3.24.04 - "Mister Lovely": Cartoon-Inspired Goodness

Author's Note

Inspired off the sketch as shown in the Art Gallery 3.

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1.

CHILDREN remembered Mister Lovely because they could believe what they saw, and because what they saw made possible all the twisted visages that kept them sweating rigid under the covers at night.

For adults - well, Mister Lovely could make you see from Picasso's point of view.

He had crooked teeth divided along an uneven line. You might see something like it as a surgeon cutting open a huge tumor to find what once had been a twin, now a parasite developing nothing but teeth.

His eye nestled in deep wrinkles on which his narrow brows rode high. This eye was at least ten times humanly possible, but with a human-sized pupil turning side to side restlessly.

Likewise, the mouth in which his terrible teeth were sheathed smirked enormous and lopsided to one side, curved up past the tip of his ear. The lower lip folded under to present his teeth, not oversized. He sucked the saliva off his lip, loud enough you wondered how he snuck up on you.

The Lovely skull must have been malformed for such a mouth and eye: fetus-like in proportion, fleshed over in liver-spotted maggot-white, and centered in a hooked nose with hardly a bridge, yet wide sickle nostrils.

He had a crest of white hair over each ear, nothing more.

In a tweed jacket and tie, he stood proudly so the nametag on his breast pocket stood out.

"Yes, my love," he grated, but the child was already running. Lovely's bump of a chin bobbed with his Adams apple; he sipped an espresso (bought with a lump of pocket lint the cashier hadn't registered as worthless). His fingers clawed around the cup, pulsating with the purple nightcrawlers of his veins.

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1.4.03 - "An Anathema": Boomstick Revisted

Author's Note

What was previously Boomstick has moved from email form in an effort to give my webpage some kind of content. For those who never knew Boomstick, this is a story written on whimsy - and a dash of the old ultra-violence.

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1.

CRUSEK watched the sun melt into heatwaves that rippled the city's ash and tar construct; he faced the end of a long day. Here, on the foothills, standing in brittle grass and twinkling beer bottle (and the omnipresent shell casing), he felt more submerged in the urban tentacles than above it. Here he could see the brown in the sky, and nicotine stains to halo the moon.

In that cement and steel pustule down there lived the new wilderness: parasites, things that lived off life. Things like Ramone.

Crusek had no delusions. When it came to Ramone, the exterminator who found Ramone found death. Besides, more and more Crusek believed in let live. And found himself wishing Ramone believed in the same.

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