Anthology2 Presents
BENTO BOX #2
Bite-Sized Fiction
by Jae Lizhini, Jason Kenney, Adrian J. Watts, Emmanuel Goldstein ? starring Jacob Milnestein

HER BLACK DEVICES ‘Part two’
(with Mr. Tom Waits conducting a symphony of park benches and rubbish bins) Trilogy of Terror trailer Welcome to the Jungle dvd

By Jae Lizhini

It was four-thirty in the morning, and Detective Emily Swanson found it hard to think about anything other than how tired she was. Two hours of sleep was the worst kind of tease. She’d need to do something, so she could focus. They wouldn’t keep the cadavers here for much longer. Forensics was already hounding her about their findings and what ideas she had come up with. She took another long gulp of coffee from the rapidly cooling Styrofoam cup. The bitter coffee had been doing little more than remind her how the chemical dependence on the beverage was as much as a habit as was the cigarettes.

“Barry, I need to get away from the bodies for a few moments; you mind, mate?” Swanson asked, her short blond hair lightly drumming against the tanned curve of her forehead.

The short man standing above her looked down at her squatted position in the grass. Her head was crooked to the side of her shoulder; her own cool icy gaze reflected against his thick glasses. He brought his large hand to the bridge of those lenses, pushing them up on his face. “In just a second, Emily. I had some things I wanted to go over with–” He stopped in half sentence. His brown eyes widened from behind his glasses. His lips sagged into a grimace. Folds appeared at the corner of his nose and connected to the fringes of his full lips. He had a mask of worry, which his properly trimmed brown goatee did little to hide. “Wow, you look awful.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I probably feel better than I look then,” Swanson said, looking cold. Her gaze turned back to the skull of the male subject, the whites of the bones appearing through the grotesque threads of remaining skin and muscle.

“That was wrong of me. What I mean is–”

“Its all right, mate. No harm.” The detective feigned a light smile. “Melissa had some friends over last night. They were playing Guitar Hero until midnight.”

“Sounds rough,” Barry said to her. His signature smile returning to his face. “You sure you are up to this, love? I could get someone else to work this scene.”

Swanson bit her cheeks. She wanted to say something full of vinegar and rage. However, she knew that Barry meant well and was genuinely worried. He was the closest thing to a mother she ever had. So instead, she smiled. “No, we’ll handle this. It’s just a rough go of a morning. By the looks of things, we’re going to need Scully and Moulder for this one.”

“So you’re feeling the same way I am about it?” Barry asked, finally squatting down to be at eye level with his partner. “Forensics and I have gone over about forty possible scenarios. And nothing is adding up.”

“Well, obviously, judging by the way the foreheads have the series of incisions like needles around the scalp, it was a slow job, and the killer wanted to torture his victims,” Swanson said.

“Acupuncture — we hadn’t even assumed anything like that. The way the skin is cut on the face, the killer would have also had to slice the victims with the same number of needles, and they are too deep for anything like that. Also, the damage to the tissue seems almost corrosive in nature, on top of the cutting. They found some sort of slimy residue on the victims’ mouths and on their clothing, which, according to the lab guys, looks like mucus from a slug. They are going to analyze it for us to see exactly what it is.”

“So what, then? They were attacked by gigantic slugs?” Swanson asked.

“Or maybe some sort of super powered killer that’s part slug,” Barry said, trying to hold in his snigger.

“Even for Pacific City, that seems to be stretching it,” Swanson told her partner. “But what ever the case, the way that the victims fell, they were killed before they dropped to the ground.”

“Yes,” Barry agreed. “And we won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but, by the bloating of the throat, we assume they may have suffocated on top of having a lot of flesh removed.”

“And their brains,” a smoky voice called from behind them. It was a deep tone, with the draw of the American South. Barry and Swanson both turned their heads to the figure that stood over them. A flash of recognition ran over both their faces.

The new comer was a virtual silhouette. The onyx Stetson hat was worn low to his brow, the large brim casting an impossible shadow over his face and past his neck. A tight fitting duster covered his torso and continued to the fringes of his knees. It was as though Clint Eastwood lost his shadow.

“How did you get past the guards?” Swanson asked after only a heartbeat. Her gaze went to the uniformed officers, who had started to turn around. Obviously, they were taken by surprise as well.

“Missus Swanson, you done know the answer to that, without even thinking about it,” The Man in Black said, his ghastly voice sounding like he was enjoying himself—which made it all he more creepy.

“Look, you can’t be here,” Barry said, rising to his feet. “Far as I am concerned, you are a suspect.”

The Man in Black simply walked past the portly detective, his black gloved hand pressing lightly on the man’s broad shoulder. “There is a reason I am here,” he said in a way that sent ice down Barry’s spine.

The Man in Black slowly bent down to his haunches. His brown eyes glittered past the mask of shadows that devoured his features. His right hand pressed against the deep green grasses, the blades falling under the pressure of his large palm. His left was free and gently touched the sharp incision marks on the skull’s forehead. “Res und trol,” he said under his breath. As the strange words fell from his lips, a yellow outline formed around his hand, the jagged energy reflecting on the white of the victim’s skull. The first image hit him before he even closed his eyes.

Brutal snap shots began to slam through the stranger’s skull. The Man in Black felt his legs buckling from under him, as the strong images assaulted his brain. Still images flashed in front of him. Each picture was all that was left from a dead man’s flesh.

The first image was the park, late at night, two lovers talking. Then some sort of disagreement. A black slug appeared on the girl’s leg. Then the slug devoured her head. The victim saw another appear on him. Other images of blackness and pain appeared before him. Feelings began to attack his senses, exposing the stranger to the victim’s death.

“What the hell is he doing, Swanson?” Barry asked, his eyes narrowing behind his frames. “I mean, besides tampering with evidence?”

The tawny detective hadn’t moved from her position and was only centimeters from where the man in black was planted. Her eyes were staring at his gloved hand and the glowing energy that seemed to be coming from the simple limb. She always had a feeling he was one of those super-beings, but now she had been proven right. That was enough for her to agree with Barry’s claim of him being a suspect.

Swanson slowly reached towards her holster. Her thumb guided across the chocolate leather strap, snapping it open in a flick. Her fingers slid around the handle, pulling the black semi-automatic from its home. It clicked audibly, as she righted the gun. Its muzzle pointing at the back of The Man in Black’s skull. She was about to say something, when the stranger moved his hand from the skull. The energy around his digits faded into the ether, as he turned his head to his shoulder. The white of his left eye peered from the shadows that covered his face. He looked to the detective with a softness that made her feel a hesitation.

“Your victims’ names were Peter Stallwell and Sherry White,” The Man in Black spoke, his voice firm and commanding. “They had gotten into an argument, when they were attacked by something not even I have ever seen before. You will find more about the nature of what they were attacked by after you do an autopsy. Be sure to take extra care with the remainder of the clothing, especially on the male. The substance will tell a story you might not be ready for. This case, you will learn, is best left to me.”

The black-cloaked stranger rose from his position. His trench coat ruffled audibly in the wind. The fabric swept across his legs, as he turned towards the gun and the detective. His featureless form stood stoic, the whites of his eyes flickering in the coming sunlight.

“We’re taking you in, freak!” Swanson said, her gun once again firmly aimed at The Man in Black. “Kneel on the ground NOW!”

The stranger’s eyes stared at her, through the mask of shadow that obfuscated his features. The sense of long hair seemed to flow across his shoulders, as the wind rolled across the fabric of trench coat. He could tell by the anger in her eyes she was serious.

* * *

GUN
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by Jason Kenney

The officer on the other side of the table cleared his throat and leaned back.

John Franklin sat there, his hands folded on the table, and waited. He was a patient man who understood the process. His father taught him the process. He tried to ignore the dull pain in his chest, the slight warmth that had been there for two hours now, since right before he pulled the trigger, since right before he killed a man before the man could kill him.

“So, let me get this straight.” The officer was named Jones. Franklin put him a few years younger than himself. The kid tried to overcompensate by deepening his voice, but it came out forced and contrived and probably didn’t work with anyone. “You were taking your gun to a shoe store?”

This officer was the good cop. They were all good cops just trying to do their jobs.

Franklin nodded. “I was going to buy shoes and had my gun with me.”

“Why did you have your gun with you?”

“There’s nothing saying I couldn’t.”

“Open carry aside,” said Jones, scratching his head for effect, as if he were truly confused, but that also came across as an empty gesture, “why on earth does a grown man feel the need to take his gun to a shoe store?”

“Some people carry a rabbit foot.”

“You call a Ruger your good luck charm?”

Franklin smiled. Before he could answer further the door opened, catching his and Jones’s attention as two men entered the room, one wheelchair bound, pushed by another who had a smirk that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face.

“I’d say it was pretty lucky for him today, Officer Jones,” said the pusher as he settled the wheelchair in a corner of the room, its occupant sitting there, immobile except for his eyes which bore straight into Franklin. “Mind if I have a few minutes with John here?”

Jones shrugged and stood up. “Only if he doesn’t mind. As far as we’re concerned, you’re free to go, Mister Franklin. Just don’t go far in case we have any follow up questions.”

“It’ll only be a few minutes,” said the new guy, looking to Franklin as if to ask permission. Franklin nodded.

“Thank you, Officer Jones,” Franklin said, and the officer left without another word, closing the door behind him.

“John, I’m Johann Weisz; my paraplegic friend is Tommy.” He nodded toward the corner. “We’re with DHS, Homeland Security and all. I’ve just got a couple questions for you. But first…” Weisz shifted and stuck a hand in his pocket, coming out with a lighter that he reached out and set on the table in front of Franklin. “That’s your real lucky charm right there, isn’t it?”

Franklin looked at it and then back to Weisz.

“You can take it,” Weisz said. “It’s yours.” Franklin snatched it off the table and wrapped his hands around it. “How are you feeling, John?”

“Okay.”

“Ears done ringing? No big bruises from the blast? Head feeling all right?” Franklin nodded. “How’s your gut?” Weisz asked.

Franklin instinctively moved to touch his stomach but stopped, letting his hand hover there as he studied Weisz.

When that man had looked at him with those glowing eyes, when that man had smiled and pointed at Franklin, the burning started there, in his stomach, but spread, his body on fire as he pulled the trigger.

He hadn’t told Officer Jones about it. He hadn’t told the paramedics on the scene when they first checked him.

But Weisz… Now that he mentioned it, Franklin could feel the warmth, the faint discomfort hitting for a second and then easing as he took a deep breath.

“That guy was a pomo, wasn’t he?” Franklin said, changing the subject, looking for answers.

Weisz’s smirk tightened slightly.

“He was a post modern person, yes,” Weisz said, leaning back. “Robert Worthington, wanted in connection with some robberies a lot like what you happened to get caught up in. But you stopped him. Good for you.”

“So why are you here?”

“Like I said, Homeland Security. Just want to make sure you’re doing okay and offer Uncle Sam’s assistance if you need it — getting what I need for paperwork, stuff like that.”

“What’s his story?” Franklin looked to Tommy.

“He’s taking notes.” Franklin looked back to Weisz who was tapping the side of his head.

“I didn’t give you permission to get into my head, Mr. Weisz.”

“You didn’t have to, John, and I’m sure you know that.” Weisz pushed himself to his feet and fished into his pocket, coming out with a tattered business card. “If you feel anything… well, different, you call me.”

Franklin looked from the card to Weisz. “Different how?”

Weisz shrugged and went behind Tommy, pushing toward the door. “Could be nothing. Just watch yourself. See how you feel in the morning.”

“Different how, Weisz?”

Weisz smiled and looked Franklin dead in the eyes. “Different like you start blowing shit up.”

Franklin didn’t know what to say to that.

“Keep in touch, John.”

And the door opened. And Johann Weisz and Tommy left.

* * *

DUAL

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Origin #2
by Adrian J. Watts

When Kye regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was the cold sensation of metal against his skin. His eyes were open — he was pretty sure of that — but some time passed before any light registered in his eyes and he was able to get a visual sense of where he was. Everything around him was shiny; more importantly, it was all equally shiny. A flat, consistent surface of some sort. He blinked a few times and was able to tell that the walls (which he could see out of the corners of his eyes) and the ceiling (directly ahead, he realised, meaning he was flat on his back) were made of white tiles, all uniformly reflecting the light from a bulb above and behind him, just out of view.

He tried, slowly, to turn his head but felt a quick, snapping pain. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but it hurt. A lot. He tried again, even more slowly, and the pain returned. He thought better of trying it a third time and instead closed his eyes. He opened them again a moment later, when he heard a noise that, on the periphery of his awareness, sounded very much like speech. He couldn’t make it out, but since — to the best of his knowledge — he was the only person in the room, he guessed the voices were forming a discussion about him.

To his right, he became aware of something dark moving, popping just in and out of his blind spot. He tried to call out, to get its attention, but nothing happened. He tried again to turn his head, and this time there was no pain, no snapping sensation; his head simply did not move. He tried to close his eyes, he tried to blink, he tried to change his breathing — nothing happened. For a moment, he feared his heart may burst with the fear that came with the realisation that he no longer had any control over his body, and then it occurred to him that this might include such things as his pulse rate. He was right. The fear quickly faded as his body refused to respond to his thoughts.

“Zen magale, zin giingi,” a voice said. It sounded feminine, Kye thought, but was otherwise so strange that he didn’t hazard a guess as to the speaker’s other characteristics.

“ARGH!” he heard to his right and felt something warm and wet splat against his cheek.

“The paralysis device still lets them scream?” the feminine voice said.

“Yes,” a different, more masculine voice said. “I thought you’d like that.”

“Very much.”

There were more screams, followed by more warm wetness, and then a smell — one Kye had never experienced before. He didn’t like it, but despite his conscious revulsion he did not wretch, or gag, or spit, or tense his nostrils. The scent just wafted, in and out, down his throat, through his lungs.

“Another failure!” the masculine voice said.

“But it will make the next stronger,” the feminine voice said.

Again Kye saw the dark shape just outside his vision, and this time it stayed. He tried to focus not his eyes, which remained beyond his control, but his mental energy on it, and soon he could make out the shape of a black-cloaked female figure. A few moments later, another figure — the uncloaked form of a man — stood beside her. He was wearing a tight-fitting white labcoat and a black apron, both of which were splattered with blood. Oddly, Kye found he could not see their faces, even when they passed directly through his vision. Only their clothing and the general shape of their bodies registered with him.

“Give it a moment,” the female said. Her voice seemed different now; Kye felt a tingle run through his body, as it it was responding to her. “Let the residue take a greater hold.”

“Fine,” the man said. “But if I do not secure the implant soon, the – ”

“Go ahead. Zen magale, zin giingi.”

As the woman spoke, Kye felt, rather than saw, bizarre images run through his mind. He felt the moon, shining brightly in the daytime sky. He felt the sun, dark enough not to light the night, but still swallowing a densely-populated city. He felt the throbbing hum of a factory in full life, churning out an unknown mechanical product, giving his life meaning. He felt a sequence of 1s and 0s, Alphas and Omegas, +es and -es all pour through his body, meaningless to his mind, but somehow essential to his being.

Then he saw the drill — and the blood-spattered scalpel. His mouth opened and the scalpel pressed against his tongue, twisted, snaked its way through his nasal cavity. He felt pressure, like he needed to sneeze, but nothing beyond that. A moment later his vision was obscured by a film of redness, colouring the already stained drill-head, as it passed from his view to just below his line of sight. There was a feeling of pressure against his cheek, and then -

“NO!” he shouted. “Stop!”

The drill pulled away, and he felt the scalpel wriggle its way back to his lips. The light above his head flickered, and he turned his head.

“We waited too long,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Call in Thunder Salmon.”

* * *

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“a sad song, with nothing to say”
by Emmanuel Goldstein ? starring Jacob Milnestein

“If hospitals cure, then prisons must bring their pain.”
- Richey James Edwards,
‘Archives of Pain’

Blood ran down his face, a smear of carmine beetle red running from his forehead to his eyebrows. He blinked furiously, leaning against the lectern for support, his breath erratic and strained.

The Count lay to his right, his faceplate smashed and broken, revealing swollen, bulbous eyes in mimicry of the masque he once wore, skin turned purple by the bruising of acne and pustules. A mirthless smile caught Louis’ lips, inclining the corners up in a hollow smile.

For a long time, the Count’s masque had been the subject of discussion amongst the vacuous girls that crowded the school corridors between lessons, tartan skirts rolled up to reveal tantalising flesh and lips daubed with beeswax and spittle.

It had been a common rumour that beneath the Count’s obsidian faceplate there dwelt a guise of unparalleled beauty, a face that pride and familial shame prevented him from showing to his peers. Puerile schoolgirl fantasies, Louis thought with a sneer, turning once more to regard the disease-marked swollen countenance of the dead boy. Despite those hushed rumours, despite sweaty and gasping whispers made in the dead of night, the Count’s face had turned out to be exactly as he had always warned them: a face full of the anger and pain of plague, of pestilence, of disease.

“Sleep well, friend,” Louis whispered, his heart suddenly aching and his legs trembling as he clutched the gilded bronze of the ancient lectern.

With a pained grunt, he pulled himself away, staggering forward and trying not to look at the silent shapes of Rin and Haruka. Behind him, the soft light of the hole in the world continued to cast rainbows upon both the stone floor and their dead flesh, colours moving along the soft skin of legs and faces that remained forever turned away from him.

No longer would those breasts swell with the intake of breath; no longer would those now closed eyes cast him knowing looks between classes.

His right hand tightened into a fist.

“Bastards,” he whispered, his vision blurring.

Upon his cheeks, he felt the warmth of an unfamiliar moistness.

The pounding at the door began once again, the heavy weight of weapons smashing against the rusted metal of the ancient doorway.

“Open up in the name of the King!” came the cries from beyond the sealed threshold.

Slowly, Louis lifted his head, lips twitching in a snarl and cheeks red with shame.

“The King is dead,” he screamed, his voice raw and hoarse. “The King is fucking dead!”

Blood and spit stained his lips, his childish refutation of reality a stuttering declamation against circumstance.

The hole in the world seemed to swell with his lies, the fracture widening, revealing more and more of the gulf between them and the heavy curtains of that other world. From the great madness beyond, some vast unknowable entity seemed to shift on its blasphaemous axis, turning its unblinking eye towards the damp, shifting darkness that surrounded the tiny planet.

“The King is dead!” Louis screamed again, his eyes wide with madness. “The King is…”

Without warning, the door exploded, fragments of rusted metal filling the room, hot air throwing him backwards. He saw the ruin of metal and stone sail past him and into the twisting, shapeless fracture hanging in the air above the ancient lectern.

His body slammed hard against the wall, Haruka’s lifeless form not far from him now, face down against the stone, her cardigan and school shirt torn open to reveal the hole in her back where the bullet had passed through her.

Louis laughed weakly, his body screaming in agony as he lifted his pale eyes up to gaze upon the Baroque stucco decorations that covered the roof, white Portland cement now smeared with blood.

He felt a pain in his ribs, a twisting shard of metal nestling between his ribs. Again, he felt the hollow smile haunt his lips.

This is it, he thought quietly to himself, this is how it ends. Not with a bang but with the softest whisper, the colours of another world quietly playing across the ancient walls.

He laughed quietly, softly, gently.

All those years, all those long empty years, staring up at blank-eyed teachers and accepting cruelty when it was doled out to him, all those years of pointless pain and suffering, and now, just when things were becoming interesting again, he was going to die.

The heavy footfalls of military boots filled the room.

He smiled again.

“The King is dead,” he whispered with childish spite. “The King is…”

Before him, he saw velvet slippers and long, stockinged legs, and a cold terror filled his mind, his hand suddenly digging into the scars of the wall behind him, desperately trying to pull himself away from the presence of the other.

With elegance and grace, a solemn figure crouched slowly down before him, watery blue eyes staring out at him from behind a smooth fringe of ash blonde hair.

“P-Prince Baldr,” he whispered, the name like a thorn lodged in his throat, tearing at his larynx, twisting his words as they blossomed.

“Tetsuya,” the pale blonde prince whispered in reply, hir face cold and expressionless. “You have revealed too much of your weakness.”

Louis felt his heart hammering in his chest, blood from that swollen organ thundering in his ears like the crash of ocean waves. He tried to laugh, but instead all that he could muster was a nervous, churlish giggle.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he gasped, the words falling from his bruised lips like ash. “Even if you seal these doors forever. Even if you bury us beneath the foundations of this fucking place. It won’t change the fact that we have seen what you’re hiding, that we found out why they locked us away here in the dark, why they forged the Black Iron Prison.”

Tears and blood streamed down his face, smears of emotion upon his pale complexion.

“The Count, Rin, Haruka, even me… we all saw it, we all saw the world beyond the Black Iron Prison. You can keep your fucking King; you can keep your school and your cruelty and your immorality.

“This world isn’t all there is. It isn’t even the fucking horizon.”

Baldr stared at him with cold, blue eyes and then, with a sneer, turned hir head away.

“Tetsuya, do you really want to know why we were locked away? Do you really want to know what it was that the ancients knew that we’ve forgotten?”

Louis closed his eyes, feeling the whispers of dreams and the tug of those dark waters of the unconscious, its undertow willing him down beneath the waves and into timeless oblivion.

“I don’t care,” he whispered in response. “I just don’t fucking care anymore…”

“Have you never stopped to question why the King is never seen?” Baldr whispered, hir voice suddenly tremulous with suppressed emotion. “Have you never asked yourself why the King is hidden away from the people, cloaked in darkness and speaking only in riddles?”

Calmly, s/he leant forward, pushing hir face close to Louis’ own, hir breath like ice against his cheek.

“The King, Tetsuya,” s/he whispered, hir voice full of unbridled excitement. “The King… is Yaldaboath!”