Clasping the holy knife he wore around his neck, Nathan glanced up at the walls; flanked by movie posters (everything from The Lodger to From Hell part 3) and artists renditions of the Lord and his five divine feats were the smiling effigies of Peter Kürten, Ted Bundy (Nathan’s favourite apostle), Peter Sutcliffe, Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Buono; emblems of the new religion, a new passion that was sweeping the world. They were much cooler, in Nathan’s thirteen-year-old opinion, than the chipped and desecrated statue of the old-world god strung up on a cross, now locked away in the storage room waiting to be taken to the wreckers, merely a useless artefact because, as one newspaper proclaimed of their new Lord: he is now bigger than Jesus.

  “Turn to chapter nine, verse twenty-five, line seven,” the reverend ordered.

  And Nathan, along with the congregation, intoned: “I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping…”

  Brett McBean is a Melbourne-based writer of horror fiction. He has had two novels published, The Last Motel and The Mother. “The New Religion” was the third place winner in the June/July ‘06 Jack the Ripper themed contest at The Red Light District.

  “Chrysalis”

  Chuck McKenzie

  Blessed oblivion fled. He convulsed, thrashing against silk-lined pine, dislodging the lid of his casket. Soft, cool soil gushed into his eyes and mouth. And with it came the rapture, an overwhelming sense of belonging, of oneness; the soil, the rocks and himself, bound by a common state of being, crawling with life yet lifeless, unfettered by wear and tear and the wretched need to scratch, rub, defecate or breathe. No tics or aches, no pain or weariness; just the comforting throb of the earth, the whispering cycles of the soil. Joy overwhelmed him. He tried to cry out, but his shrunken, desiccated lungs allowed only a low moan to escape peeling lips.

  He lay quiet for a while. Then, driven by an urge to immerse himself completely in the earth, he began to push aside the coffin lid. Soil cascaded over him, and he swam slowly upwards. Deep, rich loam caressed him, and he opened his mouth, allowing it to penetrate and fill him.

  Without warning, he erupted from the earth and lay shocked and trembling upon the ground. So hot. So bright and harsh. He feebly tried to claw his way back into the dirt, to return to the refreshing coolness of the earth, but the sun-baked mud resisted his rotting fingers. He moaned again. Let me in. Please, let me back inside where it’s cool and safe and quiet…

  But the ground refused to soften.

  Eventually, he clambered to his feet and stood staring miserably at the world around him. Living things scuttled among the headstones and grasses, moving between the leaves and branches, whirring about overhead and underfoot. The very air pulsed with life. He moaned again, kicking angrily at the ground.

  Why am I here? Why are you doing this to me?

  Somewhere, a dog barked. Voices drifted between the tombs. The world pressed in upon him, and something inside suddenly clicked over. He began to run, long staggering strides propelling him jerkily across the graveyard.

  Why am I here?

  He stumbled over a weed-covered drain and fell, bursting from between the plots and diving headfirst onto a gravel-lined path. He lay still for a moment, savouring the sensation of cold, lifeless stone against his ruined face.

  Someone screamed.

  He raised his head. A little further up the path stood a woman, her face pale, a crumpled bouquet of flowers clutched between trembling hands. She stared at him, eyes wide and glistening. Delicate veins pulsed in her throat. Muscles shifted beneath her skin, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

  So alive.

  And, gazing upon her, self-pity was forgotten.

  You poor, wretched creature. Your every moment must be agony. The constant fear of your own existence; the never-ending anticipation of bodily failure, of aneurysm, blindness, senility, entombing you forever in a cell of living flesh. If I could only do something for you, something to stop your suffering -

  And abruptly, he understood.

  Heaving himself to his feet, he staggered towards her. She backed away, screaming, then turned and fled. He pursued her, a new sense of purpose lending him speed.

  Wait! Please! Come back! Let me help you!

  She darted off the path, stumbling through uncut grass between ancient tombs. He quickened his pace. She turned, saw him closing the gap between them, and screamed again. Then her foot twisted beneath her, and she fell.

  He was upon her in a moment, shuddering in revulsion as he caressed her warm flesh, covering her mouth, stifling her cries.

  This is my purpose: to take you to a better place. That which I devour will be purified instantly. The rest will slowly turn, rising again to join me in my task. This is the greatest gift I can offer…

  He tore open her neck with his teeth, gagging as living flesh slithered down his throat. Between mouthfuls he moaned softly, overcome with the joy of selfless giving. And she moaned too, for a while.

  Chuck McKenzie enjoys being scared, and according spends many hours standing in front of his bedroom mirror muttering: ‘Boogie! Boogie! Boogie!’

  “Nothing to Fear”

  Nigel Read

  Day One

  I press myself against the glass door, heart straining, stomach clenching, and my hands, slick with sweat, fumbling at the latch. Through the glass I can see Sarah on the couch, a half-eaten block of chocolate in her lap. She’s watching a holofilm. I desperately want to be on the couch next to her.

  Goddamn it! Why won’t it open?

  “The door is not real,” a calm voice says behind me.

  I want to strike out at it, but I daren’t turn around. It’s bad enough that I know I’m on a balcony on the twenty-sixth floor. But to turn and face it? To see all that emptiness beneath me?

  “The door isn’t real,” the voice repeats. “It won’t open until I allow it to, until you turn and face your fear.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but it is dry and my throat has constricted, and all that comes out is a squawk. I lick my lips and swallow a couple of times to ease the knot in my throat, then try again.

  “I can’t,” I manage to say, my voice high-pitched and strained with the effort.

  “Yes, you can,” the voice says sternly. “You just choose not to, because it’s unpleasant.” A pause. Then, “Perhaps it’s too early for you to choose.”

  The balcony disappears. I’m face-to-face with a determined-looking man in army fatigues. Strong, gusty winds buffet me, and the floor lurches underneath me. The whistling of the wind and the drone of a nearby engine are deafening. I panic, as I realise where I am.

  Before I can act, the man grabs me, turns me around, and shoves me out the door. Leaving my stomach behind me in the aeroplane, I plummet towards the Earth.

  “Relax,” the voice says in my ear. “It’s not real. It’s just a simulation. Release your fear.”

  I start to scream. It is primal, welling up from a place deep, deep inside me. I scream and I scream and I scream, as the ground rushes up to meet me.

  Suddenly, I’m staring at the smiling, bearded face of Dr Ashley. My arms and legs and head are restrained, still connected to the simulator. My throat feels raw. I struggle against the restraints.

  “Hold on,” he says, removing the catheter—I grunt from the discomfort—and the biomonitors over my heart and forehead, then unplugging the simulator from the neural interface in my neck. He steps around to my left side, and the restraints retract.

  I collapse to my knees and vomit.

  “Nurse!” Dr Ashley barks.

  An air-hypo, metallic and cold, is pressed against my arm, and there is a brief, sharp pain. I retch a couple more times before the nausea begins to fade. Gentle hands pull me back until I’m laying on my side.

  I ache all over.

  Dr Ashley kneels down next to me. “How do you feel?”

  I want to swear at him, to call him every name I can think of, but all that comes out is a croak.

  He looks at me sympathetically. “Oh well, it was only your first treatment. It’ll get better over time.”

  I croak again. With feeling.

  #

  Day Twenty-Three

  The surf bellows beneath me. It’s almost deafening. I peer over the cliff edge. The ocean smashes and roils against the rocks at the base of the cliff. A wind, snap frozen from the Antarctic, tugs at me.

  My stomach leaps. “It’s not real,” I mutter under my breath. “It’s only a simulation.”

  “You’re doing well,” Dr Ashley’s voice yells behind me. I turn to face it, but there’s only an empty car park, and in the distance a couple of wind turbines spinning furiously.

  “A couple of months ago,” the voice continues, “you couldn’t even bear to look at such a height, let alone approach it. Another couple of treatments, I think, and I’ll be able to report to your employer that your phobia has been cured.”

  I smile with relief and turn back to the cliff’s edge. It’s exhilarating, facing my fear like this. I imagine it’s like the rush an exhibitionist feels when they expose themselves in public. A combination of fear and excitement.

  “I’ve got a reward for you,” the voice says.

  Sarah appears beside me, smiling, wearing the sundress she knows I like. She hugs me fiercely. “I’m so proud of you. I knew you could beat this.”

  I can’t help it. Holding on for dear life, I start blubbering. Tears leave tracks down my cheeks. She strokes my head and whispers soothing words.

  When it’s all over, I feel strangely empty and calm.

  “Come on,” she says, releasing the hug but still holding my hand. She steps up to the cliff edge.

  I meet her eyes. I know what she wants.

  I smile, and we both jump.

  #

  Day Twenty-Nine

  Leaning against the balcony’s guard rail, I stare down into the abyss. All I can see is a constant sea of movement, but no details.

  It’s a long way down.

  “It’s not real,” I chant, invoking my personal mantra. “It’s only a simulation.” My stomach flutters sporadically, but the reaction is nothing like it used to be. It’s manageable. Controllable, where once it used to control me. I’ll finally be able to take that promotion on the 132nd floor. All thanks to Dr Ashley’s treatments.

  The door slides open behind me. “Honey, what are you doing out here?” Sarah asks.

  “Facing my fear,” I reply, swinging a leg over the rail. Another flutter. My pulse starts to quicken.

  “Don’t do that,” she says, a tremor in her voice. “Come back inside. Come back to bed.”

  I shake my head and swing the other leg over so that I’m sitting on the rail. “I can’t do that. I can’t let it beat me.”

  “I know, honey,” she says. “But this isn’t a simulation. What if you fall?”

  A moment of doubt. Is there real danger? I freeze, my stomach lurching and my heart threatening to burst out of my chest.

  Then, in the middle of my panic, I realise what is happening. It’s the last test, to see whether I’m fully cured of my altophobia. I cannot fail, or all the treatments will have been for nothing. Clenching my teeth, I force myself to release my grip on the rail.

  “It isn’t real,” I chant. “It’s only a simulation.”

  “No!” Sarah yells, her voice anguished.

  I close my eyes and push off. I’m falling, and there’s no fear.

  Laughter wells up irresistibly from deep inside me.

  I’m finally free.

  Nigel is a Perth writer who works for the government in his spare time. He’s had articles, short stories and poems published in a variety of places.

  “Overheard on a train?”

  Rhidian Rhead

  ‘Yeah! I always sit here’. The man said.

  With a wave of his meaty middle aged hands he indicate the area of the end of the train carriage with its two long and facing bench seats on each side. He was speaking to Natalie, the young office worker who was sitting at the far end of the opposite bench seat. She was grateful for the width of the carriage between then, as the man’s hand gestures had spread but not to greatly dissipate the not unpleasant, and vaguely flowerlike smell of someone who been drinking heavily a fair few hours before. Natalie was dressed in a practical and drip-dry sort of office get up, suitable for the office and suitable for going out on a Friday night? Her arms were bare to the shoulder and she was wearing a dark red vinyl top and a short dark skirt of leather like material. The sort of getup that any messy office mishap could just be wiped off, without any fear of leaving a permanent stain. She was however wearing rubber gloves. Did this suggest an aversion to being touched, or to touching what other people had touched, or perhaps a desire for privacy? The talking man showed no sign of noticing this as he continued to speak.

  She was sitting so quietly, avoiding eye contact and seemed to be desperately trying not to be noticed. Only a few more stops to go now, Natalie thought. ‘They call this the ‘Vestibule’. The man said to Natalie. He took every care to speak slowly and to correctly pronounce each of the word’s easy to slur syllables, as if to show he was a man of some education and not just a pissed passenger to be mutely endured on a Friday night.

  He continued, in a more confidential tone, ‘From here you can see everyone who comes and goes’. ‘Who goes up and who goes down’.

  The motion of his hands now seemed to mimic the path of the new passengers who had just joined the train, as they decided to go and try for a seat on the train’s upper or lower deck. ‘And If you don’t like the look of them’, He said, alcohol completely insulating him from any sense of irony, as his hands indicating the door to the passage between carriages. ‘You can get up and try the next carriage’.

  Not waiting for any response from the woman he continued. ‘I always sit in the vestibule now, coz you never forget that first time’. ‘That time when you are tipped off first by the pale blood drained look on the faces of the passengers facing you’. ‘That silence’.

  ‘That silence but for the faint slow drip, drip, drip of someone else’s life blood that lets you know that there’s an Axe murderer on the train and he’s standing right close behind you’. ‘Axe in one hand and in the other probably a head held up by the hair and still bleeding. Blood and gore up to his elbows and plastered all over his face that stupid cock sucking mad grin.’

  ‘You don’t forget it’. He paused,

  ‘You don’t forget it, not the first time.’ The cleaver weighed heavily in Natalie’s open handbag. The Stainless Steel edge of the cleaver was honed Oh So sharp. So sharp that once a sleep-over boyfriend on finding it had playfully offered to help shave her with it, not knowing that it was The cleaver with the Oh So thirsty blade.

  So thirsty, and, “One less stop to go now” she thought.

  By now the carriage was nearly empty and the train only two stops away from the tunnel, the tunnel where passengers covered their ears at the volume of noise from the scream and shriek of the train’s wheels. Where the noise of steel on steel would blot out the sound made by any human throat. Whether made in agony or in exultation.

  As she was thinking this, her hand undid the clasp and she reached into her handbag feeling past the make up and coins. Natalie could feel the chill of the stainless steel handle through the rubber of her gloves. Steel on flesh. It felt good.

  Natalie thought, ‘It felt Oh So good’, ‘to be Jack’s daughter!’

  Rhidian Rhead looks at the world through jaded green eyes and writes at night by the unearthly glow of the cathode ray tube. He writes to pass the time until his destiny is fulfilled. He does cast a shadow, but chooses to rarely ventures out into Sun light, preferring to remain amid the cool and ambiguous shadows of double meaning. He claims that this story is based on true events, but declines to state when and where or which when and which where the events happened.

  “Touched”

  David Schembri

  The thunder of his heart pained his ears as he stepped back from the bed. Wiping the sweat from his brow with a trembling hand, he stared down at what he had done. Tears begun to fill his eyes.

  “Kiana?...” he muttered.

  “Why did I do that? What just happened?” he muttered again.

  In an attempt to startle her from her lack of movement, he lowered a hand down toward her bare shoulder, but recoiled when he realised there was no use. He sighed with despair.

  She was gone. He could feel the warmth that had radiated from her skin already beginning to fade.

  Stepping back two more steps as the guilt weighed heavy on his shoulders, his hands slowly moved to his panting mouth.

  “Three years of marriage! We were happy!...” he continued as the tears streamed down his face. He shook as the reality of what he had done sank into his mind.

  He could not remove his stare from what lay before him. Through the gloom, Kiana lay motionless upon the bed. Her Asian eyes facing upward, her mouth wide open, and her arms dropped at her sides. The night’s gloom was pierced by the moon light that gleamed in through the white drapes of the large bedroom window.

  The pale glow gave illuminance to her cold face, and Eric wept into his hands.

  ***

  After endless moments, Eric slowly removed his trembling hands from his face, and stared at his spread fingers. The fingers that once tapped calculations into payroll software for over five years. The fingers that used to gently glide over Kiana’s face whenever she told him how much she loved him. The fingers that had gripped her throat and squeezed the life from out of her body. His knees began to shake beneath his weight, and his breathing grew even heavier as the seconds ticked by.

  He could feel a strange presence behind him... It spoke.

  “So, it is done then,” a strangers voice said softly.

  Eric turned to the voice that came from the door way, but his eyes could not make out the strangers face. In he stepped. He casually brushed past Eric, and walked to the window side of the bed. The glow from the moon light silhouetted him, making it impossible for Eric to detain any detail of his intruders identity.

 

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