that for us. To carry on.”

But the thought of carrying on was to each of them secretly an impossible task. It would have been easier to count the atoms of all the tears they’d shed since the man from the Ministry had knocked on the door.

“She’s never coming home dear.”

They squeezed each other’s hands tighter and let their heads look down at the table cloth decorated with chicks and ducklings. It was a week before Easter.

The egg they had found under the hazel began to move.

It was almost imperceptible at first, a faint vibration in the shell that tapped the table like a polygraph.

The vibrations increased until the egg actually began to roll a little, knocking into the jam jar with a clink, then returning to its original spot.

“That’s funny dear.”

“I know.”

The old pair were transfixed by the movements. The egg wobbled and shook for an age until finally there was an audible but gentle crack.

The crack became bigger and the egg split jaggedly into two halves.

From within a small creature popped out onto the cork mat and “peeped”.

It was the most beautiful thing that the pair had ever seen in their entire lives, a fragile being emitting light and colour from its every pore. It flopped around awhile until, mustering some unseen force, it stood up and looked at them.

“Oh my! Its her, its our lovely girl, she’s come back!”

“Yes dear, she has!”

The ancient couple cried and laughed as the little hatchling hopped around the breakfast things bumping into the empty egg cup, where it jumped up and landed in its neat striped bowl. It peered from over the rim and seemed to smile.

“Our baby!”

The two were overjoyed beyond comprehension. It was a miracle where no miracle could exist. A sticking-together of a shattered daughter blown to bits just before Easter. A world re-made.

Their hearts filled with a million memories of family life like wine: becoming parents, tending her needs, playing in the garden by the hazel, looking for the bunny, her first day at school, her prom, her eighteenth limo and her passing out tall and proud.

They shut their eyes to recall it all and never opened them again.

A small chick jumped across the tablecloth, pecked at their joined hands and flew away through the open kitchen window into the blue day beyond.

DEGRA

Degra was the whore of Carpathia.

A  concubine of great repute to whom the Lords of Wallachia would flock. A lady of the shadows offering succour in the darkness of the warring hills.

From a tender age she had been broken by the barons; a coveted thing but a thing no less. Like a baby's rattle she was passed between the great houses guarding the slopes of kingdoms as the borders shook with the clamour of war.

Battles were won before bedding her; treaties were signed in blood with Degra looking on: siblings were slaughtered as she dressed: mistresses were forgotten with the promise of her attendance. Degra witnessed the vigorous throat of a nation slit many times as she bore the heft of vicious Kings and sprang their ill-spent spawn.

From the snowed peaks of the Tatra to the mighty Urals her name made nobles scheme to bed her, but it was in the House of the Dragon were her heart turned black. Dracul was the war lord feared by others, his passion for impaling his enemies making his name a byword for barbarism. Not yet the blood devil he would become, his lust for spilling blood knew no limits. He sticked his foes, staked his rivals, burnt his staff and ate his friends.

Upon Degra's tender body he reeked injury after injury as he tested the limits of her mortality. Brutal nights with this sexed beast were jeweled with punches, kicks, bites, burns, pricks, scalping and flaying. Degra's blood was also nightly drawn into small flasks as the Count began his heinous journey towards vampirism and its curse upon the world.

But Degra was truly defiled by others. Unbeknown to the cheating Count, once secreted every morning as he left for the border wars, Degra was captured and imprisoned in the ossuary of Dracul. In the baleful company of his jilted wives, the whore came to know the meaning of violation and the bloody pangs of their bitter scorn.

The cruel and jealous brides of the Impaler slaked their thirst for pain on the young flesh of the girl every day among the bones of the dead and her screams could be heard echoing along the valley sides. Farmers cowered in their byres and remained hidden lest they illicit the foul attention of the Dragon House.

Defiled and desolate, punctured and bled, Degra withdrew into the furthest shores of her being, a place so deep and dark that thoughts dared not form. Only hatred had a home, a seething maelstrom of hostility threatening to suck in her very soul. She was barely human anymore.

The terrible atrocities wrought upon her body continued as the Dragon's brides plumbed the depths of depravity with iron and spike. The autumnal fog settled on the kingdoms' foothills and the barons of Carpathia slowly forgot about Degra and her silenced screams.

The helpless girl's hatred of the heinous brides grew and blossomed and became a lush charred garden in the grounds of Wrath. She tended its black fauna with patience and tenderness and it billowed like the yawning beds of her suitors' mansions, where her bastard babies slept in lonely graves. Their dead dreams deepened like cysts on which they suckled and on the day of her demise Degra's true hatred was born.

It was the soulless season: winter in the lightless hills was a dire miasma of hoar and hail and the Dragon's brides were vexed by the biting cold as they ran down the long steps to the ossuary. Degra lay chained to the wall.

"So you kept our men warm on days such as this did you, whore of the slopes!" screamed the brides as they slapped the girl's listless face.

"You thought you could usurp us and dessicate our loins sad whore, but it is we who shall unseat you. It is we who shall split the cuckoo and rid the hills of your irksome ova forever. Prepare to die slowly, Harlot!"

The mean Contessas chose the symbol of the House and their husband's fearful moniker .as inspiration for Degra's doom, the long and dreadful sharpened stake.

For many agonised days and nights Degra suffered the patient curette of impalement, a twisted final coupling as the brides howled with pleasure.

When the point eventually passed through and her lifeblood spilled over, Degra's eyes were wide with loathing for the savages before her. A power began. A force forged in sadism and charged with vengeance. It gathered in Degra like a cyclone.

She thought of her unwanted bairns and smiled, her blackened heart the engine of her growing wrath as she stood skewered and raised her arms like wings before the staring wives.

Degra summoned the last residues of her dying self and issued a scream so primal, so wretched that it extinguished the sconces lighting the crypt and spattered the red-hot embers from the iron brazier. She clasped the timber jutting from her loins and wrenched it down and free. A colossal veil of her precious life gushed over the now terrified women, a scarlet tide of scolding liquid dissolving their soft flesh, stripping it from their ribs, which fell clattering to the stone floor of the bone room.

Degra wilted to the ground and folded her wounded arms around her shoulders, a curled flowerhead spent from the carnage of her blood-eagle. She closed her eyes and sensed her changing soul departing as she at last died in the House of the Dragon.

She vowed her return and knew her children would wait for her in their graves.

Degra’s soul soared like a gigantic kite, billowing with hate, fanned by a thousand desecrations. Liberated by death, she was transformed into a harpie of unstoppable force.

Unsure of her ultimate destination Degra sheered the oozes of limbo until she settled on an endless plain of darkness. She landed like a terrible moth, an eater of light and she found herself on the outskirts of Hell.

She then sensed the ground rumbling beneath her feet. Stretching the capillaries of her colossal wings she arose to face an approaching horde; a dark battalion of demons sent by the dark thing to retrieve the infamous whore of Carpathia.

The demon at the head licked its red lips and drooled as it spied the shapely wench. Its phallus engorged and swelled to huge proportions as if it were straddling a field canon.

“You shall be taken to the Dark One harlot, but first I shall sample your delights myself” it hissed as it stroked its swelling member.

The other demons looked on with keen interest and grinned inanely as they too rubbed their pulsing cocks. Through glass sharp fangs they dribbled like idiots.

Degra remained unperturbed. She had witnessed enough savage lust on the mortal plane to not recognize it here in the Devil’s realm. But unlike her mortal self she had grown immeasurably stronger in the vault of Dracul and now passed on she had become a gargantuan siren, a devourer of beings, a raptor-like wraith of limitless power and the incarnation of vengeance.

The leering demon lurched with lecherous intent and lunged its phallic ram toward her lips. Degra grimaced with her eyes shut half-heartedly yelling ‘Nooooooooo!’ but then, she opened them and smiled, a huge smile exposing a dreadful array of countless teeth as sharp as dirks.

She bit the demon’s member clean off and ate it. Crunching, she then turned to face the remaining throng. They hesitated and their exhilaration wilted quickly. Degra rose in the foul air and extended her huge wings and took flight. Her mouth widened massively and she swooped to consume the now panicking demons, scooping them up by the hundred like a monstrous basking shark.

The black plain filled with the thick blood of the mangled imps and Degra ate her fill. She alighted upon an outcrop, outstretched her wings and issued a ground-shaking roar.

At first there was silence. Nothing stirred. But then a yellowy crimson glow appeared on the black horizon like a distant fire. It grew bigger and gradually a form emerged, a horned demon grasping a towering trident. Its cloven feet punched burning prints into the vile earth as it trod slowly towards Degra. Around it the flames swirled and the figure became huge as it neared the rock.

It was the Devil himself and he stood before, her a gigantic red-hot being of fire and sinew with eyes as jet as the endless night.

“You dare to kill my demons Whore!” he yelled as the plain shook with his might. He was the monarch here in this kingdom of misery, the fallen angel from a story older than time itself.

“I am Satan, Lucifer, Asteroth, Beelzebub: I am them allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll”, he roared and slammed the shaft of his fork onto a steaming boulder, which split in half with a deafening crack.

The visitor slowly rose. She stretched out her enormous wings to their entire width and stood fully erect. Her massive mouth widened revealing her thousand fangs and she screamed across Hell:

“I am Degraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Satan was momentarily stunned by the force of her voice but rallied his vast frame and readied himself for battle clasping his giant trident, the three barbs pointing straight at Degra.

Degra hissed and flew into the rank air. She hovered in front of the Devil, a bird of prey. He lunged at her and she flew higher. He breathed fire at her wings but Degra was too fast. He cast crimson beams from his black eyes but she had grown immensely agile and spun around mid-air.

This monstrous fray continued for millennia, the foundation of Hell buckling under the strain.

After an age the ground around began to split and the trapped souls of the damned crawled out like lava.

“Look Devil. The slaves of your keep break free!” Degra laughed.

Satan turned to see it for himself and as he did Degra flew high and down, wrapping her huge wings around his lethal fork and his entire body while positioning her head just above. She opened her terrible mouth wide and her teeth glinted in the red glow of the startled demon. He looked up at her as her mouth descended upon his cranium. She smiled and engulfed his entire head before biting it off at the neck. She chewed.

Satan’s towering body fell to the ground upon which thousands of liberated spirits teemed like ants and began to feed on the red meat.

Degra cleaned her teeth and ascended high into the fell sky.

“Hell is no more, the Devil is vanquished and I set you all free!” she boomed before rising through the fly-ridden mists towards the mortal plain. She entered it where once she had dwelled two thousand years before to search for the House of the Dragon.

She found it empty, a decrepit rampart crawling with spiders and rats. Hurling them to one side she smashed her wings through the floor to reveal the ossuary, the setting of her slow immolation centuries ago. She was struck by the five coffins lying in a circle. Degra cast aside a lid and plucked out a corpse donned in white clutching a dead rat, its blood streaming from her cracked mouth. Immediately she recognized it as the shriveled body of one of Dracul’s brides, who had for so long tormented and defiled her.

The veiled corpse opened her rheumy eyes and gazed with disbelief at the wraith clutching her throat.

“Yes, Bride, it is I, Degra, returned to show my respects. Where is your master my dearest?” she asked tightening her grip.

“D- D- Degra, my Master is far away. In London Town. But he will n- never see you Whore. He has other t-tastes now!” croaked the bride.

“Thank you. I feel sure he will see me again my dear but alas you will not. For all those days and night’s I spent in your noble company I give you a parting gift”

Degra squeezed her talons harder and the chicken neck gave, the lank haired head dropping to the stone floor. She repeated this four more times and crushing the fanged heads beneath her massive feet she felt a twinge of contentment as her past captors were extinguished forever.

One more task remained before she left these hills, to reclaim her squandered children sleeping in the middens of long dead Kings. From high she called them to her.

From every corner of the dark valleys gentle rustlings could be heard as earth and scrub was pushed aside by tiny hands. The exhumed babies opened their eyes and cried as they saw their mother. Degra clapped her wings together and the babes swam through the air toward her, her dead progeny, defiled for being born as she was. She took them all beneath her wings and screamed her delight to a waiting world of the future.

Sweeping away from the fastness of Carpathia, the land of their desecration, she glided on the thermals of jagged peaks and at length reached London, where Degra saw the streets teeming with the seeming dead sleeping in shadows. She recognized that same fetid blood lust on their faces as that of the Dragon’s barren brides.

What had happened here? Was it now a world full of foul vampires?

Degra flew west towards the plains to rest her wings a while.

The city meantime bled and scabbed: slicks of evil pooled like oil, thick and crude.

In a modern world rid of Satan the undead had dominion now.

A lack of any faith was on the rise. Humanity hid. The undead swelled.

He, the Dark One, had laid his cables well since his violent nights with Degra. They had stretched into this future word.

For a thousand years they had riddled the globe; the capillaries of his thirst. Blood welled up, throats were slit, eyes were gouged, hearts were ripped from ribs. Blood overflowed in goblets.

Dracul waded through it all, waist-deep in flesh and bone. A sea of wounded tissues. He gazed at the distant plumes of fires and warfare and kicked motes of human dust across the streets.

But he was bored. The world was his. Satan had skived like a schoolboy. Bunked over the wall. Who gave a fuck where he went.

This, the Year of Our Absent Lord, 2084, was it. He was majestic. The Devil by proxy.

The vampire king dipped an acidic finger in the grue. Sssssssss.

He flew to his home of late, an ancient white square tower nestling among the steel and glass blocks of the city where he walked and pondered. It reminded him of his Carpathian home an age ago.

He sat, a wolf-bat, tedium swallowing him in a reverie of silence and echoes. He had ignited a pogrom of violence in the city's thronging streets and drank his fill there.

The Tower of London stood tall above the murderous mobs, its pale walls spattered with the crimson of incisions and slaughter. Its moat was a ring of blackened blood.

Over the coming year, the six ravens of the Tower were enslaved by him. He was the Ravenmaster.

He clipped their wings to keep them close, those five. The sixth, Drool, was unfettered to do the dark Lord's bidding. He was rewarded with biscuits dipped in blood, a treat denied the jealous five, who reminded Dracul of his wretched brides in his fortress long ago.

"Drool. Drool. Black as oil. The world is mine. My blood planet. But I am bereft. There is nothing left to turn. Nothing to infect. What can I do. Drool, what say you?" asked Dracul.

"Deepest darkest Lord of Decay, Master of the Blackest Ravens, there is a place that might allay your weariness with the world, a place that might entertain you, a place of .... worship," Drool croaked.

"Worship! Woooooorship! Whoooooo is worshipping whoooooo?" he bellowed, the Dragon, crawling down the wall.

"They worship a new one Master, humans, they have a new god," Drool whispered in his steaming ear.

"A NEW GOD!" yelled the creature on all fours. The raven stood on his back.

"Yes, Great Lord, there is an enclave, a gathering, a nest of believers, dug in like the fattening ticks on my scratty back. I know. I have seen it," crowed the raven oiling his long thick feathers.

"Where is this residue of sweet-necked bastards Drool. Where?"

"Silbery Master. Silbery Hill Hotel. A Guest House of this Faith below the green slopes."

"Take me there crow. Take me now!"

Drool grasped the thick mat on Dracul's back as he strode across the cracked land, batting away fawning sycophants with huge dog hands. They reached Silbery Hill at dusk. The Hotel nestled in its shadow like a blister.

"There Master, the hotel by the hill," Drool hissed, pointing with its wing. The vampire scratched his tattooed tongue and smiled.

"I love believers!" he chuckled, "such a vintage draught in dangerous casks!"

The monster and the crow reached the step both transforming into a travelling salesman with a large black sack.

Knock Knock Knock.

An nervous-looking woman opened the door and peered into the black night.

"Good Evening dear lady. Mister Quench at your service, purveyor of tooth picks for those who still retain the need of such simple things. May I " the businessman oozed.

"Good Evening Sir. I must ask you. Are you of the new Faith?" asked the woman.

"Agh yes madam. I am thirsty for it. You might say it has an infusing effect on me."

"Excellent. Excellent. Come in. Out of the darkness and rest a while."

"Thank you my dear."

The businessman-vampire entered the hotel and felt the first frisson of cautious excitement as he sensed the strong aura of belief within this house, a belief he would take great pleasure in destroying slowly and watch the residents' blood decant before his ancient gaze.

He was taken to his room for the night, where he caressed his raven Drool and smelled the Living in this house. He could not wait.

Dracul padded lightly out in the form of a jackal. Drool rode his back.

"I sense a gathering Master," whispered the raven., "In the chapel."

The jackal growled softly and ascending the staircase, nosed open a large teak door. Inside where candles lit by the hundred around the chapel, In the twilight Dracul could make out human forms, both large and small, sat side by side in wooden pews. At the altar stood a much bigger shape in the murk of the shadows. It had its back to the company.

The jackal and the raven loped up the central aisle to the head. As they passed each bench human eyes were upon him, the eyes of adults but also of very small babies. Babies with red eyes.

For the first time in an eon Dracul felt a twinge of fear run up his spine and his hackles rose. Drool squawked as a baby reached out for him.

Assuming his vampiric guise the Dark One stood before the figure at the altar. Slowly the figure turned and as it did huge wings unfolded and stretched out across the dark, their clawed tips illuminated by candlelight.

The winged figure raised its head and grinned at Dracul.

Recognition dawned on the face of the vampire and he tensed.

"The Whore of Carpathia!" he hissed, "Have you come back for more wench!"

"Count of the Dragon House, how I have waited for this moment, through eons of endless time, to meet you again for one more kiss!" replied Degra.

"Then come to me my dear," beseeched the Count.

Degra stepped forward smiling, her wing tips extinguishing candles.

"Babies!" she whispered at which the red eyed children rose and descended upon the raven Drool.

"Masterrrrrrrrrr!" it shrieked as they ate the entire bird, spitting out black down and returning to theor pews.

Dracul was enraged and assumed a huge wolf-bat form, growling and snarling, lunging for Degra with massive dagger-like fangs exposed, but she was too quick for him.

Wrapping her vast wings around the figure like leaves she widened her own mouth of knives. In this lethal embrace they stared at each other gnashing, fangs clashing like swords as each tried to bite the other. It was a monsters' kiss and Degra, cracking joints, opened wider still and took in the whole of the vampire's screaming face.

Suddenly the door exploded inwards and a roar reverberated around the chapel like a tidal wave.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Degra stopped and looked up to see a colossal black figure stoop into the room and stand fully erect at the entrance, its dark hooded head touching the high ceiling, its hands hidden within its long sable shroud. A thick yellow freezing mist emanated from it and percolated the room.

"I am Death and I command you to give Dracul to me!" the figure bellowed in a deep booming timbre.

"He is mine, Lord Death. His life is forfeit to me!" replied Degra holding onto her prey.

"He is Undead Lady Degra and the world bloats with his cursed un-men. I must bring an end to his loathsome reign. Only death will do for him and his web of puppets," boomed the figure, "I command you!"

The jaundiced fog swirled around Degra and, as if forming hands, began to pull her wings apart. 

"Babies!" she shrieked. 

Her progeny hopped off their seats and looked up at the shrouded giant, They flew up encircling his shroud and ripping into tatters. With supernatural speed, the children rent and ripped until Death was exposed as a gigantic skeleton towering over the assembly. 

He gathered the mist around him and sent it hurtling towards the babies, who were ensnared in its frozen eddies and held like stuffed animals.

"My baaaabieees!" wailed Degra and loosened her grip on Dracul.

The vampire hissed and champed facing his two adversaries, his appalling talons outstretched. 

Once Degra had accepted her offspring's demise she whirled round and glared at Death and then the Count.

Death stood still and waited.

Dracul moved first and leapt onto Death's back, his fanged maw broadening as he tried to bite the deity's neck-bone. With a dreadful screech, his vampire teeth actually punctured it and drew viscous black ichor from the wounds. Dracul drank and plied his curse upon the Reaper.

But far from harming the fogged figure, the dank fluid began to ossify the Count's veins and render him paralysed. His skin began to stretch and tear, his bones cracked and his organs liquified on top the chapel floor.

Dracul writhed in agony as his body dissolved in the cold river of Death's blood now coursing through him, an extinguishing tide of finality bringing certain doom to him and his millions of followers, all interconnected by his tendrils of evil.

As Death and Degra looked on, the dying Lord of Darkness smiled. His sentence was over and he could sleep the coming millennia in the company of his long lost brides. He glanced at his two opponents one last time as his flesh and blood were powdered, curling away in the bitter murk.

Degra turned to Death and stood silently staring into his skull. Slowly her wings receded and her form softened and reshaped into the beautiful woman she had been a thousand years before in the hills of her homeland before her degradation.

"Go Degra. Live. I have no need to take you yet. My monarchy is once more restored and the graves are massing now the Dragon is slain at last. I shall be busy. Go. And take your babies with you. One day, in a lifetime not yet spent, I will visit".

From the ice of the rafters drifted small forms crying for their mother like the lambs of Carpathia. Degra knelt to hold them all and, as Death departed, shed a mortal tear and gently mouthed the word 'Thankyou' to the sky.

FLAW

I am Flaw.

Beware me for I am doom.

I roam this world and seed the chaos that you see.

I am the flaw in humankind and I will never cease.

Find me in the room.

I am Flaw.

The Son

Wrath incarnate, he slowly dragged his hornless Father by the hair across the Earth.

His name was Slaughter.

The land sizzled and smoked as he trod, his eyes calderas of dudgeon.

Animals fled as he approached and he would fling his cargo round and round if they tarried. His Father moaned. A broken King.

Cities toppled, people ran, vehicles burned as Slaughter passed. A walking wound. A whiff of extinction. Armies puffed.

He would stop to roar at his grumbling burden and bare his mouth of dagger fangs.

"Quiet or I will eat you!" he would bellow in his red face.

"I cannot undo what is done my Son," replied the limp figure.

Slaughter walked on across the world leaving a dark track of charred land behind him. Everything ended in his path: nothing left but the cinders of hate, the carbon of death.

"You betrayed me Father!" he screamed as they descended into the ocean, searing the saltwater into towering castles of steam where he stepped. 

The sky filled with billowing vapour. The water gassed leaving the ocean floor a writhing shroud of mouths opening and closing.

"It was my turn!" he yelled into the chasms.

On he went with his bumping load, flopping over rocks and coral as Slaughter looked downward to the depths.

He trudged into the deepest trench until the surface of the Earth was but a rumour of stone and he dug.

"We will both perish," he whispered as they spiraled down through the mantle, a molten tethys where souls burn.

But not the devil's or his son's.

Slaughter reached the core as night teetered over the world.

"God will miss us Father!"

The boy hurled the broken figure into the raging core of iron and followed.

It slowed for a split second as if confused. The devils stretched across its ferrous slopes and wove into the infinite. They were gone.

Hell fell.

Morning came, brighter, on what was left.

VOM

Pitt woke up that morning like every other. 5am. To feed the pigs.

She emptied the brown feed into the troughs and watched the the pigs devour it. It was new feed she'd bought from a new digestion plant. It was made from what they'd called digestate. Great for pigs they'd said. It smelt bloody awful but had been dirt cheap. Money was tight this year. Tighter than ever and ends were not meeting since the economic slump.

Vagrancy was on the rise and Pitt knew it stood round every corner.

Still, Pitt always enjoyed to watch the pigs eating. She got lost in their contentment. They were so conscientiously efficient, munching every last crumb until there was nothing left but happy porkers.

On this particular morning after the pigs had fed on the new brown digestate, Pitt noticed one of the larger sows wobbling on its legs a little. As it wandered round the pen it began to stagger and shake. Pitt hadn't seen this sow behave like this before and knew something was wrong. She approached from the adjacent empty pen and stroked the pig checking its skin temperature.

Suddenly it shivered, sat on its hind quarters, dropped its head and then began to tremble. It lifted its head to look at Pitt and vomited violently allover her face and shoulders. A spray of yellowed curdled liquid and bile completely covered her upper torso and the vomiting seemed not to stop. The pig's huge mouth remained wide open as the slew spewed out.

She was covered. Pitt tried to find her way out but her eyes were sealed with the thick pig puke and she just couldn't rub them clear.  As the vile fluid slipped into her mouth she gagged and also began to vomit, first slowly and then with a force she had never experienced, as if her insides were loosening.

Throwing up with chest-straining heaving beyond belief, she stumbled through a pile of brooms and shovels and fell over the wooden gate, crashing straight into the full pig pen. The pigs were momentarily stunned as Pitt landed among them, spraying sick everywhere, but after a second of silence in the barn she began to scream as the first animals started to bite. The hungry things commenced to eat through Pitt's clothing as she desperately tried to clamber out of the stall, but it was too late. She was exhausted from the most violent puking she had ever experienced and gagged on the bile burbling in her throat.

As she laid there face down puking a large pig bit clean through the hamstring at the back of her right knee and she shrieked with agony. the sound sent the herd into a frenzy of biting and crunching and within minutes Pitt the farming wife had been eaten alive. Even the bones had been ground down and slurped up, together will all the congealing blood oiling the ground. The pigs had also eaten all the sow vomit she had been covered with along with her own. They had also eaten the ailing sow. There was nothing left. Not even Pitt's clothes.

When the farmer returned and found his wife gone, he declared her missing to the police and withdrew into himself and the solace of alcohol, leaving the business of the farm to his son. Within weeks the herd of pigs were slaughtered and made into link after link of pork sausages destined for supermarkets allover the country with the brand name Pitt's Farm. Digestate and puke were never listed in the the ingredients but they were there nonetheless.

Jupp lived in the city. He loved sausages. He coveted the plump skins of fatty meat, fried quickly in a pan. No herbs. No flavourings, just thick succulent pork. He saw the Pitts Farm bangers and grabbed three packets of twelve from the shelf. Despite it being Winter, it was going to be a great Saturday morning.

Jupp rang his mates and invited them all over for sausage sarnies. They all worked at the digestion plant in the city outskirts and this was their weekend off. The prospect of Jupp's butties and rock music played loud on his system drew them in like pigeons.

"Top class nosh Jupp", "Mighty bangers!" The priase was unanimous.

The friends relaxed in the telly room after eating. One of them had brought an old body melt flick to watch on the player. One of those toxic waste horrors that were popular in the 1980's. Watching it Jupp began to feel a bit queazy. He held hos belly as it rumbled loudly, so loud in fact that everyone heard it.

"Jeez Jupp, how many butties did you eat? I can hear your guts from over here!" said his mate slouched in the far armchair.

Jupp smiled and rubbed his stomach but he could feel the beginnings of churning. He cradled his gut and knew he wasn't right. He went a a whitish shade and then a hint of green brushed his face as the first signs of heaving could be felt. He was going to be sick.

Just as some unfortunate tramp was dissolving into a toilet in the screen, Jupp stood, started to walk, stopped and stared at his pals before opening his mouth disturbingly wide and violently puking allover them and the room. The slick of curdled sausages and bread hit his friends in a tsunami of foul-smelling chum and they and the room were quickly covered in the contents of Jupp's now empty stomach. He fell on all fours and gasped for air. He was physically shattered after being the sickest he had ever been in his life and the final globs dribbled from his trembling lower lip.

It was then he heard the first of his friends start to retch. It was a loud, dreadful sound and clutching his midriff his friend stared at the ceiling as a fountain of spew blasted from his stretched mouth hitting the light fittings and blowing the bulb. The ceiling was daubed in thick puke, which dripped onto the assembled company now in complete darkness.

All of them began to gag and throw up allover each other. There was no time to reach the bathroom. the force of the vomiting was so great that it split their mouths at the cheeks as the uncontrollable convulsions swept through their helpless bodies and sent them reeling on their hands and knees desperate to rid themselves of this heinous vomit. They screamed in between and the whole scene was a charnel house of sick, blood and bile with humans crawling through it like milk worms.

The screams of agony had alerted the neighbours, who in turn alerted the police. On breaking into the premises and witnessing the carnage the two attending officers had also felt sick and had to go outside for air. Before they could finish radioing for an ambulance the pair had fallen to their knees in the curbside to be violently sick in the gutter, throwing up that morning's curdled Maccy D big breakfast in a pool of half-digested pancake mix and patty sludge. It began to rain and the hideous mess was washed along the gutter, down the drains and into the city-wide sewage system.

The local paper picked up on the police report and brandished the next day's headline with: "CHUNDERSTRUCK!" and relayed the unsavoury details of the incident to a grateful readership only too ready to bask in the arms-length glee of schadenfreude. Pitts Farm was never mentioned as the wrappers were swept up along with the vomit splatter by the city clean-up crew. The whole thing was put down to a bad case of the winter vomiting bug, the novo-virus. But some locals began to mutter of darker sources and a rumour of foul play started its chatter.

When a similar incident occurred in another neighbouring city and then one much further away a national paper took interest. A seasoned hack was dispatched to check out the stories, find a link and paint a picture worthy of nationwide coverage. Was this just novo-virus or was it something else?

The journo, Vander, got a hotel room in the city near the first occurrence and began to snoop around asking questions. He managed to track down Jupp, who was still recovering in hospital. His split cheeks had been stitched and his digestive system rested with a ciurse of mild antibiotics and bland food and water. He felt like he'd thrown up his very being that day he whispered to the journalist sat at his bedside scribbling. The violence of the vomiting came across vividly in Jupp's traumatised voice and the thought of it happening again clearly terrified him. Further questioning garnered as yet unknown details about the friends' common employer, the digestion plant and the sausage sandwiches they had all shared that Saturday. Could these be the links he was looking for? He chuckled at his own pun and holed up in his room with a bottle of Bells he wrote up his piece for the waiting editor.

"BAD DIGESTION?" ran the suggested headline and went on to ask questions about the City's new out-of-town anaerobic facility and its possible impact on the local countryside. The editor said no.

"That plant is one of the biggest employers in the Northern region. It makes millions for the local economy. No! They'd sue us no messing. Get more facts Vander and lay off the damn scotch!" he yelled down the phone at the deflated hack.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world Pitt's Farm products were selling well from the freezer shelves of stores. These frozen pork sausages had matured in transit and their potency had quadrupled.

The first American case was a welder enjoying a sausage sandwich during his break on the high steel. He sat on the soaring girder and took huge bites. he swilled it down with hot coffee from his thermos. Wiping his mouth on his arm he began to feel a little queazy. He stood up and immediately his stomach began to cramp. He clutched himself and staggered towards the workers' loo near the completed lift shaft.

"What's up Chuck?" said his co-worker looking non-plussed turning off his blow-torch.

Chuck never got to answer. He threw his guts up as the clouds looked on. He heaved and gagged and was repeatedly sick, the convulsions increasing in intensity each time until eventually he shrieked loudly and his co-worker looked on in horror as Chuck puked out his trachea, then his lungs, then his stomach full of acid until eventually his entire insides had erupted from his mouth with such terrible force that his whole body flipped inside out with a sickening slurping sound.

The co-worker held his head in utter terror and screamed as the bloody mess slipped off the girders and fell five hundred feet to the pavement crammed with pedestrians. Looking like a big red wet slug, Chuck's inverted corpse hit the tarmac with a nauseating thud and splattered everywhere.

The bewildered crowds tried desperately to avoid the flying globs of blood and guts as they ran wildly in all directions. Everyone was screaming and grue was spattered allover there hair, their hands and their faces. It was impossible to stop the crimson slick dribbling into their mouths. 

Almost immediately the gagging started. Hundreds of pedestrians began to heave and clutch their bellies. They tottered into each other wailing in agony as the puking began. It was like a chain reaction: first one, then another: the violence of the vomiting crescendo'd into an orgy of erupting entrails as food pipes, livers, spleens and intestines launched into the air as their bodies literally de-gloved themselves. Pints of stomach acid were strewn across the road hitting cafeteria windows and the stench of vomit and bile wafted across the inner city.

The apocalyptic event hit the news across the globe and footage of the horror was running as Vander ate his evening meal in his room. He couldn't believe his eyes. This was like the Pitt's Farm incident only much worse. He connected the dots and knocked up what he thought would be the story of his life.

"VOMDEMIC!" ran his alarming headline, "Hundreds of new Sickening Cases Every Day!" Garnished with his pictures of the farm, the dead friends, the pigs, the sausages and the secret Digestion plant, Vander penned a convincing connection to the American carnage across the pond. He was pleased how it turned out.

So was his startled Editor, who sniffed a Pulitzer or a Bafta or something in all this chunder and proffered Vander his own photographer and researcher on the spot.

"I want a world exclusive Vander! I want to know what's in that damn Digester!"

Holed up in their digs, Vander and his new team hammered out a plan. They would break into the plant, take samples, shoot lots of pictures and try to interview any disgruntled worker before high-tailing it back to their room.

"We'll do it tonight!" enthused Vander.

They broke in at midnight when luckily the guards were changing shifts. They all noticed the big shiny side arms they had in their leather holsters and their zest was momentarily tempered. They wondered why there were no dogs, but it could have been the smell. It was horrendous and would have driven dogs wild. It reeked of rot, decay and death.

The three entered the outer office whilst the door was open and tip-toed to the sheds beyond with an eye on the main digester in the distance, a huge green half-globe at least 100 foot high, it looked like an ominous Christmas pudding in the moonlight.

In America a chain reaction of body flopping was raging. What had started as a localised disaster with Chuck's demise had mushroomed into a national Apocalypse. Everywhere people were puking violently on each other, stoking mass body inversions. Millions of corpses turned inside out lay strewn around streets, houses, malls and factories. The hot guts steamed in the evening chill and the entire country looked like a vast slaughterhouse floor swimming with innards and bones. 

The fabric of American society quickly broke down. FEMA was activated but it was too late. Thousands tried to fly out at airports. Where the pilots didn't throw their guts up then some made it only to find that they were spreading the lethal vomiting contagion across the globe.

At the Digester Vander and his team were unaware of world events and had reached the lab in front of the the main dome. They disturbed a single scientist at her desk. As she reached for her gun Vander kicked it towards his companion, who trained it on the woman in the white coat.

"What the hell are you doing here?" protested the Scientist.

"Shut up Doc. I'll ask the questions. What the hell are YOU doing here?"

The gun was aimed more precisely at her and she removed her glasses looking fiercely at Vander.

"We have developed the world's biggest, most efficient biological digester."

The gun nudged her.

"It dissolves any form of waste, creates heat which can be siphoned off and produces digestate, which can be used to feed animals".

"What sort of waste Doc?"

"Anything. Literally anything. We dispose of society's trash and turn it into heat and meat-paste."

"Why don't you show us!"

Sticking the nozzle into the Doc's back the party walked out onto a massive flat concourse. Huge trucks were driving up a vast ramped road, reversing into an unloading bay and returning down the other side towards the plants exit in the distance.

They entered the main dome of the digester through a door marked Authorised Personnel Only. Inside it too the group a moment to adjust to the twilight. What Vander saw then horrified him to his very core. In front of them was a colossal quivering bag towering above them. It was attached to a wet pipe at the top ending in a gigantic fleshy funnel. The bag quivered and belched as if alive and occasionally let out loud rumblings. It ended in another fleshy pipe which exited the dome though a hole. It reeked to high heaven.

"What. What the hell is that?" asked Vander grimacing at the sight before him.

"Its a stomach. A human stomach. We were able to grow a giant one." explained the Doc staring at the thing with obvious pride.

"A stomach! What on earth goes into it?"

"That." The scientist pointed to a large jetty overhanging the flesh funnel way up near the ceiling.

The party all looked up. Falling off the jetty was an endless slurry of waste matter: garden material, clinical waste, surplus food, chip fat, old veg oil and domestic rubbish.

Vander could also make out what he thought were .... bodies! Animal bodies and human corpses, all slopping into the convulsing 'mouth' of the infernal stomach thing. But worse was to come. Vander noticed that some of the human bodies were moving, flailing their arms and legs as they fell.

"They're, they're still alive for God's sake!" he yelled at the scientist grabbing her shoulders.

"of course. I told you. Society's rubbish. Undesirables. Prisoners, young offenders, tramps, vagrants and anyone deemed unnecessary in the modern state. We are doing you all a favour and cleaning the place up! We collect the run-off and feed the farms! Its a win-win. I should know, I grew the stomach and convinced the Government to let us do it!"

Appalled at the catastrophe unfolding before him, Vander grabbed the Doctor and with the gun pushed her all the way up the winding staircase to the very apex of the dome where the jetty was. He peered down at the red pouting throat below and the slew flowing into it.

"This was just a story when we arrived but now its more than that. Its an outrage and you must be stopped!" he screamed at the cowering woman.

"Its what the world needsssssssssssssssssssss......." the scientist didn't have chance to finish as without warning Vander pushed her into the billious slop gushing past. She fell screaming into the hungry maw. Vander smiled. His companions arrived too late to stop him. They leant over the edge.

Suddenly a large living person caught up in the stream grabbed hold of Vander's foot. He staggered and was pulled in, accidentally knocking his two companions over the jetty too, camera and all. All three entered the crimson gullet screaming. It shivered and then they were gone, digested and expelled as brown paste into a waiting truck.

No-one ever got to hear of their findings about the secret plant and the vomdemic spread across the globe unabated. Millions died in agony as they turned inside out.

Eventually though, over time, people became slowly immune to the effects of the syndrome. No one ever knew what happened to the millions of imploded victims. They just vanished from the streets every night.

Digesters carried on springing up everywhere. The streets were clean.

There may well be a digester near you!