Glorious Gastro

I’m having withdrawal symptoms from this thing, it’s been so long since I last posted. Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately, ES and I were both being turned inside out by the most beautiful of common ailments: gastro.

I’m talking the “forget about wiping, just dab at it and wait for the tears to dissipate” variety. On the long road to finally being able to eat (and dispose) of solid foodstuffs again, there wasn’t much excitement – and virtually nothing worth retelling here.

Today, I’m sending out two more stories to the great and ruthless maw of the publishing world: “Homecoming” and “The Consummation”.

I’m not sure where “HC” will find a home: it’s a snippet from three lives interrupted – one permanently – by the unexpected reality that metal planes aren’t actually meant to be in the sky. But the implied content involves child molestation – personally, the most horrific thing I can imagine – and, although it’s never expressly mentioned, just strongly hinted at, I somehow think the small-markets will shrink away from it. So I’m going to send it deliberately to the small-market, non-paying presses. Scary, huh?

“The Consummation” needs to find an adult market, purely because it features sexual content and I wouldn’t want a nun having an aneurysm by unsuspectingly stumbling across it while she’s surfing (or, maybe that’s exactly what I have in mind). “TC” will be my first submission to HorrorGarage, which specializes in adult fare.

As promised, however, here’s the first installment in a longer short story for your amusement. As you can see, I think my particular influence is quite clear.

I don’t think it’s all that good – essentially, below is just a set-up for the actual events of the story. But, trust me, it was hard to sit on anything that didn’t have a hole in it at the time of writing.

If you like it, great! Let me know, and I’ll make sure the next part is up here ASAP. If you don’t…

Well, not that great! But let me know anyway. The majority rules in this case, and if I have more nays than yays, “Lambs” will just re-circulate and serve as title for a different story (because I like the ring to it).

Again, I ask that if you enjoy this story and want to refer some of your mates to it, or post it on your own website – go ahead by all means. My conditions are always the same: have the courtesy to acknowledge me for my work and please send me your URL so I can visit it.

If you steal my work, may the fleas of a million camels dig their way to the subcutaneous fat of your genitalia, where they will make sweet love to each other and perform dark, sacred rituals involving your innards and a block of blue cheese.

And, on that note, here’s:





Lambs of God (Part 1)
By Sean James Bosman

Everyone expected flames. They said that was foretold. We’d all go to one last barbeque and it would all be over: our precious economic systems, our petty politics.

Maybe it’s because that’s what we expected that it didn’t happen that way. But the collapse of everything we’d known had been just as total as the Doomsayers had predicted.

Trumpets didn’t herald the end. No horsemen stood atop a grinning down at their handiwork.

It started as gastro. The first symptoms were the same. Fever. Stomach cramps.

But the fever didn’t stop. It climbed and climbed. People turned ashen. Waxy complexions broke into puss-filled blisters. Rashes formed around mouths. Eyes sank back into pulpy orbits so black they were nothing more than bruises.

Then came the convulsions. Coughs started to tear away lung lining and breath smelled of rot.

After days of burning up, the healthy and the weak alike were reduced to swollen bags of liquefied internal organs.

Doctors joined their patients, collapsing over gurneys in Emergency Rooms across the country. We watched as production assistants who knew how to hold microphones properly replaced all the familiar correspondents. They also started dropping like flies.

The number of assaults skyrocketed. A bus driver bludgeoned one old lady to death after she’d coughed on him and refused to disembark until she’d arrived at her stop. Irate patrons at a fast food joint drowned a shop assistant in the deep fryer for not wearing gloves.

Some lunatics took it upon themselves to hold people up – not with firearms, but with syringes filled with their blood.

Conspiracy theories hit the Internet and spread almost as quickly as the virus. Surely someone had to be behind this chaos?

Our health systems failed. Hospitals collapsed under the immense influx. Refugees from the north broke over the border, swarming in droves to the perceived hope our city lights had to offer. Xenophobia flared. Foreigners blamed locals, locals blamed foreigners and soon civil war broke out in the areas where there were enough survivors to form cadres.

Researchers and lobbyists became targets-of-the-week. The most notable: a researcher from the University of Johannesburg. Every inch of his naked body had been jabbed with empty hypodermics before he’d been crucified and mounted above the M1 / N12 Interchange.

Those who were still healthy boarded themselves in their houses. Some starved to death. Others French kissed their Smith and Wessons.

Traffic noise died down. The pall of smog around the city slowly dissipated.

Electricity service centers collapsed. Our power went out for the last time on the night of the seventeenth of March. No one knew how to fix them.

I had holed up in my duplex in Randburg. My family and I were safe as long as we never wondered outside.

It was going to be fine. That’s what I told my son five hours before he finally gave in and liquidized in my arms. His mother followed him two days later.

With nothing left, I opened the door and walked off into the night, setting my place alight as I left. Perhaps fire was what we’d actually deserved.

***

Fletcher picked me up later that night.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d walked along the N1 until my knees folded under me. Lying on the cold tarmac, I’d sobbed, marveling at how I could hear myself. The headlights washed over me, throwing my shadow far ahead of me.

The rattling Toyota purred next to me as his heavy work boots stepped into view. A flashlight blinded me as he went to his haunches, grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head back.

His silhouette leaned in towards me.

“You’re not ill.” His voice was deep and gruff. He spoke to himself more than to me. I shook my head, his grasp bringing fresh tears to my eyes.

I tried to stand. His thick arm wrapped over my shoulder and he lifted me, grunting under my weight. Without another word, he dragged me to the 4x4, opened the passenger door and flopped me into the cabin.

When he climbed in, he handed me a bottle of water.

“Drink this,” he offered.

I didn’t know I was thirsty until the first sip. As I tossed back my head, he grabbed the bottle from me, cranking over the engine at the same time.

“Not so fast, you’ll get sick… Normal sick, I mean.”

The truck lurched forward, he ground through gears and we started up the way I’d been heading.

My head lolled back against the window. As the dark hills rolled by, I slipped away to watch Gary twitch in my arms again, as blood ran black from his ears and nostrils.

***

The first of them arose.