I Bring Her Diamonds. My Hands Are Full Of Them

I bring her diamonds. My hands are full of them.

“Please,” she sobs heavily, “stop coming back.”

I had no money for diamonds, once.

When my car crashed, the exploding windshield sent diamonds rushing deep into me – my eyes, throat, hands – all shining in the moonlight. The pain was overwhelming. And then it stopped. And all I could think was I finally had something to give her.

Every full moon I come to her porch at midnight, to show her how they shine in my open hands. But every time she only holds her head and softly cries.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan

The Toxins in All My Pores

My name was Dr. Jillian Fisk. My specialty was genetically engineered marine invertebrates.

When Dr. Gardner stole my research grant, I was reduced to testing myself as a subject. I couldn’t know the altered hemocytes -- the experimental "jelly cells" -- would multiply everywhere within me.

I find Dr. Gardner and embrace him, smoothly, wordlessly, wetly. His face scalds in my translucent hands. The toxins in all my pores scorch his skin there. My gelatinous tongue fills his throat, ruptures his stomach.

I rise, bioluminescent. DR.JELLYFISH.

All the world will know the scent of salt, the sting of soft skin.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan

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

Hungry Hannah

"HUNGRY HANNAH EATS REAL FOOD!" I thought all robotic dolls were creepy, but my twin daughters loved that commercial.

And they loved Hannah.

At least until tonight. Tonight I find the babysitter's back gnawed down to her spine. Karen lays legless, dead mid-scream, a broken doll herself. Samantha's face is chewed to tattered strips of scarlet skin -- wet ribbons staining hectic red hieroglyphs across the carpet. Her eyes and scalp are gone.

I find Hannah looking up at me. Her painted eyes are flat black coins. Her plastic teeth, still moving, are soaked in violent crimson.

"Feed me," she bleats.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan