The Sun Don't Shine

Drowning. Falling. Stroked. Swallowed by the world. A miasma. A dreg. Bitten in two. One half dead. The other shit-thick like a dry fuck.

I will flay you. Just you watch. Lifeboats be ready. It's gonna be turgid. Scrambled. Candy-flossed skin. I'll take it all like cling film. You won't need no dermis in the death of days. You won't feel a thing. I am the King and Queen of necrosis. The brass hat of flagrant wounds. The dismal seed.

Sweeping over contours like a kestrel I can smash and grab the guts, the hearts, the souls wherever I go. A nerve bandit. A burglar in your brain, forcing the lobes apart to bag the id. To heave the swag. To leave a calling card on the grey foundation as it gives way. It says "No-one's home. Not today".

Nobody's safe. I am a furious drape as dark as plague. A nimbus of hate. It will gather you all in its dreadful billows from which you shall be siphoned. An ichor. A milk. You will be rent, the bones soft- sucked, your warm marrow brooking on my tongue. It is your fate to pool inside me.

The storm of judgement shall debride you. The vortex of an only mind. A tempest of injured limbs, a cyclone of blood-blistered despair. I am here.

It is to nothing we voyage. To the kernel of night. A quasar of misery cursing the light you humans emit. Batteries for babies. That's all. Well to hell with you all. Let me net your flailing carapace and shove my gulping forceps where your soul collapses. Watch me proper stuff you where the sun don't shine.

Showtime!

Judy stood first. Punch followed. It was party time. The night was young. As young as new blood. They had time to kill.

The streets were dark. Darker than a dead show. People were thronging beneath the only lights outside the public houses swilling beer. Laughing like apes. 

Tussling. Pushing and shoving.


Judy stepped into a back street. Pitch black it was. She smoothed out her smock and whistled.


"Hello little lady!"


A rough voice grated the air. A large man appeared in front of Judy.


"You with anyone? You fancy a drink?"


He placed his hand on her arm.


"What the .....!"


Punch slit his throat with a quick, precise swoosh of his razor.


"That's the way to do it!" he trilled.


The man fell between bins. It made a racket. But the revellers didn't hear. They were too busy revelling.


Judy bent down and stared at the man's eyes. Blood welled up like a cherry cup. She reddened her lips with a few drops and batted her eyelids at Punch.


"Oh nooooo you don't!"


"Oh yes I do!"


"Oh noooo ...."


Judy was on him. He fell backwards stiffening. They groped, unbuckled. With guiding hands they mated furiously between the bins and screamed like cats.


"Well done Punchy!"


"Fits like a glove!"


"Let's have some fun. C'mon!"


They staggered off into the tent of darkness. Hideous to look at, night owls queuing for kebabs turned away when they saw Punch's massive chin and nose and Judy's blood red cheeks and smeared mouth.


Punch ran at them with his club, swinging it wildly.


"What ya goin to do when I'm not here no more Jude?"


"Why? Where ya going babes?"


"Nowhere! It's just that the show won't last forever will it. I'm getting old darlin! They retired the ghost!"


"The ghost was dead! You're not old. You're as young as that horny dog who's always after me!"


"That damn dog! I'm going to feed it to the croc!"


"You'll need some sausages to get the dog Punchinello!"


"Don't call me that Jude!"


"Punchinello, Punchinello!"


"Damn you Jude! I'm going to get somethin' better than sausages!"


With a quicksliver flash of his razor Punch opened him up. He slid his hand inside and yanked out a splashing coil of fresh guts, colon and all.


Punch hauled them up steaming in the night air like a trophy.


"Here doggy, here doggy doggy!"


The horny dog panted, licked Judy's red lips and leapt to grab the hot giblets and gobbled them all up.


"You've done us in Punch!"


"I did it for you Jude. No more dogs, no more crocs, no more babies."


"But I liked them really."


The pair fell over the tent's sill showered with blood. Their hands went limp. Punch and Judy lay upside down.


They stared at the man's ashen face flopped in the opening between them.


Through bubbling lips he spluttered in a high-pitched voice:


"That's the way to do it!"

SORE LOSER

Gustav hadn't seen Martin for 25 years, not since they had been bitter rivals in the World Chess Championships. 

Gustav had heard from a a mutual acquaintance that Martin was dying in hospital. Apparently Martin had asked to see him for old time's sake. 

So on a damp Sunday afternoon shortly before Easter, Gustav decided to visit his old foe and pay his last respects.

They had last met in 1955. Gustav had won the World Chess Championship and taken the long-held title from Martin in a gruelling round of hostile matches.

Martin had reacted to losing very badly indeed and completely retreated from public view and was largely forgotten. Gustav had remained Grandmaster until he retired 10 years ago.

The hospital was positioned on the far side of the City in an old corner almost lost to time, a gothic heap needling with towers and minarets. 

Rooks cackled in its murky heights and one landed square at Gustav's feet. It turned as he moved forward towards the gates.

"This hospital is more like a damn witch's castle!" Gustav grumbled.

The weather was terrible. Dark skies were chequered with pied clouds and distant thunder fumed far away. 

It was raining stair-rods. Gustav pulled up the collar of his long coat and adjusted his hat to keep the wet out as he trudged through the shadows towards the other side.

An ageing carbuncled nurse met him in the gloomy reception and after mumbling about the rain Gustav asked for Martin's room. 

"Down the long corridor, the End of Life Ward,  bed 13.  Would you like me to let him know that you're on your way? I can call the duty nurse."

"No thank you. I think I'll surprise him."

Gustav pushed along the dim corridor to where the world ended for some. He wondered if he had made a mistake in coming.  After all, they had never been friends. It was their dreadful rivalry that had always brought them together in a loveless arena of Kings and Queens.

"We were just pawns ourselves!" he mused.

Reaching the End of Life Ward Gustav felt the lights grow dimmer. The temperature fell and the clock seemed to stop. 

He wavered on the threshold and questioned his next move. Gustav went in.

A wizened nurse hunched beside a dripping candle gave Gustav a knowing nod and he walked slowly towards bed 13.

He took off his hat.  

"Hello Martin. It's Gustav."

Gustav noticed that Martin could hardly open his eyes. They were covered in scabs. In fact his entire bald head, face and neck were covered in large weeping bed sores, which looked truly agonising.  

"I've brought you some grapes Martin."

Gustav placed the grapes in a cracked bowl at the side of the bed. A single wooden chess piece stood erect next to it. An old black queen, that had seen better days.

"How have you been Martin?"

Gustav couldn't help gawping at the open sticky rents on his rival's ancient body. He shivered.

"It's been a long time Martin. I'm sorry to see you like this. I wanted to see you, for old time's sake and just say goodbye. No hard feelings." 

Gustav put his hat back on, nodded and turned to leave, when Martin raised his right hand. 

Reluctantly Gustav took it and gently shook hands. He could feel the moist moldering blebs against his skin and grimaced. He drew his wet hand away and left.

Gustav hastened from the ward and went to the nearest bathroom, where he vigorously washed his hands. 

He tripped past the old nurse at reception who simply stared at him as he left. 

Hurrying through the hospital grounds the rooks seemed to laugh at Gustav. As he got further away his pace slowed. Somehow he felt weaker. His skin became parched and itchy and as he walked he could not help clawing at his face and neck. 

As he got nearer to his house adjacent to the Royal statue, Gustav began to stagger. He was burning up. Resting against the pedestal of the King the Old Monarch seemed to be looking down at him in disgust. 

Gustav fell into his home and crawled towards the mirror in the tiled hallway. What he saw horrified him to his very core and he began to scream. 

His entire face, head and neck were erupting with noxious red and yellow seeping bed sores all sopping-wet and blood-flecked.

"Martiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!" he shrieked as he slumped to the floor.

In bed number 13 Martin left this life with a hideous smile across his face. 

On his bed-side cabinet the black queen lay flat.

One word was scrawled in blood and pus.

Checkmate.

The Red Mites of Mars

Mars opened its first store in 2070. It had been colonised since 2040 and over the thirty years it's pioneers had carved out a unique Martian lifestyle for themselves. They were different. Apart. Other.

So it was inevitable that the culture, food and fashion born on Mars would one day be a commodity that Earthlings would want and pay for. Hence the Mars store.

By 2075 they were everywhere. Mars was cool and people wanted to be a part of what was happening. Going red was what they said.

As the stores did well so too the Mars recruitment bureaus. They were packed as youngsters flocked to join the newbies, heading for the red planet to make a new life for themselves away from the overcrowded, overheating World.

Cities had risen from the crimson dust in a rapid expansion of real estate on Mars. Demand had to be met and business was booming. The planet's scarlet surface was bristling with cranes as new settlements came on stream under new domes. These newly-created atmospheric domes had made it all so much more possible. So much more achievable. It had been inevitable really.

Earth was a mess. Globally warmed. Massive population. Water wars. Air corrosion. Unstable systems, man-made and natural. Animal extinctions on a mass-scale. Half the world's peoples on the move to escape the hottest parts. A move to the shadows. A shift to the affluent North.

The stores from Mars were dotted across the North too. They stocked a myriad of items which were strange to the people of Earth but very familiar to the colonists of the red planet.

One of the shops' biggest sellers was Mars Moss grown on Martian dome farms. This reddish green vegetation had incredible moisturising qualities for dry skin especially as the World was heating up. It could absorb up to ten times the amount of moisturiser that a standard Earth moss could and apply it better on the skin.

As the temperatures rose on earth, overheated and and desiccating wealthy people flocked to the the Mars stores for this fabulous cooling Moss.

The store owners continued to sell colonists' art and crafts, together with Martian technology like the air conditioning unit, but it was the farmed moss that made them rich.

Moss was imported to Earth in vast quantities. As demand increased so too did standards decrease and the mosses were greedily ripped from wild populations outside the protective domes. 

The biggest outcrop was on the slopes of Olympus Mons, which up to that point had been protected under the colonists' strict conservation laws.

The wild mountain vegetation was shipped Earthside with scant regard for contamination. Branded as a new natural super-product from the red peak, it sold like hot cakes among the the desperate affluent people of Earth, who wanted it's even more soothing qualities no matter what the cost.

As time went on it all went swimmingly well for the Mars merchants. They got richer and fatter. But then talk of something in the wild moss began to surface. Something creepy. Something crawly.

The first official sighting of what was in the wild plant came when a diligent young girl cornered something coming out and prudently captured it in a glass jar, which she took to the nearest Mars outlet. 

The thing in the jar was peered at. Poked. Perused and cut in half. It was conclusive. It was a bug. A tiny red mite to be precise, as small as a pin-head and strong as hell. Under the scope it had a tiny shell-like round scarlet body, ten red eyes, a hundred crimson legs and huge pink serrated jaws clearly made for sawing and scraping.

No-one knew what it ate on Mars, although scientists believed it to be connected to the thin and scant chalks around Olympus Mons. Perhaps it ate the chalk. More certain was it's shelter from the hottest parts of the day. The Moss. That is how it had come to Earth.

Mars Stores put out a video-banner across the cities of the World. There is nothing to be alarmed about. The red mites will simply die on Earth as they have no access to the chalk of their own planet. Please continue to buy the wild moss. Simply shake out any mites before use.

And so all the imported mites were scattered across the settlements of Earth.

But they didn't die.

The mites thrived in the oxygen-rich Earth air. They grew cleverer and discovered a new and endless source of living calcium.

The first cases went unnoticed, happening as they did in cemeteries. The dead don't complain.

It was another incident which happened to be tele-videoed live across the globe that shocked and repulsed the peoples of the World.

Live on video a news reporter had brought a large crate of Mars Moss on set to test the number of mites that might be in there. He opened it up and began to shake the clumps. Instead of falling to the sheet laid out on the floor the insects leapt onto the man. Before he had chance to retaliate thousands of red mites covered his face and body. He fell to the floor screaming.

The mites got redder as they snipped off his clothes and like tiny surgeons cut through his soft skin along its entirety. 

The newsreporter yelled in agony. His female colleague clambered up onto the sofa shrieking in disbelief. 

With a million snips the creatures peeled back the man's skin revealing his living frame writhing like a gutted fish. Sickeningly fast they cleaned away his glistening muscle, sinews and fats. The mites then freed the still-twitching red-soaked skeleton, ripping it away from the remaining stubborn tendons in a shower of steaming blood.

As the swarm hefted the skeleton on its shoulders the man's final agonised view was of his own eyes being pulled out of their sockets and the optic nerves trailing from his skull like streamers. 

The man's bodiless brain was still aware of the feeling of floating for a few more seconds before it switched itself off for good in a nightmare of disembodied pain.

The mites carried the carcass off-set and into the street. A brave cameraman continued to follow and a horrified global public watched with a terrible morbid curiosity.

The camera filmed the carried skeleton as it made its way into the largest Mars store, the Mega Mars. It was met with hundreds, maybe thousands of other bloody frames being brought there by millions of Martian mites.

Sadly the cameraman wasn't spared and his own camera continued to roll as he was degloved and swept off to the Mega, all watched live by a mesmerised population.

For the next year the same sickening micro-surgery occured across the globe, as the voracious mites filleted and boned the peoples of the Earth, dragging their clicking booty to the nearest Mars Megastore.

It was in one such store that an intrepid kid unearthed the shocking truth about the skeletons and managed to get a report out to the remaining population before being stripped.

The bones were being fed to the Queens!

The workers got the brains and the spinal cords, which they pounced on like dogs.

Slowly but surely the human population of Earth dwindled, so everything else got boned too. Fish. Frogs. Cats. Elephants. Crocodiles. Blue Whales. Sparrows. Spiders. Everything. For the Queens to use.

From the carnage, the mite Queens had created a vast network of huge calcareous shells. Eventually these outcrops joined together to form a massive hard plate.

From Mars it appeared that Earth was now white, a planet of bone, shining like a new gigantic moon.

The Martians looked on in horror and thanked God for their bio-domes and the docile mites Mars had miles away on Olympus Mons.

The last Earthlings, holed up in the Kennedy Rocket Base, prepared for evacuation. Billions of red mites encircled the compound. The survivors' only chance was to get to Mars and live normal lives again under the colonists' first and biggest dome.

Guided by Martian Control, the ship entered the thin Mars atmosphere and the access window was opened in the dome's side to allow passage.

It was only then, as the window closed and the rocket was landing that Mars Control saw that the refugees were not alone.

The ship's outer skin was teeming with red mites and wedged in the exhausts was a vast Queen. It landed with a crack and eyed the colonists' home with insectoid relish.

Screaming out her orders, the Queen sent its army of mites out into this new world of fresh clicking bones and waited.