A Ravenous Canvas

Walking forever through corridors of art, that's the fate I sought. If I were doomed to resurrect, as everyone was, why not wander eternally around beauty?

But when I tried to reach The Metropolitan Museum, the apocalypse stopped me. Manhattan's zombies swarmed my car, buried it in dead flesh. I'm trapped.

Now they're a ravenous canvas, pressed against my windshield. Their faces are yellow papyrus; their spoiling blood and bile are rancid inks and pigments, their viscera are rotting oils. This is their dead aesthetic; their moans exhort me to join it.

I'll starve.

I'll rise.

I'll create art too.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan

Skin

In the weeks after her mother died, Pamela had no skin. Everything was surface—every twitching nerve, every gush of bile. When Creepy Carl told her to smile as he dropped off his rent check, her lips peeled back to the bone.

At home, she told Ben: I know about the girl you’ve been fucking for the last four months. Your intern. In our God damn bed.

Come on, baby, he said, it wasn’t like that.

But it was. She wouldn’t have her raw insides sheathed in lies. She slept in the guest room, on top of the blankets, oozing resentment.

From Guest Contributor Carrie Cook

Carrie received her MA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and is currently living in Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Columbia Review, Midwestern Gothic, Menacing Hedge, and Bartleby Snopes.

Ignominy

The oppressive dryness from the onboard heating joins forces with the mid-carriage intensity of the bus engine to agitate my Nor Loch-purchased nausea. I glare up the aisle at the convex miniature of the driver’s face trying not to think of anything stomach-related...or liquid...or food.

My teeth are Publius Horatius at the Sublicius Bridge: facing off against a more dreaded force than that of Clusium.

But bridges span rivers, and the guy next to me sipping spring water from a bottle of ostentatious brand summons images of the Tiber and spilt blood.

Bile breaks through and brings friends.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Drink

"Drink!"

Gunnar raised the cup to his lips, the sickening in his stomach impossible to ignore.

"Drink!"

Gunnar gagged down one more cup, a temporary respite from the bile in his throat.

"Drink!"

Gunnar could barely focus on his hand, let alone make out his fellow revelers. The entire universe had shrunk down to just him and his cup.

"Drink!"

There was echoing laughter as Gunnar collapsed to the floor. It sounded distant, like it was coming from another hall.

"Drink!"

Gunnar's final thought was that he hoped losing a battle with his cups was good enough to enter Valhalla.