FINDHORN

We went north that summer in our late Seventies.

Touring along the A1.

It was 2029 on the radio.

Our memories were as long as our hair had been. Patchouli whispered to our tie-dyed thoughts and we smiled as the miles fell away.

The car, a bright red Traveller, was old like us but well maintained. Oil topped up. Water filled. No-one really saw us I don't think.

The roads zoomed past like our lives unspooling. Soon we were in Scotland.

Findhorn was not too far away.

Driving driving. North.

We spoke of youthful dreams. Of communal hopes. Of koinonian peace. Of the beautiful Seventies, when we were young and in love and beautiful too.

The lobster fishing villages crawled by, the little trawlers bobbing on the blue, the east coast zagging like an arrow pointing to ...

Findhorn.

We arrived at the Bay, a silver pool salt-kissing the roots of handsome pines. Seagulls shrieked a welcome as we glided by. It looked like Canada we said even though we'd never been.

We sauntered hand in hand around the town, past holidaymakers who didn't notice and meandered out to the commune, copies of Undercurrents blowing past us dated '79, "new members welcomed" it read underlined.

I turned to my lovely Wife and said "We're here baby, we've arrived at last!"

"Yes. Can you believe it my love. Findhorn. After all." she whispered back.

Each picking up a large shell we listened to the sound of the seven seas. It spoke of homecomings, of eternal love and unending sweeps of time and space.

We lay on the beach clutching those shells to our ears, microphones for things beyond our lives in Heaven. We tried to reach....

"Will we ever come back?"

"I hope so dear."

No-one saw us lying there on the shingle that night. We were driftwood snagged in the eddies. We vanished along with the day's castles like skinks of light.

Far away in Yorkshire our children lit two candles on our graves.

They illuminated the words they'd carefully chosen ten years before when we'd crashed in Scotland to the day.

"Mum and Dad, our beloved, hand in hand in far-off Heaven.

    May you get to find your Findhorn along the way"

REEK

It was an odd morning. I caught a bus into town. I had a job interview and nerves were getting the better of me. I shuffled in my seat, my fellow passenger moving to one side to avoid any awkward physical contact. He stunk like a dead slug so I was glad he moved over.

The windows were steamed up with rank morning breath and I could just see outside that the sky was overcast and somehow darkening. It looked apprehensive, dug-in, like a worried wolverine. I felt the same way as we trundled into the bus station.

The job interview was with a large new factory in town. I was one of a several hundred poor sods stood around, hands stuffed in our pockets, tightly wound as if waiting to be gutted on a slab.

I'd heard on the grapevine this brand new meat processing outfit had interviewed thousands of people across the country but no-one had started yet. A new boss was coming from miles away and then everyone would be set on they said.

It was important for me this job. My wife expected me to get it and we needed the money. I'd been made redundent from my last one - a cheese factory - but that was months ago and the pay-out had dried up. Bills were reddening, irksome heralds of something worse.

I tried to look attentive when the interviewer called me in.

"Mr.Strils?"

I shook her hand with feigned gusto and I think she sensed my desperation. She could have offered to lobotomise me and I would have still said yes to the position.

"I'm Miss. Tritus," she rasped and signalled for me to sit down.

She smelt odd though, with a strange and very unpleasant tangy niff, as if an old stinking fridge had been pried open for the first time in years. There was a very discernible whiff of corruption, of infected wounds and bottled pee. It put me  completely off, that sickening fragrance and I didn't hear her ask me a question.

"Sorry, could you repeat that Miss" I blustered desperately reaching for the glass of water on the table. I was suddenly thirsty as hell as bile rose in my throat. I really wished I didn't have my hyper-sensitive sense of smell at that moment. I needed to focus.

"We are looking for people with a strong stomach, less than average eyesight and a weak sense of smell."

"Oh. Right!" I gulped.

"I think I have all of those," I lied.

I lied specifically about my sense of smell. It had been a pain since I'd first smelt my brother's wet bed when we were kids.

It was as pushy as an iron my smell ability and I had an over-active sense of every pong going. It drove my wife crazy. I was suffering unusually today too as my interviewer really stank the place out.

"And I see you have worked with meat before. Did you handle a lot of flesh?"

"I was more on the admin side really. Buying and selling choice cuts for the mincing machines."

"Excellent Strils. We'll need plenty of mince when the ships arrive."

"Ships?"

"Did I say ships? Silly me. I meant chips! We shall be selling mince pies and chips as a new line in our outlets. New management are on their way. They"ll land tomorrow. They're brimming with new ideas and very hungry for success. Its an exciting ....."

The woman cut herself short as if she'd been told something secret and terrible like a death in her family.

"Already?" She mumbled.

"Pardon?" I said.

Before she had chance to say more an alarm sounded across the factory. My interviewer looked annoyed.

"The interview's over young man. Youv'e got what we're looking for I think. We'll be coming for you Strils ... sooner than I thought."

Her voice faded as she jostled me out of her office, her foul sceptic musk nearly overpowering me. As I left she patted my shoulder. I felt as though I'd been marked by a rabid fox.

The alarm was louder in the corridors and people, mostly countless interviewees, shambled along looking for the exit like lambs in a pen.

Outside there was an eerie quiet as the alarm trailed off. We stood in the street like refugees, unsure of what was happening. We trailed out of the gates rubbing our noses. It really had stunk like nothing on Earth.

I grabbed a coffee and caught the 485 home. My wife and I lived by the edge of town on the heathland, in a small cottage I'd inherited from my Aunt. It was a lovely spot, surrounded by heather and pheasants. Our Baskerville Hall we joked. Minus the hound. I was glad to smell country air again.

Alighting the bus I noticed the frogs hopping across the road, seemingly in a hurry. The heather pool was now strangely silent. What on earth had spooked them I wondered? Looking up I did notice how odd the clouds were. Pierced as if knives had passed through them. The distant meat plant glowed.

My family had left that day to visit relatives in Borth. I was alone in the house waiting to hear about the plant job.

No word. Evening came like an unwelcome visitor: vast, smokey and ominous. I could sense the petrichor before the rain turned up. It drenched the heath and battered the roof of the cottage. It was other-worldly.

I used the toilet and lit a match as my parents had. The smell. I went to bed and listened to the storm fuming outside. I could sense its unusual size and muscle as it lashed the moor like something landing, something vast and ghastly.

My curtains were open and the window ajar as I stared apprehensively out of the window into the raging squalls. I dozed off reluctantly around 10pm.

I awoke sneezing and sensed it immediately, something foul approaching across the heath.

I could smell it, a billious reek of necrotic meat and weeks-old piss and I recognised it immediately.

It was Miss. Tritus!

Coming to offer me a job? At this hour?

I could hardly think straight as that familiar stench enveloped my nose and got stronger and stronger.

She was near the house now, at the gate. I was suddenly frightened and I leapt out of bed, ran downstairs in the dark and grabbed the axe next to the fire as a precaution. I got back into bed and waited.

Maybe I didn't get the job after all.

Before she could tell me Miss. Tritus sloughed off her skin and entered the house as a monster-sized snail, slurping along the floor in undulations, leaving a slick trail of scum and slobber.

Her probosci fingered up the wall of the stairs as she homed in on her mark from the factory.

She knew her quarry was near. She was ravenous and had been since emerging from the cosmic spawn carried across the galaxy, which had settled on Earth a month ago. She and her kind were used to blending in and taking on the local form. It was a hard slog but as long as they were fed it was worth it. One of these meaty people would fill her for a year. They didn't smell her coming.

The stink ballooned as she slid towards the bed. Her wet antennae felt for the head and her oozing maw opened as they gripped the hair. In a watery sigh of excitement she whispered "Strils!"

"Wait!" he commanded himself as he hefted the axe under the quilt.

As Miss. Tritus began to drag him in he leapt up, threw back the bedclothes and swung the blade hard on her neck.

"You can smell me! You lied Strils!" She gargled in shock.

A huge rupture appeared on her throat and a terrible slime poured from the wound. The creature's face drooped and the whole thing went limp at his feet, its head detaching with its probosci still gripping his wet hair.

I wrestled it off like a football and feeling spent but elated I staggered downstairs for the whisky bottle on the side.

I raised the cut glass to my lips but to my horror heard a slithering sound on the landing.

I turned to see the monster staring at me through the ballustrades.

"Strils, that hurt! You shouldn't have lied to me!"

Miss. Tritus had grown a brand new head!

I fainted and awoke just as my body was dissapearing down her throat.

It reeked to high heaven that alien gullet, worse than any other niff I'd known and just my luck, it was the last thing I ever smelled.

I didn't get the job after all.

In I went .....

Schlupp!

THE BIG MOUTHS

It began with dogs. Selective breeding that is. Breeding them for looks.

It wouldn't be long before we did it to humans. And we did.

Call it eugenics, bio-engineering or designer people, all still selective breeding.

The leaders in the field were Genuflect, a secretive company run by the maniacal Dr. Altar.

First it was breeding thinner noses, rounder backsides and plumper breasts. Then came bigger eyes, taller legs and whiter teeth. Any of these could be mixed too. A bigger breasted bigger eyed wife with longer legs and a taller musclebound husband were the biggest hits. It was called genuflection.

But it was the wider mouths programme which caused all the trouble.

Widening mouths for men, women and children had been a popular breeding area until eventually fine wide mouths were readily available on prospective husbands and wives.

They seemed so appealing, a little extra mouth at each corner created a fuller broader smile and a more confident redolent voice in people.

But the breeding went too far and some mouths became so wide that citizens found them hideous and above all frightening.

But the project couldn't just stop. It had investors,  buyers and customers who had all said yes to a much bigger mouth.

It was a mistake. That became clear. No-one is quite sure who to blame now but the problem was simply that a huge broad open mouth of large white teeth sent some people screaming from shops and cinemas or wherever else they turned up.

Panic began to break out as the so-called big mouths were everywhere grinning and leering at tax-paying citizens. Violence towards them became the norm. Dentists were their only allies.

'You freak mouthed fuckers! Stop smiling and go back to the lab!' went the cry.

That the big mouths paid taxes too was moot. Society was ruffled. The selective breeding facility was meant to placate its members and not perturb them. The anomalies in the mouth project were an embarrassment and a serious threat to civil order. They had to be dealt with before lawlessness erupted.

On the night of May first at midnight all so-called 'big mouths' were rounded-up and interred in camps away from normal society. This happened worldwide and by May 2nd none were to be found outside the barbed fences of these camps.

Genuflect camps.

They were prisons. Global authorities passed laws that meant having a big mouth was a seditious act and punishable by death. Genuflect handed over all the names and Dr. Altar personally pacified the taller specimens in his lab on Camp 1.

The general population applauded this swift action and quickly resumed its obsession with the perfect designer body just not nips around the lips anymore.

To further garner public admiration the authorities had some of the more vocal big mouths 'quietened down'. For good. Altar took charge of personally tranquilising the taller women in his camp office. For the public this was just deserts and a huge vote winner but for the internees it was the trigger to fight back.

Riots flared up across the world led by the natural leaders of the prisoners, those that had been bred for longer legs. So men, women and children who were taller and larger mouthed arose to spearhead the uprisings in the camps. They were a fearsome sight charging across the compounds like stilted clowns with gaping mouths.

Guards were attacked, sentries trampled and wardens thrown from their quarters and killed. Dr. Altar escaped.

Retribution by Genuflect and global powers was swift and thousands of the big mouths were machine gunned as they began to storm the fences. Bodies piled up like new walls and the tall ones retreated with the rest into the safer shadows of the camps' interiors.

Deeming further contact too dangerous Genuflect strengthened the fences, doubled the sentries but removed all supplies from the internees. No water, food or clothing. Ever again.

It took time for the remaining mouths to realise what was happening.  The taller leaders spelled it out to them. They had been abandoned now and must work out how to survive for themselves. Besieging the fences wouldn't work. They were now massive. Besides, hidden machine guns flecked the land beyond like sleeping hornets.

No. They had to bide their time. Take stock. Grow stronger. Bigger. More frightening. Sacrifices would have to be made but all agreed that it was worth it. They would selectively breed themselves and create an army of monsters.

The message went worldwide via social media still working in the camps and that was that. The next more immediate problem, food, was solved by the walls of flesh piled at the fences.

By eating the dead and fucking the living the big mouths began to hold fast. They selected only the tallest and widest mouthed for inter-breeding. The offspring were treated like idols, leggy and toothy and lesser internees were happy to be fed to them.

Over decades the Genuflect camps were forgotten. Like the long rank grass grown over the rusted guns, old politicians had gone to seed and new ones had newer problems.

Thirty years after internment the army of monsters was ready everywhere.

On May first they sacked the fences, took up the guns and ran naked screaming and drooling towards the cities, their mouths so wide their heads seemed hinged.

First contact with civilisation was in the streets were their forebears had been rounded up. Through continued gene cleansing the towns' people now seemed dull and indolent, moping around tedious metropoles sedated with toothless banter. They were like cows when the monsters showed up.

Some big mouths simply ate their quarry. Some chased them out of their minds. But it was the bosses that ought to pay. But first, scared.

Colossa, the tallest of the big mouths entered a clothes shop and, with the staff fleeing as she roared at them, took her time getting dressed for a business meeting. A very important meeting with the ageing head of what was left of Genuflect, the loathed Dr. Altar.

Colossa had been told by her mother that the Doctor, a tall man himself, had a weak spot for tall women.

She slapped on some mascara and smoothed out her mouth slits leaving just a normal set of lips. To these she applied thick rouge stick. A puff of perfume in all the right places and Colossa was done.

She strode briskly in her trouser suit like a secretary bird and reached Genuflect in no time. She licked her lips and stooping under the doorway took the lift to level 13, his private surgery.

She knocked softly on the door and the Doctor bade her in.

"So, Miss ....."

"Colossa"

"Miss Colossa, how can I help you?"

"I have heard a lot about your excellent results Doctor. I would like to be shortened."

"Ah, shortening. Its a physical procedure, which involves laser amputation and hyper-healing techniques. Basically I would remove a section of your legs. Very simple and painless and very popular among the grandly heightened lady like yourself. I take it that you are descended from the long legs and not the big mouths?"

"That's right Doctor." Colossa made sure that just her normal lips moved. Her mascara was holding up well. She sat down in a large comfy chair one long leg over the other. The Doctor stood before her, his long wispy white hair over his shoulders and his hands in his pockets.

"That's good, we don't want any hideously wide smiles round here thank you. What a mistake I made with that batch!" said Altar jovially as if he were describing broken eggs. He eyed the long-legged woman with rising interest and suddenly felt greatly attracted to her. He shuddered under his ageing white coat and stretched his gnarled fingers.

Colossa gave him a flirtish look and let one of her high heels drop.

They went into the small operating thearte at the rear and were joined by a petite nurse. Colossa was lead down and the nurse began the sedation.

The old Altar drew dotted lines on Colossa's legs, his eyes widening with excitement and explained to her that he would remove at least 24 inches from them. But first he would have to examine her thoroughly. She nodded and gave a little smile.

The sedative worked very slowly on mega humans like Colossa.

"Miss, are you drifting off? Give me a little smile," asked the nurse jovially. The Doctor was busying himself with rubber gloves and lasers in the annexe.

Colossa looked at the jolly nurse and began a small smile. It widened a little and engaged the cracks at either side of her mouth. The nurse stopped smiling and froze.

Colossa's smile was now as wide as her entire head and her vast array of teeth, usually hidden, were rowed like a grand piano. It was a heinous smile; massive, curved, red lipped and frightening as hell.

"Hello!" Colossa said and grabbed hold of the nurse's head. She screamed but it was cut short when her head went inside Colossa's.

The Big Mouth bit hard and decapitated the nurse in one go. Her headless body stumbled for a second round the surgery spraying fresh blood everywhere like a hose.

The Doctor, alerted by the scream, dropped his laser. It spun on the floor and arced through his ankle removing his foot in one clean beam.

He shrieked and fell screaming, "You're a .. a .. Big Mouth! Oh God!"

Colossa, still wearing her op drapes and covered in black dotted lines, picked up the Doctor, his rubber gloves caked in his own blood, and inspected his severed ankle.

"Excellent! Saves me some work that Doc!"

She smiled widely close-up to his trembling face and he screamed.

It was two hours later in the afternoon when Colossa walked out of the building. It was a sunny day and she was wearing her power suit again, complete with heels and bag.

She also had a brand new accessory like the fashionable ladies in the city.

It waddled behind her on a studded lead and blinked at the sun.

A human head with long thin white hair and just two feet sewn onto its neck. 

Colossa smiled.

"Come along Doc!" she chuckled, "my kids are dying to play with you!"

MY NAME IS GROBIUS SKRETT

My name is Grobius Skrett.

I was a defiler, a murderer, a slicer, a torturer and a by all accounts a fiend.

I was caught in the act, trepanning a maiden, boring into her head of final thoughts.

Under the yellow gaslight I can’t have been a pretty sight for the poor watchman who found me.  I imagine that it was the drill sunk into the woman’s skull that sent him whistling till his lungs near burst. Ha ha.

Held by the scruff, I was dragged from the heap as the matter gushed over my hands, my fine digits, such spiders of elegance and fingering beauty.

Manhandled violently by brutes, I just had the nick to lick my slick talons.

"You fuckin' fiend. Sick. Sick that’s what you are.  You'll get what’s coming to you Skrett!"

Far from the law I was quickly tried in the village court built more on superstition than the rule of torts.

"Grobius Skrett, you shall be buried alive, your hands and feet severed and your box wormed as is the custom of hereabouts for the rare monster that you are.  Your heathen ground will be the leper fields outside our walls. The worms shall be the most vicious we can gather.  No one will heed your screams.  Each one of us from the village shall relieve on your face before the box is sealed and the worms satisfied. No one will visit your hole.  No one will speak of you. Ever. From this day on you never existed!"

And so it was that I was taken to the village green, stripped, pinned to to the ground,

my hands and feet slowly sawn off, my wrist stump pushed into my mouth to keep me quiet whilst I was pulled over the cinder path to the leper graves shunned for a century.

Nobody spoke on that morbid cortege, my final stroll in the air which somehow moved me to puncture, to open, to wire, to truncate: my life’s work, a glorious pageant of blood and marrow misunderstood by these rural cretins.

I should have moved to the smoky city years ago where my name would live forever.  Grobius Skrett, the Da Vinci of flesh.

Burly gravediggers more used to Catholic rites had hastily dug a trench in the jaundiced tussocks. Beside it lay a roughly carpentered crate of thick timber, from which there would be surely no escape.  This was lowered into the trench, the sweating carpenter waiting nearby clutching the lid and his claw hammer, his eyes aglow with hate.

I was made to stand on my bleeding stumps beside the pit.  No attempt had been made to smoothen the wood and large splinters bristled inside.  Without a word the relatives of my victims came forward and were encouraged to defile my body further.  

My breast bone was first cracked with a mallet and then snipped open with the butcher’s iron scissors.  My genitals were sliced away with a cheese wire.  My skull was drilled; a rough mirror of the beautiful and lasting wounds I myself bestowed with scarce finesse upon those who came to know my work.

My mangled body was then thrown into the crate.  

As decreed, each of the village folk took turns to piss up on my face, the hot streams entering my mouth and burning my injuries.  I felt oddly cleansed as the steam rose and the village priest appeared over the trench shouldering a large wide-mouthed urn.

"This will be the last voice you hear Grobius Skrett.  The mouths which follow mine will not care for chatter but will consume you whilst you still think of what to say.  If you wish to repent to them, no matter, your prayers will be digested too. May your soul rot in everlasting hell."

The priest then tipped the urn and shook its heaving contents across my head and chest, where the blood was welling.  Although I could not see I could hear the timber lid being hammered shut.

I was alone with the worms.

In the faint dusky glow before the grave was fully filled I could see, albeit vaguely, the mouths of my hungry new friends opening and closing like fish out of water.  I was certain that I could also hear their ravening groans as they searched for ingress.

The moist beings entered first my split breast, no doubt compelled to follow the loud beating siren further in.

I had nothing but admiration for these limbless morticians and I dreamt of the fine slithering I might do should I escape, a man-worm, muscling like a walrus upon sleeping lovers.

I was arcing handless above a naked couple, smiling at the thought, when a large worm entered my head hole and gorged greedily across my brain, deleting my mind like a chamfer wizard.

I was done and Grobius Skrett was gone.