Splatterpunk Fighting Back Read online

  Splatterpunk

  Fighting Back

  A Charity Anthology

  Edited by

  Jack Bantry & Kit Power

  Published by

  SPLATTERPUNK ZINE

  Cover illustration © 2017 Dan Henk

  Introduction © 2017 Jack Bantry

  They Swim By Night © 2017 Adam Millard

  Melvin © 2017 Matt Shaw

  Extinction Therapy © 2017 Bracken MacLeod

  The Passion of the Robertsons © 2017 Duncan Ralston

  Hellscape © 2017 Rich Hawkins

  Molly © 2017 Glenn Rolfe

  Only Angels Know © 2017 George Daniel Lea

  Limb Memory © 2017 Tim Curran

  Feast of Consequences © 2017 WD Gagliani & Dave Benton

  The Going Rate © 2017 John Boden

  Darla’s Problem © 2017 Kristopher Rufty

  All rights reserved.

  For the splatter punks

  Contents

  Introduction

  They Swim by Night - Adam Millard

  Melvin - Matt Shaw

  Extinction Therapy - Bracken MacLeod

  The Passion of the Robertsons - Duncan Ralston

  Hellscape - Rich Hawkins

  Molly - Glenn Rolfe

  Only Angels Know - George Daniel Lea

  Limb Memory - Tim Curran

  Feast of Consequences – WD Gagliani & Dave Benton

  The Going Rate – John Boden

  Darla’s Problem – Kristopher Rufty

  Introduction

  In the 5 years I've been doing Splatterpunk Zine I have discovered a wonderful community of writers and artists. Even though I haven't met many in person, I would consider them friends. They’re a bunch of like-minded people passionate about what they do. They’re also nice people. We can all hide behind a facade on social media, but people's true-selves come out when dealing with real life issues, which we encounter on a daily basis. Most of these issues don't affect us on a personal level, but are world issues, and I find my "friends" speaking up for these issues and helping people on a social level. Now, we’ve got together and we’re fighting back for a great cause.

  We, myself and Kit, have constructed this anthology. It means a lot to us and it's in aid of a charity which is close to both our hearts. Cancer touches all of us in some way and we are going to donate all the royalties from the sales of the anthology to a Cancer Support charity. All the writers have contributed a new story and Dan Henk has produced a full colour painting, which Mike has turned into a book cover. All the contributors have donated free of payment. We can’t thank them enough for their generosity and every penny made after printing costs will be donated to the charity.

  I'd also like to say a big thanks Kit for helping me with the project. It's made doing it much easier and he's a lot better at editing than I am! Finally thank you to everyone who has bought a copy, I hope you all enjoy the stories you’re about to read. Working on the zine and doing this anthology has proved to me what a good community we are part of. I am proud to know you all.

  Jack Bantry

  They Swim by Night - Adam Millard

  “The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.”

  – Walter Savage Landor

  Alex stared down at the plastic cup with confusion. To the bartender, who was wiping spilled beer from the counter with a filthy rag, he said, “You’ve got to be shitting me.” He’d never enjoyed drinking from plastic beakers; it corrupted the beer, as far as he was concerned, gave it a nasty synthetic tang.

  The bartender, who looked as if he’d dropped a tenner and found a quid, grunted and threw the wet rag down onto the bar. “You’ll be grateful the cups are plastic in about ten minutes,” he said, nodding in the direction of the stage, upon which several large men wearing black tee-shirts were clearing up after the last act—some generic indie-rock group called Meskaline—removing amplifiers and drums at a leisurely pace.

  Alex watched them for a moment through a fug of cigarette smoke. “Why?” he asked, eyes still trained upon the stage as it underwent its gradual transformation. “Don’t tell me you’ve booked some shitty heavy metal band.” The room certainly wasn’t large enough to accommodate crowd-surfers, mosh-pits and the like. There was barely room to swing a cat, let alone a guitar, a la Status Quo.

  Behind the bar, the large man grinned. His teeth were uneven, discoloured tombstones buried in his gums. “Just a girl,” he said, leaving it at that and walking away, disappearing through a low wooden door at the back of the bar.

  “Just a girl,” Alex said, mimicking the bartender’s tone and somewhat discourteous attitude. He picked up his drink, took a long draught, and turned to face the stage once again.

  The bar—Killion’s—was quiet for a Friday night, Alex thought, which might have had something to do with its location at the edge of the city. Less than half-a-mile away, pubs, bars, and nightclubs would be filled to capacity as DJ’s worked their esoteric magic and doormen wedged themselves into entrances far too small for them in order to prevent the admittance of undesirables.

  Killion’s, on the other hand, didn’t go in for all that security nonsense, at least Alex had not encountered anything like a doorman on his way in a little over an hour ago; Killion’s could ill afford to turn people away, judging by the barrenness of the venue. Even on a Friday night, with three bands on the bill—one of which was ‘just a girl’ according to the asshole tending bar—they had failed to garner the attention of more than a dozen patrons, Alex included.

  He decided to finish his plastic-infused beer and head into the city, before he became one of the undesirables the doormen just loved to keep out.

  “You ever seen her before?”

  Such was the unexpectedness of the voice that Alex almost turned and punched its owner. A man of around sixty, whose salt-and-pepper hair matched his beard, had sidled up to him at the bar, an empty plastic beaker in one palsied hand.

  “Excuse me?” Alex now found himself wishing he’d left five minutes ago, for there was nothing more banal and pointless than a half-slurred conversation with a complete stranger.

  The man smiled, tapped his empty beaker down loudly on the bar three times and awaited the return of the bartender. “The girl! Ana! The singing girl!” He motioned excitedly toward the now-deserted stage.

  Alex shook his head, swallowed more of his beer, and said, “I haven’t seen her. Is she any good?” The door at the other side of the room looked so near, and yet so far away.

  “Is she… is she any good?” said the man with frank incredulity, shocked that Alex should not know of Ana, the singing girl. “Boy, are you in for a treat! Ana has the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard. It’s like… it’s like being raped by a hundred supermodels all at once.”

  “That good, huh?” Alex couldn’t help but snigger at the old man’s surprising analogy. Ana surely had a lot to live up to now.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” The old man looked offended; had Alex unintentionally affronted the guy?

  Fuck him, Alex thought. I didn’t ask him to come over here and start jabbering in my fucking ear. And yet there was something inherently sad about the man now, as if all he’d cared about was the girl about to take the stage and that everyone in the room knew how damn good she was. And now that Alex had taken that away from him, he no longer had a purpose.

  “How many times have you seen her?” Alex asked, for no other reason than to alleviate the guilt he felt deep down inside. Immediately he f
elt better, but then the man started blathering on about how he was Ana’s number one fan, that he had seen her more than a dozen times, and each time he saw her, he wakened the following morning and gave it to his wife the way he had when they were first married, thirty years ago.

  “There’s something about her,” he said. “It’s sort of hard to explain, but you’ll see for yourself. You’ll see.” A thin tobacco-coloured tongue whipped out of his puckered mouth and worked at moistening his lips.

  Just then, the bartender returned and replenished the geriatric lothario’s plastic cup. Alex made the most of the opportunity and ordered a beer for himself before paying for both.

  “Thank you very much,” the old man said as he moved away from the bar and took up the empty space just in front of the stage. He really was Ana’s number one fan. A little weird, perhaps, but who was Alex to deprive some guy his kicks? In the morning, Mrs Old Man would be ‘getting it good’.

  And good for them, Alex thought bitterly, for he hadn’t had sex in months, and that had been with a woman he’d met in a bar who had, the following morning, simply left his apartment without so much as leaving a note or phone number. He hadn’t seen her since, despite returning to the place he’d encountered her, intent on instigating a rematch.

  The lights in the bar dimmed slightly and an anticipatory hush fell across the room. The old man up by the stage whooped excitedly, his gaze never once shifting from the dais where only an unattended microphone now stood.

  Alex was all at once intrigued, and even more so when, out onto the stage, walked one of the most enchanting creatures he’d ever laid eyes upon.

  Ana was everything the old man had promised and more. A waterfall of jet-black hair cascaded down over her shoulders, her emerald green eyes visible even in semidarkness. A tight red dress clung to her body, exaggerating every curve. This was clearly a woman with whom self-confidence was not an issue.

  Standing in front of the microphone, never once looking out to her audience to see who they were or if indeed there was anyone there, she looked incongruous, a huge star about to perform in a venue unworthy of her.

  Alex glanced around the room, noticing the beatific smile upon the face of each man. It was as if they had been hypnotised by Ana’s beauty; the girl hadn’t even sung a note yet and the place was manifestly captivated.

  The plaintive strings of the backing music came through the speakers just as the bartender emerged from the room at the back of the bar. Alex watched as he pushed something into his ears, grimacing as he did so.

  Earplugs?

  Surely Ana’s voice could not be that bad, not after everything the old man had just told him. Perhaps the bartender suffered with some sort of aural complaint. What other explanation could there be?

  Alex found out just a second later when Ana began to sing.

  Her voice was like nothing he had ever heard before; it didn’t even sound human. She somehow managed to create chords in her throat, three disparate notes in unison.

  But that could not be right, could it? Alex had never heard of such a faculty, and so he quickly ascribed the other two notes to the backing track.

  Ana swayed slowly to the beat of the music, stroking the microphone as she sang. She knew precisely what she was doing—that every man present wanted to be with her, if only for one night, one hour, one minute—and now, as the beautiful music poured from her lips, she began to search through the drifting smoke, her eyes imploring those present to worship her for the goddess she was.

  An uncomfortable erection caused Alex to squirm where he stood. He repositioned himself, but refused to look away from Ana, whose exquisite voice was somer-saulting across the scales as if it were easier than breathing to her.

  Next to the stage, the old man swayed back and forth as if drunk, keeping time with Ana’s own rhythmic movements. But it was what he did next that shocked Alex.

  The old man’s trousers came down, settled around his ankles, and for a moment Alex wondered whether the guy knew what had happened. If, perhaps, he was suitably soused, a man might not notice such a trivial thing as unsecured trousers, but this old geezer knew exactly what was happening. He knew because in his hand he held his cock, and was rubbing it, tugging at it frantically, his head thrown back in uncontrollable rapture, his eyes firmly fixed upon Ana as she sang and swayed and sang.

  “What the fuck?” Alex couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A man stood masturbating right there, in full view of the rest of the bar, and no one was doing a damn thing about it. Alex turned to the counter, only to discover the bartender sitting at a stool next to the register, filling in a crossword, blissfully unaware that his dancefloor was about to get very sticky indeed. “Hey!” Alex called, hoping to attract the attention of the oblivious bartender. “Dude, a guy’s about to cum all over your fucking stage!”

  Nothing. The bartender didn’t even look up from his puzzle.

  Alex sighed and turned back to the stage. Ana continued to sing, seemingly unaffected by the grotesque sex act playing out in front of her, and Alex suddenly felt bad for her, despite his own burgeoning erection. Guilt washed over him, although he was certain he had done nothing wrong, was only reacting to Ana’s alien voice.

  All around the room the men swayed back and forth, entranced, enchanted. Through the smoky gloom, Alex could see that the old man next to the stage was not the only one masturbating. They were all at it, some of them shamelessly, others surreptitiously, as if afraid their wives would come through the door at any moment and catch them red-handed, so to speak.

  It was then that Alex became aware of his own transgressions, for he too was rubbing at his crotch and the swollen member beneath. No sooner had he realised it than he snatched his hand away.

  What the fuck is going on here?

  Up on the stage, Ana’s first song was about to end, and she locked eyes with Alex across the room, her lips curled into the slightest of smiles. It was that which pushed him over the edge. His legs threatened to buckle beneath him; a strange light-headedness caused him to stagger forward a couple of steps. If it wasn’t for the empty stool pushed against the counter, his momentum would surely have carried him toward the stage, where he and the old man would dance and writhe and masturbate each other until the culmination of Ana’s set.

  When the song finished, no one applauded, no one cheered, no one made a peep. Cocks were tucked away for the time being; Alex collapsed onto the unoccupied stool, spent.

  For the next two hours he watched Ana perform.

  For the next two hours he hungered for her, could no longer look away from her, no matter how hard he tried. The embarrassment of what had happened with all the men in the room soon faded. They were all in this together, all worshipping at the feet of a goddess.

  No wonder the bartender wore earplugs.

  At the end of Ana’s set a fight broke out between three men from one side of the room and two from the other. Chaos ensued, plastic cups were launched into the air, some empty, some half-filled with beer. It rained down on Alex, soaking his hair, his neck, his clothes.

  Through the sea of brawling men—more were joining by the second, and the bartender seemed loath to get involved, lest he find himself on the wrong end of a knuckle supper—Alex could just about make out the stage.

  But there was no Ana.

  Just a solitary microphone stand and the wispy remnants of artificial smoke no longer being pumped onto the stage.

  Alex finished his beer (he hadn’t touched it, not even a sip, for the duration of Ana’s set) and left via the beer-garden feeling strangely sated.

  “You like my voice?”

  Alex started, for there at the side of the road just beyond the beer-garden gate was Ana. She was smoking a cigarette; its filter was crimson with lipstick. Alex couldn’t help noticing that her speaking voice was very different to her singing voice. But weren’t they always? Singers often adopted certain affectations when performing. If Ana talked like she sang, it would be wholly terr
ifying.

  “You’re amazing,” Alex said. It was all he could manage; Ana arched her eyebrows, as if he had told her something she hadn’t already heard a thousand times before.

  She took a long pull of her cigarette before flicking it to the kerb. “I’ve never seen you at one of my gigs before. Just passing through?”

  She’s talking to me. She’s talking to me as if I’m her equal. “No, I just don’t usually come out this far.” All thoughts of the city and its myriad attractions were gone. All Alex wanted to do now was follow Ana around for the rest of the night. If he asked nicely, perhaps she would let him. “Would you like me to walk you home?”

  Where the fuck had that come from? Alex had never been very good with women, and it was sudden spurts of bullshit like that which had led to him being single at almost forty.

  It came as something of a shock, therefore, when Ana said, “I’ve got an apartment in the city. I’d appreciate the company.”

  “You would?” He couldn’t believe his luck, couldn’t fathom why this gorgeous young lady would even entertain his offer. But she was smiling, and as she lit a new cigarette —perhaps that was the secret behind her ethereal voice—Alex could see that she had brightened a little.

  “Sure,” she said, exhaling a plume of blue-grey smoke into the chill air. “So long as it’s not out of your way.”

  I would walk a thousand miles for you, Ana, Alex thought but of course did not say.

  Ana’s apartment was a penthouse suite at the centre of the city. As Alex stepped out of the elevator, saw the marble walls, the golden vases, the statues of Eros and Psyche standing either side of a white marble fireplace, he said, “Holy fuck! You got all this from singing in bars?”

  “Of course not!” Ana said as she walked across the room to a bar lined with bottles. The bar appeared to be stocked with one of everything: whisky, brandy, sherry, reds and whites, liqueurs and ports. “I sing for the fun of it. I made less than a hundred tonight.”