The Final Cut

Round 2 of Flash Fiction Contest
Prompts: Genre-Horror; Location-Abandoned Apartment Building; Object: Pepper Spray
48 hours to create an original story under 1000 words.

The Final Cut

Bringing a baby into the world is messy business.

I only did it because I needed the money. The other guys, well, they needed money too, but they were greedy SOBs. For me, it meant keeping my fingers intact. Fingers that Perroni’s thugs promised would be chopped off, one for each day I was late repaying my debt. If I was going to be a vascular surgeon, I needed my hands. My gargantuan student loads could wait; the Perroni brothers couldn’t. Carlos and Vick didn’t care that I had 90 days in Gamblers Anonymous and hadn’t played the ponies or visited my bookie in over three months. When my GA sponsor told me to clean up “the financial wreckage of my past,” I don’t think he meant by illegally harvesting organs.

But accountability comes with a price. I could wield a scalpel better than most seasoned MDs and certainly good enough to remove organs from desperate folks willing to give up a kidney for $10,000 a pop, which we sold for five times that much, easy.  The other two yahoos, Jack and Dan, were still in med school and failing miserably. How they sold the stuff on the black market was not my business. My job was to cut ’em up, sew ’em up, and get ’em out alive.

When Dan spilled how much dough we could rake in for each procedure, I jumped. A handful of surgeries and I’d be free and clear. I told him I required a sterile environment and enough propranolo to knock out an elephant. And that was just for me. So they bought a hospital-grade generator, trucked in water by hand, and conjured up an operating room straight out of M*A*S*H in an abandoned apartment building near Holy Trinity, a teaching hospital in south Philly. Dan gave me a pager to let me know when it was show time.

The night I got my last page was cold as it was dark. I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and knocked twice at apartment 414. I counted to five and gave the door three sharp raps. Inside the small apartment, Jack was prepping the donor’s arm for an IV. I usually avoided looking at them until they were under. There was nothing in those hopeless eyes I wanted to see.

“What’s this one’s story?” I asked Dan, whose head was buried behind a laptop. 

“Female, 28, wants to sell her kidney…” Dan hesitated. “And that’s not all.”

I craned my neck around. On the operating table was an average-looking blonde covered with a plastic sheet, her face eclipsed by a belly as big as Vesuvius and about as close to erupting.

“No fucking way,” I said. “No C-sections.” Besides, there was something about her that gave me the creeps.

“Nothing’s gonna go wrong. Look, she’s a needle chaser who wouldn’t be able to care for a kid anyway,” Dan argued. “We’d be doing her a favor. Plus, the payoff is huge—$50 grand each, plus an extra $10,000 if the baby is white.” With fifty thou I could pay off my debt and quit this gig.

“I need to examine her,” I said. I rounded the table and, for the first time in five operations, looked square in the donor’s face. A rush of icy air enveloped me. I shivered and looked down. “Who opened the goddamn window?” I barked.

“Buddy, there are no windows in here,” Dan countered. I took a deep breath and brought my eyes up. I recognized her in an instant. She had gone to a couple of meetings and shared some crap about the apocalypse and some badass named Beelzebub. We figured she was either bat-shit crazy or a Jesus freak whacked out on crystal.

She met my gaze and her eyes sparked, but not with recognition or fear, something else. It was hunger, and not the kind a homeless guy has when he’s about to dig into a free meal. It was primitive and eternal. I involuntarily took a few steps back, the hair on my neck standing at full attention.

The room spun. I held onto the instrument tray to steady myself. “She’s not healthy enough for this procedure,” I lied. But the waver in my voice gave me away.

“Sure she is,” Jack said and slipped the needle into her vein. Her eyes rolled back as the halothane hit her brain. “And you are going to perform the surgery.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a handgun and a canister of pepper spray.

“Jack, take it easy,” Dan urged.

A guttural moan rose from the table. A thin bluish-pink tongue snaked in and out of her mouth, even though she was pumped with enough dope to stun a rodeo bull.

“This is so wrong,” I said, seized by a nameless terror. “I’m outta here.” Before I could reach the door, Jack blasted me with pepper spray. The capsaicin burned as it coated my face and lungs. I instinctively fought the air with my hands.

Jack grabbed his gun and cocked it. “Tie him up,” he ordered, tossing Dan a rope. Dan reluctantly secured me to a wooden chair.

“It’s gonna happen, with him or without him,” Jack spat, nodding my direction. “People are expecting a baby and, by god, we’re going to produce one.”

Overhead, the lights buzzed and flickered. In my haze, I saw a dark shape hover over the sedated woman.

“Dooon’t!” I slurred.

 “Okay, here we go,” Jack whispered. With a swift motion he drew the scalpel from navel to pubic bone. As he parted the abdominal muscle, an unearthly howl bubbled up from the amniotic sac. “Holy mother of God!” Jack shrieked. “What the hell ….”

Those were Jack’s final words, but his tortured screams raged for several minutes as jagged, razor-sharp teeth separated flesh from bone. After a time, the sucking, slurping, and crunching were replaced by the soft coo of a satiated newborn. 

The Remembering Group 1, Challenge 2

Round 1/Challenge 2
Prompts: Genre-Horror/Location-Crowded Beach/Object-Fanny Pack
Challenge: Write a 1000-word original story in 48 hours incorporating the prompts

Disclaimer: This is quite graphic, so if you're squeamish, might not be for you. 

The Remembering

A man emerges from temporary amnesia and rediscovers his true nature.

The midday sun burns fresh scars into his already seared skin. A bead of sweat trickles from beneath the nest of matted hair and slips into the corner of his eye. The sting of salt from his own body wakes him. He is curled up like an embryo in the soft sand, his hands around his ears shielding him from the screams of tow-headed toddlers playing tag with the surf. From this fetal position he watches the sidewise swell of god-fearing Americans trample the beach as Southern California cities spill clean in celebration. A swirl of red, white and blue assaults his eyes as well-muscled young men near the water’s edge toss a striped football in perfect spirals. 

He forces himself upright and leans against the sea wall. He doesn’t know how he ended up on this beach on this day in the middle of summer’s gut. He gingerly rubs his head and feels the scab through a tangle of blonde blackened with dried blood. His pulse quickens as the hazy imprint of cat-and-mouse stamps down on some dark corner of his primitive brain. He lost his footing at one point and tumbled backward against pavement. That much he remembers. But was he prey or was he predator in the game?

He licks his chapped lips. Ragged red high tops stuffed with socks lay next to his bare feet. He unfolds the wadded-up black jacket he used as a pillow and reads the label. Member’s Only. He takes a deep intake of air. His caked nostrils flare at the aroma of squeaky-clean families with their Coppertone and buckets of fried chicken.

“Hey, is this yours?”

A freshly polished toe nudges the fanny pack half buried in the sand about a foot away. He looks up and squints, blinded by the bright July sky. He sniffs. She is about 14 and on her period.

“I don’t know.”

“Fucking retard,” she mutters under her breath and strides off. Her scent lingers and he breathes it in. His stomach rumbles.

He unearths the worn leather bag and places it on his lap. The zipper is crusted with fine sand. He works it down about two inches and stops. A shot of adrenalin pumps into his heart. He’s not sure if he’s frightened or aroused, but whatever he’s feeling it has his full attention. He exhales and pulls the zipper the rest of the way. The ripping sound exhilarates him as tiny metal teeth tear apart. He closes his eyes and reaches in. He feels the cool weight of a child’s bracelet and involuntarily shivers as he runs his fingers over the precious stones embedded into the smooth silver surface. Turquoise. An image flashes then disappears.

He takes out the bracelet and appreciates its delicate shape as recollection forms, slow, just how he likes it in the beginning before it crescendos and falls away. She was young—the girl—still in single digits and surprisingly strong for a skinny little thing. His mind rapidly tunnels into the memory and twists around two brunette braids hanging from a rear view mirror. They were attached to part of a scalp he cured in iodized salt. A flush of calm soothes him as he recalls the kill. He had gone to the library and studied up on tanning small animal hides. She wasn’t much bigger than a jackrabbit anyway.

“First you get all the flesh and fat off it and salt good for a full day,” a trapper had chronicled. “Extract the brain out of the animal, mash it up and add half a cup of water, then rub it in.” It was called ‘brain tanning.’ Only buffalos don’t have enough brain to cover their own hides, the trapper concluded.

He remembers how it felt when he popped open her cranium. She was lying face up on a coroner’s table he bought at a medical supply auction. Blood from the kill pooled around the torso and dribbled along delicate arms hanging loosely from the aluminum slab. He had dislocated the shoulder and hip joints right after the trapping so she couldn’t get away. As he brought down the skill saw, she jerked and opened brown eyes the color of earth and he missed his target. He thought she was dead, but she wasn’t quite. He strapped her down. It was too late. His hunger raged.

This was the first brain he took while the fawn was alive and he liked it. There were many after. He liked the idea of a still-firing brain pulsing in his hands. He imagines they are thinking about him as the synapses shut down.

A few steps away a fresh fawn bleats. “Mommy, you’re going too fast! Hey, that’s really pretty, mister!" He smiles and stretches out his hand. In his palm, a bracelet twinkles in the sunlight.

Flash Fiction Round 1 Challenge 1 Swamp

Flash Fiction Contest

Round 1/Challenge 1

Prompts: Genre-Romantic Comedy/Location-Swamp/Object-RV

48 hours to write an original 1000-word story incorporating the above

Only the Swamp Will Set You Free
A cougar releases her prey and returns to her former hunting grounds.

The first time you hear about The Swamp you are waiting in the express line at a grocery store just off I-35, 20 miles shy of Dallas. You thumb through an issue of More magazine plucked from a rack next to a mountain of Snickers bars on sale two for a dollar. You fantasize about shoving a buck’s worth into your mouth. But you don’t pick up because you’ve got a hot young guy waiting for you in the RV who likes his sugar mamas sweet but svelte.

You snap out of your sugar jones long enough to silently curse the SOB ahead of you who has clearly ignored the14-items-or-less shoppers’ etiquette honor system. You mentally scan your basket and wonder if eggs are considered one item or 12 items and if free-range hens really have it better than hens in pens and that you forgot pens for the dry-erase calendar in the RV and how dry you feel between your legs since you entered menopause and that the odds of someone wanting to be between those legs are about 12 to one and whether a dozen eggs constitute one item in the express line. You wish your neurons were like breadcrumbs you could trace to find your way back to pre-menopause mental clarity.

Behind you, a couple of 40-something locals dish on last night’s drama at the neighborhood bar. 

“Y’all know somethin’ ain’t right with that trollop Missy Mae,” says a rotund blonde. Her fingernails are adorned with tiny confederate flags. You fight rolling your eyes.

“Her bein’ at Swamp is like, um, is like a tadpole tryin’ to jump a river log,” her girlfriend says with almost forgivable earnestness.

“Lawd knows, my man likes his women with a little life on them, not skinny and green as grass when it comes to lovin.’”

You pay for your groceries and walk across the parking lot. You think about the bouquet of lavender, lilies and sunflowers you will set out with tonight’s dinner when they hook up at Camp n’ Cruise Motorhome Haven in Roulette, Louisiana. You will leave the flower arranging to Nathan. He’s so much better at it.

“Hey gorgeous, whatja bring me?” Nathan says. He bounces down the RV steps and greets you with a bright smile. The new veneers your soon-to-be-ex-husband paid for glisten in the sun.

“Stuff,” you say. “Let’s get on the road.” You feel people looking at you, judging your 25-year age difference. You feel that way a lot lately.

You pull back onto I-35 and settle into your happy place—a freeway trance.

“Let me rub your sexy neck and shoulders, gorgeous. You seem tense,” Nathan gushes. You wonder if he remembers your real name or if he calls all his older women “gorgeous.” Must be less taxing on those struggling synapses.

“Mmmmm, that feel good, gorgeous?” the man-boy Adonis asks.
You don’t respond. You are fixated on a road sign. HAPPY HOUR ALL DAY. CHIPPENDALE BARTENDERS. EROTIC ENCOUNTERS. GO AHEAD. LET YOUR COUGAR OUT AT THE SWAMP.

“Punch The Swamp into the GPS,” you demand.

“Sure thing, gorgeous!” Nathan chirps. You wish he would stop talking. Forever.

You get off at the next exit and follow the instructions. It’s not far. You turn a corner and there it is. The Swamp, a mossy green building with gold trim and brass signage.

“What are we doing, beautiful?” You marvel at the new word Nathan’s learned.

“We are going to grab a drink,” you say.You take up three parking spots with your Road Warrior and you don’t care. You’ve earned it.

You push through the doors with Nathan at your heels. The place is lousy with prowling well-to-do middle-aged women and virile, penny-less post-college guys looking to hook up and work through mommy complexes with as little out of pocket as possible. 

“Cool!” Nathan blurts out. He appears to be in his element. You are not so sure.

Above the bar, the day’s drink specials are scrawled in elaborate pink chalk: Black Cohosh Cosmo and Estro-Jello Shots.

“I don’t get it,” Nathan says, his blue eyes confused beneath perfectly shaped brows.

You sigh. “It’s a play on menopause because this is a cougar bar. You know, hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings .... kind of swampy?” 

You lose interest in Nathan as you discover a fresh Helga, your term for the embarrassing chin hairs that began sprouting about a year ago. This one feels massive — a mean-spirited, menacing follicle with a shaft the size of a coax cable.

“I’ll be right back,” you say, emergency tweezers clutched in your clammy hand. In the bathroom, you elbow your way to the mirror between other aging beauties yanking out Helgas of their own or engaging in some other ritual designed to ward off the inevitable.

You return to the bar and see Nathan whispering to a sexy bartender with a crew cut and no shirt. His eight-pack abs rise and fall as he laughs to something Nathan said. Their heads, still full with the mane of youth, almost touch as the bartender slips Nathan a piece of paper, then traces his thumb lightly along Nathan’s muscular forearm before flipping a bottle of Stoli high into the air to the delight of a badly dyed brunette with a soccer-mom bob.

Nathan is still eyeing the bartender when you sneak out the side door of The Swamp. You are free of your midlife crisis. You’ve flirted and fucked and fondled and are finally finished.

You say out loud, “Call Oscar.” The hands-free system dials and after a few rings a raspy cigar-stained voice answers. “Claire? Where are you?”

“I am leaving the swamp — don’t ask. I miss you.”

“I miss you too. Come home, kitten. Come home to dry land.”