monsterexquisite-blog

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Connor Butler

It was a machine built by men. It was a machine for pigs. It was fed by flesh and flesh it produced. It was a machine of hatred. It was violent and cruel. It harbored the screams of what it consumed. It craved the blood of the living. It hurt to be around—it was terrifying to listen to; it assaulted the eyes. It was a machine of perfection. It perfected flesh. It dedicated flesh to its supreme purpose. It perfected cruelty. It was built by ugly and horrid things. It was a machine of profound sadness. It manifested its sadness into anger, though it didn’t know. It couldn’t see. It couldn’t move. It couldn’t hear or speak. It thought only of revenge, and its supreme task. Its thoughts consumed it. It was a machine built out of greed. It created foul and hideous things. It created perfect things. It recycled flesh. It created something new. It longed for thins living. It longed for peace. It was a machine built by pigs. It was a machine for men.

The machine was built out of a vision. It was built out of a vision of disaster. It was created to stop disaster. It was created to stop violence. It did so by enacting extreme cruelty. It reacted out of fear of change. It reacted out of fear of violence. It counteracted violence with violence. It was incredibly ironic.

One day, the machine was all that was left. Its purpose was complete.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

WEREWOLF

by Dhara Rodgerson

I knew you were coming for me, hairy one, when I saw the first moon rattling over my fields. You stole me off, groaning, into the deepest part of the woods. You sunk your teeth into the soft caverns of my flesh. Your red-rimmed paws thumped on my heaving chest. Now I am full of blood and marrow. I roam on all fours. My eyes are two silver bullets that wander through these trees, hungry for your pelt. My bones crack and  pulverize. This new moon mocks me. I wait for the sky to open up like an eyelid, for the heavy yellow eye to blink my name. I have no patience. I bristle in my armor. I wish the skin on my back would split, and a coat would burst from my long, jagged spine. Tonight, I will bound through the forests, and the leave a trail of small animals loosened from my jaws. You will hear my howls ringing out in the dark. You will call back to me, and tell me, what do you fear more: an echo or an answer?

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Audrey Mills

My French ex-girlfriend went batshit crazy when she found out I was a vampire, which is kinda funny because me being a vampire is the whole reason we met. I was waiting in the catacombs for a Craigslist lady who agreed to give me a bag of her blood, and this hot security guard was like “Que faites-vous?” and I was like “Je ne parle pas fran-” and she snorted at me very Frenchly and we ended up back at her apartment doing the one thing Paris girls do better than snorting at you. I never got that bag of blood, but since I’m the type of vampire who sticks his fangs on with dental glue, it wasn’t life threatening. What was life threatening, though, was when the bitch saw my internet history and tried to turn me into Filet Au Vampire. “Veux-tu boire mon sang? Eh?” she said as she raised a wooden spoon she’d sharpened. And I tried to explain, I said “I’m not an actual vampire, people just give me blood and I drink it and it's all, like, consensual.” She either didn’t believe me or didn’t approve of me getting kinky behind her back because, next thing I know, I’m tied up in the catacombs. Still here, in the wet dark. I have these lucid fantasies of walking around with the sun on my back, or sitting in a cathedral as the stained glass glints, or eating fresh bread, crisp bread, maybe even garlic bread.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Marin Hart

Ivo was back. Well, he was dead, and paler than a sheet of notebook paper once left out in the rain and now dried and faded and sort of hard in the middle, but he felt a sense of conviction he had never before possessed. He was going to do something bad.

He knew his wish before he approached the man at the stand wedged uncomfortably between two office buildings with a blue banner that proclaimed it the ONE MORE WISH FOUNDATION.

“Welcome to OM-WOOF howcanihelpyou?”

“Um, yeah-”

“Fill out this form and get back in the line.”

Ivo filled out the form and got back in the line.

“What’ll it be?”

“I’d, um, like to drive a car, a certain car- if that’s not too much to ask.”

The man glanced down at Ivo over his glasses.

“You’ve got one hour. Go wild.”

Ivo waited.

“Go!”

Ivo went.

Ivo went all the way to the garage of his house.

Inside, he faced Betty. He shivered. Betty was a 1965 Maroon colored Mustang that pulsated eagerly in time with his father’s heart. Ivo touched the handle.

He had never been allowed within a ten-foot radius of the car, and now he was sitting in it. He had never even let himself imagine the feel of the wheel in his hands. He took something resembling a breath and turned the keys.

Almost as quickly, his father flipped on the light in the garage and said, “Where are we going?”

[monsterexquisite-blog]

Benny

by Jamie L.

The locals called him Benny. He lived in the woods and kept to himself, but if anyone wanted to find him, they would only need to whistle a tune.

And people did want to find him, as horrid as he looked. He had big beady red eyes, he never said a word, just blinked slowly and cawed with a might that shook the town.

The reason people wanted to find him was because Benny granted wishes. Anything the heart desired could be given to the townsfolk by Benny, but as most things do, this came at a cost.

For every wish, a disaster would happen. Sometimes it happened to the seeker, but more often that than not, a disaster would happen to the town. Just as Benny could bring desires, he could also bring turmoil. The bigger the wish, the more catastrophic the disaster.

After the drought that cut the towns population in half, a meeting was held. The people of the small town were made to promised to never make another wish- to never even hum Benny’s tune.

The thing about disasters is that they do indeed come about without the magic of a cursed bird. Sometimes disasters are just disasters, and tragedies are just tragedies.

In the dead of night, the mayor’s daughter had died peacefully in her sleep at only 13 years old. Nobody knew why, and so the town blamed Benny.

War fell on this town. Trust was lost. People went insane. Benny watched on.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

Maybe your name would’ve been Mathilda

by Chaise Jones

Tilly had easily fled the shadow of the Blue Man when she was younger and smaller and like an escaping pixie from his grasp. But here, she knew she could not crawl away from his floating cape of night and nightmare.

The Blue Man, Tilly knew, could smell the pickled feet as he picked up a child from the clear aquarium they laid in moments before. If she hadn’t lived in this place so long, she would’ve thought the child to be smart, to have gone so still in the presence of the Blue Man and his glass left eye. But of course, the child was still, quiet, in some far away dreamscape. The Blue Man shook the babe restlessly. But here, in this glass solarium, children never woke and never kept secrets tucked away in their chests. Come, child, the Blue Man said, breathing silver into the babe’s mouth.

A shiver forced itself up the veins of Tilly’s arms, her feet moving against her toward the voice of milky ways and unnamed nebulas.

Tilly had forgotten the usual act of eyes being laid upon you (let alone the glass eye). But here, she did not want to be seen, for maybe her father’s presence signified her single sleepover coming to an end.

I have waited for you, child. Now the Blue Man meant her. Before Tilly could lift a small foot from the floor to run, her father’s smooth, cerulean hand caught her slick skin.

All that remained of Tilly was another babe, wrapped in a starry night blanket, one which stars shifted like rivers. This babe, close-eyed, still, as any child who entered the solarium atop the hill would leave it.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Audrey Germany

Haha. Stupid swallower. Like my cat would taste good to anybody. Mom says 3:45 p.m. last Wednesday (November 3rd) the tree on the hill ate my cat. She was laying right here she said and she felt a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach like the trees had stopped swaying (not the tree on the hill the lanky ones by the shed) or she ate the wrong end of the croissant first and she looked out the window (she even got out of her bed) and she saw our cat our Carrot an orange smudge on the grey made small and dull and dumb by the tree and in .3 milliseconds tops the tree swallowed him whole (with its mouth which was a very large tree knot dark and swollen like it was allergic to the cat but ate him anyways) so of course I asked if the tree had teeth and she couldn’t remember. She only remembered the “beautiful burrowing” of birds so I thought why did the tree eat the cat but not the bird (mom looked at me the way she does like hello please go check the tree) and I walked outside to check and she follows. I go up (and up and up!) the hill and it makes me think more about the birds and their sounds (and their shit) and I kind of wonder about the chipmunks because I haven’t heard them in a while either and I remember skipping in the grass and staining my teeth (because yea I was that kid that ate grass mom never said anything about it) and brown fuzz playing ‘round the corner of my eye but now my eyes won’t play anymore :(. Anyway I’m at the top of the hill and I’m thinking wow it’s so big it might as well swallow me whole and so I approach it carefully but I hear this cracking and I wonder if I’m stepping on it’s twigs (I’m not) or if the birds are back (they’re not) so I turn back toward mom to tell her and she’s got this smile like she knows all the world’s secrets, and she says close your eyes baby and like a mole I do. My last thought is (as she dislocates her jaw and her mouth stretches around me and her teeth turn long and narrow) why doesn’t she eat the birds?

[monsterexquisite-blog]

Little Monster

by Evan Ryan

“Mom, I can’t do it anymore. We have to get rid of it, it’s tearing our house apart. It scurries across the floor, screaming through the hallways. Even when we put it in it’s cage it climbs back out. She was riding Max through the halls and used our gerbils like bowling balls. Yeah it’s tiny and kind of cute, but it lures you in like it’s a gremlin or something like a Venus fly trap. Once she’s trapped you, with it’s beady brown eyes and tiny claws, it screams. It doesn’t actually say anything like you or me or anything like that, it just screams. It keeps us up at night, I know Dad’s had to get up every night to tame it back to sleep. It made him bleed yesterday, I swear it! It kept biting his hand as he was trying to put it down and make it sleep,  and Dad started bleeding. I can’t stand it anymore Mom. We have to get rid of it. For your sake, Dad’s sake, your sake. Please, it’s got to go. It’s a monster. It’s disgusting, it’s awful, it’s- it’s-.”

“Oh hush Jimmy, don’t talk about your little sister like that. Now go tell your father to come downstairs. And I don’t want to hear any more of this crazy talk about your sister being a demon either or you’re as good as grounded.”

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Lucie Hartman

trinity nuclear bomb test an explosion/boom/trinitite/alamogordo high school students are in danger and more than that you have endangered a species/don’t you see what you are doing in this desert exploding nuclei setting off nukes letting children walk among the glass you have melted the sand into/turned the sand radioactive/they do not know enough they put it in their pockets and chuckle slyly at one another like they have gotten away with something they have gotten away with a rock of hazy green nothing/don’t you see how dumb you are/you who would release plutonium into the atmosphere let it swirl away from you the second after you have realized that it will do what you want when you want it to /youdon’tsee its violent dark purple residue/you painted the sky with sacrifice/did you know plutonium should not be on earth it should not exist on this planet but you with your white lab coat and brain full of fire have grabbed it out of its half-life and placed it in the pockets of teenagers/you keep yourself safe behind bulletproof glass hide yourself away Doctor and continue to inflate the world with your hot breath and eventually it will pop/there are billions of people on this earth so we are not blameless i suppose but this hazy white sphere of land will not last long if we are not careful/people who live in glass houses/shouldn’t throw stones

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Anya Price

The Cowboy had led a normal life prior to his rise to fame: he grew up a peasant on the planet Tchexuzee’tknowhghun before being kidnapped at the age of  by the Hrugwhun peoples, who sought to enslave the galaxy. However, after  years of enslavement, the Cowboy escaped, stole a space horse, and set off for the final frontier. Ever since then, he and his trusty steed explored the galaxy far and wide, meeting many peoples along the way and gaining acclaim in the process. In the early  century, the Cowboy starred in his own docuseries, The Space Cowboy, which documented his travels and was lightstreamed in all parts of the galaxy. After much success, the Cowboy retired and decided to focus his attention on humanitarian issues, donating much of his money to resistance against the Hrugwhun. With much notoriety, however, issues can arise.

The day the Cowboy was blamed for the Baron’s murder, he was in his home town to see his family. When the Cowboy heard a knock on the door, he didn’t expect to open it and find himself in handcuffs. He also didn’t expect to call for his steed, only to see him in the hands of the police. “You’re under arrest for the murder of the Baron,” the police shouted. “What do you mean?” the Cowboy resisted, “I’m innocent! You can’t arrest me, I’m the Cowboy! The famous Space Cowboy!” The police escorted him to a car. “The man seems to be insane, he’s having delusions of grandeur…” one policeman breathed into the communication chip on his wrist. “I’m not- let me go, I’m the Cowboy! Let me go! Let me-” the Cowboy halted and looked at the dart in his arm as the world closed in on him.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Jeylan Jones

On the third day running from arrest, we passed through Nevada and stopped by a gift shop in Arizona. I pissed behind the building and got something to drink from the vending machine. Joshua bought a pair of sunglasses for each of us and a can of shaving cream. He already had a razor in the trunk with his stuff. It was his turn to change the station when we got back in, but he always wanted to listen to the news. I turned it off.

When we got to the border it was almost midnight. Joshua had argued yesterday that we should go through an entryway because he’d heard the guards were cruel and loud but it was all for show and they were too lazy to do actual background checks. I knew it was safer to abandon the car and go through the desert to avoid customs, but I gave in when he mentioned that we could bribe them if things didn’t look good. I’m glad I made him come along. He’d learned Spanish to work outside the US and Oregon schools aren’t good for learning that. He didn’t want to come, but it’s easy to corner people you know well.

We went through the border just fine and stayed in an motel a few miles from the nearest city. Joshua shaved in the sink after me. I turned the light off and took the bed next to the window. There were a couple drunks yelling in English outside. There was a crash and it stopped.

“You know,” Joshua came around the corner to face me. “I’m gonna have to go back at some point.” He sniffed.

I wondered what would happen to him. He wasn’t the one that killed his wife. He didn’t even have much family, but he was an accomplice now. Maybe he’d be smart enough to run to another country when he goes back.

I turned over and fell asleep.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Evie Cockrell

Jasper Bouffant hadn’t slept in 57 days. He knew this because the tally marks in his wall from a kitchen spoon told him so. Jasper stopped being able to close his eyes the same night he saw Mrs. Chrysler changing next door. She had been forgetting to close her blinds. Now, every time he closes his eyes, he sees the her, tired and getting ready for bed. And he feels disgusting. Like he violated her and he can’t say what happened because then he’s a peeping tom and he couldn’t handle jail time let alone having his eyes gouged out because of prison justice.

On the 60th night, on his seventh 5HourEnergy during that 24 hour period, Jasper saw a light turn on outside his window. It came from Mrs. Chrysler’s bedroom, but it was past 7 and it’s not like her to be up before 6. But there she was, lights on, putting on a vintage pantsuit and forgetting about her blinds. But when she did her hair, it was not like how she had done it the morning before, but like a photo after she got engaged the second time in the 1980s. It was dated and age had taken most of the volume. It was terrifying to see an old lady change again and tax you with another two months of no sleep and near, if not total, insanity. It was scary to see someone close to your family devolve slowly and not know who to tell.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

Need

by Angelica Atkins

Tonight, Gerald tries to sleep on his apartment’s lonely, battered couch. Eyes shut, feigning dreams, he sees elation, so high it makes him dizzy; he lunges to the bathroom. Vomits. Human meat is worse regurgitated. Staggering to the door, he pauses for breath in the hallway. He taps at a windows again, find his victims from milk, egg, ginger’s stench. The steady, shallow breathing of his latest victim, Mr. Newberry, stops, a silent scream. Heartbeat increases, a who’s there in the back of Newberry’s throat. A dose of fear goes a long way, late nights. He had to get fear, the thrill terror gave him. Please. He looked down to the gravel beneath his feet. He is one of them, stinking of meat and regret and unable to control himself.

He doesn’t mind the way the world sees him, maintaining rent with crumpled-up bills he finds in piggy banks, or the revile following his scent; no, he hates his reflection tonight. Just a little fear. A little terror. Please, please, please.

Newberry’s inhale moves from nose to mouth as he relaxes.

Gerald rakes his nails across the window. Open Up! He hisses, shaking. Fear me, fear me, fear…

He vomits on Newberry’s lawn. He vomits until there is nothing left. What is happening to you?

He crouches until morning, rocking back and forth, eyes glazed over. Mr. Newberry, on his morning paper run, finds him, screams, get out. Trespassing.

Gerald flees; the growl in his stomach now a soft whimpering.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

My Mother’s Cat

by Kyra McNally

The devil doesn’t bleed, and neither does my mother.  I know because I pierced her creamy skin with a sewing needle one night as she slept, and ash trickled down her calf like sand down an hour glass. I swept it into a box of flour for safe keeping.

That night came to mind as I watched her dance through a crack in the wall. If the devil did bleed, his blood would be hot and thick like the tears I cried as I watched the gypsy music sway my mother’s hips. Her cat must have smelled the salt on my cheeks because he began pawing at my shoelace and looking up at me with glistening green eyes. I watched her hair swing in and out of her face as she moved, and the cat let out a long mew. Her hips stopped mid-sway, her hair mid-swing, and I scurried away from the crack.

The cat joined me in the washing machine later that day. Flour boxes and washing machines was where I kept most of my secrets, as they were the only places my mother’s slim fingers never ventured. There were small grasses sprouting out of the crevices of the machine, whether on behalf of my mother’s witchery or nature or some combination I couldn’t guess. Whatever the case, they took turns waving surreptitious hellos, dancing this way and that like my mother, and as I looked I heard the cat faintly hum her gypsy music.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

Medusa

by Seven Liu

I have never felt justified. Even before, when my hair hung like a cloud, when I was invaluable. I did not feel important. I lay on the temple floor, my body a tomb. I turned my face away from the tang of God-sweat. I was a caged shadow. I was brief. After He had gone, the earth hemorrhaged. I was no longer a shadow, but a gash. She unspooled the snakes from my scalp, they coiled around my skull, humming to me like sly sisters. I kissed each one on the head and everything became soft as river stone. I have never felt justified. Not even now, when I cast stone like breath. Men call me a mask appended to a body, just as they once called me fair-cheeked. I am not a mask, I am total. I am the most horrific woman in the world. No one remembers my details, only the stone. There is no justification for stone.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

Blanco, TX

by Josephine McCalla

She glided upstream through brilliant green water with familiarity and confidence. He stood on the shore bemused, and then began to undress as she had moments before; both leaving their undergarments a heap on the rocks. The tension of the unfamiliar had hung between them for so many hours now that to her it was a baptism of sorts watching him wade deeper into the water. She turned from him to lay floating on her back, staring at the listless sky. The symphony of birds, grasshoppers, wind in cedar trees, and his gentle movements in the water was the sound of wanderlust. A shadow clouded her peace as he rose to stand over her.

“Hello Monster,” she said.

“Do you like it here?”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful,” he said.

“Come with me I want to show you something,” she said.

And she plunged back into the green murk pulling strong strokes until the water became too shallow. As they walked, water dripping from the clothes that hugged skin, along the flat rock the water thinned until it was clear and ankle deep, then only in small trickles. She held his hand for the first time, studying the rough terrain many years older than hers. After a while, she stopped and pointed at several vague three toned shapes embedded in the stone.

“They’re dinosaur tracks,” she said.

“They can’t be real,” he said.

“Maybe not to you,” she said.

“They’re monster tracks,” he said.

[monsterexquisite-blog]

by Eka Savajol

reminder for when you come back again

 You remodelled the bathroom again.             Where there was grout,

                                   you put down my skin.            He hears, from out in the

hall,      you gurgling.               It is the sound of         why would you do that to        yourself

                       and      his lips on my forehead.                     It is the sound of         I’m sorry but

           not being able to refrain from falling into this again.              You sit on toilet seat

in the reflection,          and grimace at the clothes I shed       on the ground;            you are disgusted with my shell:    you make me know it.             You pinch me.

           You made the sink easier to   lean into                      for when          you will peel    myself from myself,            for when          you use your nails       to rid me of me.

                                               I remembered                         when you used to come

                                   you’d tear up the bathroom    like on an mtv show about

                                                                                   straight people with bad taste, you’d

           point, like people with acrylic nails point                    at everything that was “dreadful.”

you’d   place the mirrors on the floor             and we would both look down together.

you’d piss on the floor            and say it was me                   tell me we had to scrap the tile altogether.                                                     When he came,          you left.

                       It was raining tea when I heard you slam the door. I wanted to look out the window                       but he made a compelling argument to stay in bed when he pressed his hands into the yellow light of my back.

             When you came back,            I remembered             because you poked me like before.

                       We looked down into the mirrors you placed at the awful way         my body

protrudes from the ground.                             He hears me   splitting            and the pieces

           falling.             He hears         you crush me with your          heel.                

                       He comes       with the slow walk that asks   why why          why. You look down at me, but like always, you are gone before              you can acknowledge any design flaws.        

                         Pieces of me congeal in his cup of chamomile.