text: "Another one this morning," said Greg as he walked along the prison halls, talking to his colleague John. He swung his jailer keys around his fingers rhythmically. "Never get used to the suicides."
  
  "Yep. Goes with the territory I suppose," John replied.
  
  They stopped opposite Dylan's cell. His pale, lifeless body hung in front of them as other officers took photographs and surveyed the scene. Thin, tangled bedsheets were wrapped around Dylan's neck as he hung stiffly from the light fixture on the ceiling.
  
  "Funny one this one, though. You've got to laugh."
  
  "Really?' Greg asked. "What did he do?"
  
  "Strangled his girlfriend. Not an uncommon one, gotta admit. But it was what he said to deny it which was bizarre. He said that his dick killed her. Jumped right out his pants and wrapped itself round her neck. He said a witch's curse made it grow to a massive length and then it killed her."
  
  Greg laughed. "Aw that's a good one. I mean, I feel bad for laughing but that is a good one. First time I've heard that one. It wasn't me governor, it was my tallywhacker that done it!"
  
  They both laughed loudly. Gregg laughed until his face went red and he had to bend down and regain his breath.
  
  "But that wasn't even the funniest thing," John said. "Wait till you hear this. We gave him a medical when he came in. He stripped off, you know, the usual routine." Greg nodded.
  
  "But when we checked him, his dick... it was the smallest one I'd ever seen. About the size of a baby prawn. That dick couldn't wrap itself round an ant's neck never mind a woman's!"
  
  They roared with laughter.
  
  ⁂
  
  [ NATURAL GROWTH by M. B. Vujačić ]
  
  "So, Mrs. Shane," Dr. Kramer said, leaning back in his chair, "I've been told you're interested in the Natural Growth Program."
  
  Sarah straightened in her chair. "Umm, yeah," she said, and gave a tiny grin, her eyes sweeping across his office. It was all wood and leather and earth tones, the walls adorned with dozens of framed awards, diplomas, and certificates. Kramer watched her from behind an ornate desk. He was a small, clean-shaven, fifty-but-looking-forty type, clad in a business suit and a hundred-dollar haircut. She licked her lips. "Sorry, ah, I'm kinda excited."
  
  The doctor smiled.
  
  Greg chuckled and gently squeezed her hand. "It's okay, honey." He looked at the doctor. "We found an article about it on the internet. It sounded great, so we decided to give it a shot."
  
  Kramer gave a slow nod. "A good choice. Natural Growth Program is not as swift as the traditional method, but I think you'll find the final result well worth the wait."
  
  He opened a drawer and took out the largest, thickest brochure Sarah had ever seen. He leafed through it until he found a page showing the side view of a woman's breast, with five pink Xs marked around the areolas. "The hormones are introduced directly into the fatty tissue and the mammary glands. The procedure is performed wholly via infusions," he tapped the Xs with a pen, "with no more discomfort than what would be experienced during, for instance, a blood donation. The procedure consists of five major infusions spread over three months. The patient is closely monitored during this period to ensure everything goes well. The risk of scarring, rupturing, or infection is minimal, and there's no need for additional interventions."
  
  Kramer turned the page. The next two pages displayed six photographs of a woman's naked torso. On the topmost photo, the one with Before written under it, the breasts were little more than nipples on a flat chest. The second picture showed the same nipples perched atop strong A cups. Week One was printed beneath it. The third, marked Week Four, displayed large Bs.
  
  "And the best thing? They are all yours." He spread his arms. "We implant no outside agents like silicone. We merely give your body a nudge and it takes care of the rest on its own."
  
  Sarah barely heard him. She stared at the sixth photo, the one with Week Twelve written under it. It showed the kind of gravity-defying Ds that not only didn't sag, but also looked completely natural. The only time she'd seen their like outside of TV was in high school. They belonged to one Mona Jackson, an unassuming girl whom everyone liked but nobody invited to parties because she commanded the attention of every guy in the room.
  
  "Honey? You with us?"
  
  Sarah blinked, looked at Greg. "Oh. Yeah. I was just, umm..."
  
  Kramer smiled, offering her the brochure. "Please, take a look. The available sizes are listed at the back."
  
  Sarah leafed through it. There were more photos of successful procedures, not all of them ending with Mona Jackson-size Ds. Some women had stopped at Bs or small Cs, while one had had her already-strong Cs grown into Fs so bulky they bordered on vulgar.
  
  Greg ran his hand over his mouth. "I gotta ask, doc, how is this so cheap? I mean, it costs less than implants at some clinics. I thought you guys would want to milk it while it's still new."
  
  "Actually, that is precisely why it's so affordable," Kramer said. "The public tends to mistrust new medical procedures. Since we do not yet have the funding necessary to hire a famous actress or a model for promotion, we feel it's crucial to keep our prices as reasonable as possible."
  
  "But it's all safe, right?"
  
  "As with every procedure, some small complications may arise, but I assure you we're equipped to deal with them. We don't have a single unsatisfied customer and we intend to keep it that way." He looked at Sarah. "So, Mrs. Shane, do you prefer any size in particular? You do not have to decide right away, of cour—"
  
  "D cups," she said, grinning so hard the corners of her mouth itched. "I want D cups."
  
  "So what do you think?" Sarah said.
  
  Greg smiled. "I still don't get why you wanted them so much. You were perfect just the way you were." He looked her up and down for the hundredth time in the last minute. "Not that I'm complaining."
  
  "But they're lovely, aren't they?" Sarah said. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, naked above the waist, holding one of her breasts. It felt warm and heavy, and it could barely fit in her hand. She couldn't have kept the grin from her face if she tried.
  
  "They're awesome, baby."
  
  Sarah's grin widened.
  
  "How much longer is it going to take?"
  
  "Eight weeks," she said. Round white patches, no bigger than shirt buttons, were glued to her breasts, three under each nipple, covering the spots where the syringes had punctured the skin. "Two more infusions."
  
  "I read about those things they experimented on to make the hormones," Greg said, leaning against the washing machine. "Did you know they can lay, like, a million and a half eggs? Maybe you'll start laying eggs, too."
  
  "If that's how it went, we'd all have tails by now from all those rats they use in labs."
  
  Greg hugged her from behind and kissed her neck. "I just want you to know, I married you because I love you, and that's not gonna change. Not even if you grow a tail."
  
  She giggled.
  
  His hands slid up her belly and cupped her breasts. "They're so warm," he said. After a moment he made a puzzled face, then pressed his ear against her left breast. "Oh, weird."
  
  "What?"
  
  "It's like I can hear two heartbeats. One's faster than the other." He put his ear to the other breast. "Same here."
  
  "What does that mean?"
  
  "Nothing. There's probably a vein there and I'm hearing both its pulse and your heartbeat."
  
  "You sure?"
  
  Greg shrugged. "What else could it be?"
  
  That night, Sarah had the first of what she'd come to think of as her baby dreams. In it, she walked on a seabed, lost in an aquatic landscape. Everywhere she looked she saw corals sticking to underwater reefs, jellies swimming in great swarms, and roe clusters hidden within forests of algae, but none of that fascinated her nearly as much as the two babies in her arms. She couldn't tell if they were boys or girls, and didn't care. They stared at her with bright blue eyes, same as her own, their lips mouthing a single word repetitively—mama, mama, mama. They asked her to promise she'd do something for them and, seeing no harm in it, Sarah gave her word.
  
  By the time she finally woke up, her pillow was wet with perspiration and for a few moments afterward everything smelled of brine and rotten clams. Worst of all, her breasts itched. She tried scratching them, but the itch went too deep. It kept her up all night and didn't pass until noon.
  
  Sarah mentioned the itch to doctor Kramer during the weekly examination. He told her not to worry, it was likely just a side effect of her skin stretching to accommodate her growing breasts. She left without telling him about the twin heartbeats, as that was something the babies had asked her not to do. Sarah didn't understand why she felt the need to keep a promise she'd made to a pair of imaginary infants, but there it was.
  
  Oh well, she could always tell him next week.
  
  "Oh, honey," Greg muttered, "oh, baby."
  
  He lay on top of Sarah with his face buried between her breasts. His tie hung loose around his neck, his shirt unbuttoned, his lips purple from all the wine he'd drank. "I love you so much," he said into her flesh.
  
  "Ow, you pinched me."
  
  "I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry," Greg said through a mouthful of nipple. "God, I love you."
  
  Sarah giggled and ran her fingers through his hair. They'd just returned from a party at the factoring firm Greg worked at. It was an annual charity thing, held every year so his boss could show off to the investors. Although just a financial analyst, Greg had to attend and drop a little something into the charity box, and boy, oh boy did he hold a strong opinion about that. But not this year.
  
  Sarah had read somewhere that the difference between a regular woman and a great one was that the great woman knew how to make her man feel powerful. She wore an unassuming black dress to the party, the kind you could wear to a funeral without being called disrespectful, but even so she made Greg feel very powerful indeed. He absolutely enjoyed how everyone—well, his boss, mainly—watched him with a mixture of envy and respect. He constantly smiled and laughed and cracked jokes, telling his bachelor colleagues a good wife was worth more than a thousand harems.
  
  Sarah thought about her mother and sisters, and how they never noticed the way everyone—not just men—ogled them when they weren't looking. But she did. Skinny little Sarah, the one daughter in the family who never shared her bras with her sisters because they were too small for them. She'd always wondered what it felt like to draw such attention. Well, now she knew, and it gave her an unconscious smirk that stuck to her face like a tick.
  
  "I love you, I love you, I love you," Greg said as he entered her. "God, how much I love you."
  
  The sex was short and sweet, and ended with Greg falling asleep with half his body still on top of a satisfied Sarah, his hand laid over one breast. She let him sleep like that for a while, feeling way too mellowed to get up just yet. Eventually, the heaviness in her eyelids became too much and she went to the bathroom to remove the remnants of her makeup.
  
  Sarah was standing in front of the mirror, wiping her face with a moist towel, when something moved inside her right breast. It was just a slight shift, but it produced a lance of pain so sharp it made her stagger and fall on the toilet seat with enough force to leave a bruise.
  
  Second one this week, Sarah thought after the pain abated, and it's only Friday. Doctor Kramer had warned her rapid movements might cause a nerve to be pulled or skin to be stretched, but it had been six weeks since she'd finished the Natural Growth procedure, and these spasms still happened.
  
  As for the babies, Sarah dreamed about them every night now. She'd fall asleep and find herself drifting in the murky depths, the twins side-by-side in her arms. She'd look at their blue eyes and hear them call her mama, and it'd disarm her so thoroughly she'd be unable to deny any of their requests.
  
  One of the things they made her promise she'd keep to herself was the odd heaviness in her new breasts. Not only did they seem to weigh ten pounds each, if you squeezed them hard enough you'd come upon bone-hard matter. As if she carried rocks inside, hidden under all the soft flesh.
  
  Also, something had begun to drip from her nipples. Sarah didn't notice it until five weeks after the therapy was over, when one morning she discovered brown smudges on the insides of her bras. At first she thought they were sweat stains. Then she washed them and realized they wouldn't come out no matter how hard she scrubbed. The babies begged her not to tell anyone about this and, though it worried her, Sarah just couldn't say no.
  
  Not long after, she woke up to find brown stains on the inside of her nightgown. By the end of the week, her breasts were oozing brown liquid every night. Just a trickle, but it frustrated her to no end, doubly so once she realized how much it reeked. You couldn't smell it unless it was right under your nose, but it was there—a stale, salty odor reminiscent of filthy seawater and rocks slimy with algae. It embarrassed her so much she decided she'd tell doctor Kramer about it during the next examination, and to hell with the dream babies. In the meantime, she washed her breasts as many as five or six times a day. Greg never noticed anything wrong.
  
  Sarah washed them again before returning to bed. She donned an old black t-shirt—that's what she slept in these days, to keep from ruining any more nightgowns—and snuggled next to Greg. He snored in big raspy wheezes, like he was coming down with the flu, so she gave him a nudge and he stopped. Sarah closed her eyes, yawning, and— —and opened them to find the room flooded. The bed, the lamp, the night table, it all floated in what had to be at least two feet of water. Moonlight shone in through the window, but instead of blue it painted everything green. The babies sat at the edge of the bed, staring at her, muttering: Mama, mama, mama.
  
  Sarah looked at them. "What is this? What are you—"
  
  Something bumped the underside of the bed, right beneath where she was lying. She looked over the edge and saw long insect legs squirming just under the water's surface. They were covered in a jagged carapace, like that of a lobster.
  
  "Oh God! Greg!" Sarah grabbed his shoulder and shook it, but there was no strength in her arms. "Jesus, Greg, wake up!"
  
  The bed rocked, and then one of the insect-legs burst from the water and clamped its pincer on Greg's arm. Sarah shrieked and tried to push it away, but another one splashed out and bit into Sarah's thigh and she started screaming screaming, SCREAMING and— —and then it was day and she was in her bed, facing the ceiling. Greg still lay there, asleep, his back turned to her. Her pillow was soaked, her hair sticking to her forehead, her breasts so sore the slightest touch made her wince. She shut her eyes and slowly pulled her shirt over her head.
  
  "No," Sarah shrieked. "No, no, no!"
  
  Black veins crisscrossed her breasts, branching out from her nipples and reaching all the way to her collarbone. They looked painfully swollen, as if the slightest bump might cause them to burst in a spray of black goo.
  
  "Greg," Sarah said, crying. "Greg! Greg, wake up! Help me!"
  
  He didn't move.
  
  She dug her nails into his shoulder and shook it. "Greg, please!"
  
  He still didn't move.
  
  Screaming, "Waaaake uuuupppp," Sarah grabbed him with both hands and yanked, rolling him over. His eyes were already open. They stared straight ahead, glazed and empty like the eyes of a mounted animal. His mouth brimmed with brownish-red foam. It spilled over his lip, sticking to one pale cheek.
  
  It reminded her of a dead slug.
  
  Sarah saw the light.
  
  It was a big white circle, with six little glowing circles inside it, like the wheel of a revolver. People, all of them dressed in surgical masks, medical caps, rubber gloves, and what appeared to be raincoats, all of it turquoise, stood around it, staring down at her. Machines, attached to her via a series of tubes, loomed within arm's reach of the bed, beeping and blinking. She was naked but for a turquoise medical cap and a pair of white panties the nurses had given her.
  
  A nurse placed an oxygen mask on Sarah's mouth, and told her to count down from ten. Sarah tried, but her thoughts kept returning to the day she'd found Greg dead in their bed. The first thing she'd done was call 911. Driving to doctor Kramer's clinic was the second. When the woman at the reception asked her if she had an appointment, Sarah simply raised her shirt. Ten minutes later, while Kramer was holding an ultrasound stick against Sarah's left breast, the attending nurse gasped and said: "Oh my God, are those legs?"
  
  Doctor Kramer gave the nurse a withering look, then gestured at Sarah with his free hand, waving it up and down as if to tell her to stay put.
  
  "Legs?" Sarah said. "What legs?"
  
  "Set Mrs. Shane up for an MRI," he told the nurse. He sounded as calm as ever, but his face had gone ashen and his Adam's apple kept twitching. "Full chest scan. The standard tests, as well."
  
  "What legs is she talking about."
  
  Kramer took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "It, ah, it appears your mammary glands didn't react to the therapy as we intended. I... We need to do more tests to—"
  
  "Jesus Christ, what legs is she talking about?!"
  
  His mouth became a slit. He turned the ultrasound screen toward her and pointed at half a dozen segmented lines sprouting from and curving around a dark smudge.
  
  "That doesn't look like a leg."
  
  "I'm afraid it does."
  
  "No, it doesn't. Where's the knee? Or the foot?"
  
  "A moment." He took his cellphone, tapped its screen for a few seconds, then showed it to her. It displayed a photograph of an Asian man holding the largest bug Sarah had ever seen. Its armored body was bigger than the man's head, each of its six limbs five or six feet long. Its front limbs had pincers that looked vicious enough to shear an arm off. "This is a Japanese Spider Crab," Kramer said. "Look at its legs. Then look here." He indicated the ultrasound screen.
  
  "What do you... Oh... Oh my God."
  
  His forehead glistened with a thin film of perspiration. "I... I don't know how this could happen, but we will—"
  
  "Are they alive?"
  
  "No. Not truly. I can't tell for sure without additional tests, but I'd say they're equivalent to benign tumors."
  
  "Tumors? You gave me cancer?"
  
  "Uh, forgive me, poor choice of words. Parasites would be a better comparison. They live off your body's resources, but they're not a part of it. The excretions you experienced, the ones that poisoned your husband, they—"
  
  "Poisoned? They fucking killed him," Sarah said. "No, you killed him. Your goddamn therapy did. And now you're telling me I have fucking cancer?"
  
  Kramer swallowed. "I assure you, I understand your anger and I'm deeply shaken by all this. But we must act quickly if we're to prevent these parasites from doing more harm. Chances are, we'll have to operate."
  
  "With... Am I gonna be fine?"
  
  Even now, lying under the surgical lamps days after that ultrasound, Sarah still hated herself for asking that question. She couldn't shake the feeling Greg's death was her fault, that she had no right to worry about herself when he lay cold because of her. If she hadn't been so goddamn picky and just gotten silicone implants like everyone else, he'd still be alive.
  
  His birthday was supposed to be in two weeks, Sarah thought as the six lights merged into a yellow blur. I was going to buy him a gold tie clasp.
  
  For a while afterward, Sarah saw nothing but blackness. Then she heard a noise. It came and went, a soft whoosh, vaguely familiar. She eventually placed it. Waves breaking against a beach... Or against a ship.
  
  Sarah could hear other sounds now: the hiss of sand drifting up then slowly settling back on the seabed, the click-clack of a rock bouncing down an underwater reef, the gurgle of air exhaled from a lung, and far above, the waves crashing. She was naked, her hair algae, her belly huge and swollen and covered in black veins. Everything glowed with a trembling green light.
  
  The babies swam up to her. Their skin was brown and spiny, their blue eyes bigger than their mouths. They hugged her belly, showering it with kisses. One of them drifted away, crying and begging Sarah not to let it go. She heard screams in the darkness. They were close, but muffled, as if her ears were stuffed with cloth.
  
  Her vision twisted at the corners. The babies' faces grew distant and vague, and so did the crash of the waves and even the sight of her own warped body. Soon all was blackness again, but now the screams grew louder. They stabbed at her skull, filling the space behind her eyes with ground glass.
  
  She could see the lights now, all six of them. Only now there were scarlet stains on two of the lamps. The slow, rhythmical beeping of the machines had given way to what sounded almost like a klaxon. She tried to sit up and ask where all the doctors had gone, but her body ignored her commands. She could think, hear, even move her eyes, but aside from that she was paralyzed.
  
  Oh, please God, no, Sarah thought, don't let me die.
  
  God must've felt merciful that day. She sensed a coldness at her back and an uncomfortable tugging at her chest, but at least there was no pain.
  
  Something clattered on her left. Sarah turned her eyes, trying to see. The doors stood wide open and people were shouting for help in the hallway beyond. A table lay overturned, the saws and scalpels scattered on the floor. Kramer lay next to it, his head bent at a grotesque angle, the lower half of his face a red ruin. Sarah felt more tugging at her midriff. She rolled her eyes down as far as they'd go... And realized God hadn't been merciful after all.
  
  The thing on her belly was as big as a fist. Its pincers, caked with Kramer's blood, tore at her remaining breast, trying to free its sibling. Then, as if sensing her gaze, it backed up and turned to look at her, its chitinous legs dancing over her skin like skeletal fingers. It had a round face with a tiny pug nose and bright blue eyes, same as her own. It inclined its head, its mouth working, and uttered a single squeaky word: "Maaa-maaa."
  
  Despite the anesthesia, Sarah began to scream.
  
  Millions, Mrs. Shane. Tens of millions.
  
  That's what every lawyer who'd contacted Sarah during the nine months after the operation had told her. She could sue the clinic, hell, she could sue the entire medical system, for tens of millions of dollars, and that was just for the emotional damage. What she'd been through was awful, no question about it, but that was all the more reason to demand compensation.
  
  Sarah supposed it was, but she still never called them back. She spent most of her time in front of the bathroom mirror, naked but for her slippers. She couldn't help comparing herself to a waterlogged corpse, with her pallid complexion and her damp skin, the two ragged scars that had replaced her breasts standing on her chest like botched skin-grafts.
  
  Sarah returned to the living room and collapsed onto the couch. The apartment stank of brine and sweat, and the shadows seemed as deep as those in underwater caves. She didn't leave the house much anymore, nor did she talk to her family except on the phone. Not for some time now.
  
  The crab-thing had almost managed to free its brother or sister or whatever it was from her remaining breast by the time the security guards had arrived. It charged them the moment they entered the room. They opened fire and—although inaccurate enough to graze Sarah's arm and destroy a fortune in medical equipment—one of them managed to put a bullet in the thing's face. Its sibling lived only seconds longer.
  
  Tens of millions of dollars, Mrs. Shane. We could ask for that in a settlement, and they'd count themselves lucky. That's enough to ensure an extravagant life for yourself and your family, not to mention whatever children you may one day have.
  
  "Somehow, I doubt that," Sarah said to the empty room, and looked at her belly. It was so swollen she couldn't rest her arms on it without having them slide off. Its surface was rough and uneven and covered with thick black veins, the skin as craggy as if there were a thousand little knots just under its surface.
  
  Knots? she thought. Nah, not knots. Eggs.
  
  The doctors who had treated her after the surgery made her promise she'd notify them if something, anything, about her body felt or looked the slightest bit odd. Sarah wanted to be as good as her word. She really did.
  
  But she couldn't, because she had other promises to keep, promises made to the new blue-eyed babies in her dreams. Sarah didn't know how they'd ended up in her belly or why she loved them so, and didn't care. What she did know, however, was that they numbered in the hundreds, and they relied on their mama to keep them safe until they were ready to hatch.
  
  ⁂
  
  [ UTTER NO EVIL by Joseph Watson ]
  
  I keep asking myself why I was so stupid. Maybe I could have gotten help, real help. If I'd done something sooner, but I didn't.
  
  It started at work. I snagged my arm on something when I was taking out the rubbish. They always leave loads of crap lying around the back of the shop. Most of it comes from the nearby factories, the guys there say it's not their fault, but shit, that's a big fat lie. The bosses' big pockets get them out of any serious trouble, so we have to make do with the back of our street looking like the world's just ended.
  
  I'd caught my arm pretty bad. It was a bloody mess, to be honest. At first, I panicked and thought it'd gone deep, but once I'd cleared away the blood and gunk it didn't look nearly as bad. I got patched up in the back and didn't think any more of it; it'd be healed up in a few days.
  
  When I got home it still itched like crazy. There wasn't any pain. In fact, I'd not noticed this until now, but there wasn't much pain when I'd caught my arm either. Just a strange itchy feeling, like nails were scratching under my skin.
  
  I jumped in the shower. That should have sorted it out. I scrubbed it raw and for the first time got a good look at the wound. It was just an ordinary cut once you wiped away the blood. Well, an ordinary cut that didn't seem to hurt in any way, like I'd been anaesthetised. It was jagged and messy. There was a valley of torn skin surrounding the gash. Still, nothing to get all that worried about though. It looked worse than it was.
  
  The itching, though, that was still there even after I'd put on some antiseptic. If it was still weird the next morning I'd made the decision; I'd go to the doctors. Maybe I'd have to get some antibiotics or something.
  
  The next morning, the itching had gotten worse and when I rolled up my sleeve there wasn't any cut left. It'd healed already, within less than twelve hours. Let me just phrase that again; a cut running half the length of my arm had healed, completely, in less than a day.
  
  The skin had healed funny too, it wasn't like a scab or scar was forming, instead the skin had sort of glued together over the cut. The texture looked like I'd kept my arm in water too long. It appeared to be healing, but in a strange way. The skin almost looked like it was pulling itself apart.
  
  I went to the doctors.
  
  The doctor who saw me was nice enough, young, just graduated maybe. She went through a lot of stuff, asked how I was eating, drinking, whether I was getting enough sleep. Eventually she prescribed me some new skin cream, said it's most likely an everyday infection. Trust those bastards that dumped all that shit out there to have made sure it was filthy too.
  
  I didn't tell her that my arm had healed like I was Wolverine. Don't ask me why I didn't say anything, just figured, if they thought it was a normal injury then it'd be a normal injury. I was an idiot.
  
  The cut still itched whilst I was at work. That feeling again, it was hard to describe, like fingers scratching. No, not fingers, that was the day before. Now it felt different. Like teeth, biting under my skin. When I got home the skin was still the same, perhaps even worse. It looked stretched, less like it was healing over and more like it had been pulled apart and was barely holding itself together.
  
  I slapped on some more of the antiseptic, making sure to cover the entire wound. That was the other thing I noticed. The actual wound had gotten bigger. The cut had been fairly big but it'd been narrow at least. Now, the infection covered a good chunk of my forearm.
  
  I bandaged it up and got ready for work. The first few hours were just about bearable, but then, I honestly thought I was going mad. I'd made an effort to simply not look at the bandage in an attempt to ignore it. Trying not to scratch an itch is almost impossible, and this was the worst I'd ever felt, it wasn't even as if I could get to the itch, it was like it was underneath the skin.
  
  It wasn't until I had about an hour left before finishing that one of the other shop assistants came up to me. She gave me this slightly nervous, sympathetic look and told me my arm was bleeding.
  
  Christ, I must have stood there for over half an hour at least, with blood flowing down my arm. I rushed into the back office and grabbed some paper towels from the bathroom. Unwrapping the bandages, I dabbed at the blood and wiped it out of the way. The wound had re-opened but was much messier than before. The skin had pulled back on both outer-edges of the wound, like it had been yanked open. Where the skin had given way, it looked as if it had dried up, peeling back to reveal a cavernous glistening hole buried in my arm.
  
  The gash continued to bleed for several minutes as I wiped away at it, before eventually stopping. As I reached for the bandage, I glanced down at it once again. It was a horrible wound, and as I wrapped my arm up again I swore the opening quivered.
  
  Why, for the love of god didn't I say anything?
  
  My manager let me leave early and I made a trip straight to the hospital; I wasn't taking any more chances. They patched it up, stitching the wound and cleaning it, which burned something wicked. The guy told me it was the infection that was the problem and said to keep the wound as clean as possible, changing the dressing every few hours. I told him about the fast healing, but, if I'm completely honest, I don't think he believed me. I came in looking like a wreck, probably thought I was out of it.
  
  That night I felt exhausted; by the time I got home I didn't have the energy to do anything. I collapsed in a heap on my bed and fell straight asleep.
  
  It was a hot night; I felt hot. My arm thrummed with a dull, aching heat. Some horrible sickness was coursing through my body and it was starting to affect my mind. My dreams were horrid, sharp, painful things. Not actual dreams but more like flashes of nightmares, singular images that were lighting up at the back of my eyelids. Christ, I felt bad.
  
  I awoke covered in sweat in the early morning. It was still dark outside and I glanced at my alarm clock. It was just past three in the morning, and I was due at work for eight. As I laid there staring up at the ceiling I heard a clicking sound from the side of my room. It was light and muffled, but I definitely wasn't hallucinating. It wasn't coming from the side of my room though, as I continued to look for the source of the noise, I realised it was coming from my arm, beneath the bandage.
  
  I unwrapped the bandage and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The wound in my arm was even bigger, running along the entirety of my forearm like a crooked smile. And it was moving. It quivered even more as I poked at the flesh, with soft clicking sounds whenever the two ends of the wound closed together. I probed at it for a bit, watching my own body seem to consciously react to my inspection before taking a deeper look. I still didn't know what was causing the clicking, but I found my answer.
  
  I peeled back the edges of the cut, causing the wound to move more erratically, like some wild animal that was being pinned down. Beneath the edges I managed to get a glimpse at what was causing the noise. A row of small jagged teeth appeared to have erupted from my flesh; tiny crooked yellow daggers lined up in roughly symmetrical rows across the insides of my arm. I carefully pushed the flesh out of the way to look further in, only to see the bright red flesh and muscle, and, what looked curiously like a tongue. A sinuous slice of meat that seemed to move as I watched it. I let go in shock, and the teeth chattered once more.
  
  I paced around the house for hours, watching the sun gradually creep in through the windows. I'd wrapped my mess of an arm in a clean bandage, and had not looked at it since. The steady gnashing of the teeth could still be heard, despite my best efforts.
  
  I was losing my mind, this couldn't be real. Sleeping was impossible, not only did the wound constantly make noise; the steady chattering of teeth seemed to get louder. The pain had gotten worse too, covering the whole of my arm, not just the forearm where the cut had been, but all the way up to my shoulder.
  
  By the morning I had that same itching sensation all the way up to the top of my back. I jabbed the side of my shoulder tentatively with a finger and it felt tight, yet oddly spongy. A dull heat had settled under the skin. Whatever I had was spreading.
  
  Whatever I had wasn't in any medical book.
  
  I unwrapped my arm to take a look again. The teeth were still chattering, the wound occasionally twisting itself into some kind of grin if I looked hard enough. I was looking hard enough, diseases don't grin for crying out loud. Bacteria isn't evil, it's just nature.
  
  Yeah, try telling my arm that.
  
  I was sick, really sick. What'd happen if I went to the hospital again? "Oh, come on in, sir, we're just going to send you to quarantine and turn you into a lab rat, can't have you infecting people now."
  
  Work soon became impossible. The steady chattering too noisy to cover up. Returning to the hospital was also a no-go. I was a medical experiment now, some twisted miracle that'd be prodded and poked. No, I was alone.
  
  Alone with a body that was no longer mine.
  
  Soon, I had another mouth, similar to the first, which gibbered and clicked above my left shoulder. They continued with the same mumbling sounds. It'd be worse at night, locked in the silence of my room, trying to sleep, as the wounds would continue uttering nonsense.
  
  Which brings me back to where I started. It's impossible to leave the house now. Last time I checked there's nine mouths spread all across my body. Wicked, ragged wounds with the same gnashing teeth and horrid supple tongues. They've gotten louder and louder, so much so that I've given up leaving the house, or even trying to sleep. They are wearing me down, attacking both my body and my mind. They're winning the fight and they know it.
  
  They mutter things now. Maybe it's me going mad, but I swear that they talk in their own way. Murmuring in their own twisted language. And there's no way for me to escape it.
  
  I could have done something sooner, gotten help, but I didn't. I was so stupid.
  
  Last night, I tried to cut one out, the first one. I grabbed a knife out the kitchen draw and stuffed a towel in my mouth. It was agony, the thing began to croak and almost scream as I went at it with the knife. I couldn't keep it up though, I'm weak. It won out in the end, just leaving me in more pain than when I started.
  
  And then they started chanting again.
  
  I broke down. Snapped. I screamed until my throat gave out, anything to stop what is now a chorus of noise.
  
  I yelled at it, the thing, this disease, whatever it is, that's slowly taken hold of my body.
  
  "What do you want?" I screamed.
  
  And it... they, answered.
  
  "You."
  
  I collapsed, and the mouths laughed in unison.
  
  ⁂
  
  [ DOWN WHERE HER NIGHTMARES DWELL by Sheldon Woodbury ]
  
  They say the greatest heartache a parent can feel is to witness their child in pain and feel helpless to stop it. That misery is even more wrenching when it echoes the same pain they felt as a child, because then they know the soul crushing agony being inflicted on the flesh they created.
  
  But what if that flesh is the cause of the pain?
  
  The childhood of Molly Stark was brutal in a way that no child should ever have to endure. She'd been born with a face that was plump and sullen, with gloomy eyes, and a misshapen body. This woeful condition created other frailties as well, a halting stutter, a nervous twitch, a shuffling walk.
  
  To make it even worse, she grew up in Los Angeles where beauty was worshipped above all else. The siren call of Hollywood lured striking faces from far and wide. Prom queens and heart-throbs strolled the streets in all their glory, as even more gorgeous faces shimmered on the giant billboards above.
  
  Her teenaged years were nothing less than a daily crucible of terror and fear. She found out in the most painful way possible that the cruelty of kids had no boundaries. She felt like a prisoner of war and the collective duty of her classmates was to torment her with slashing insults and cutting taunts.
  
  That's when something began to fester inside her, dark and secret. She didn't know what it was, only that it came from the place where her nightmares dwelled. It told her she had to change, no matter the extremes that needed to be taken.
  
  Her course of action was obvious at first. She began to exercise with an obsessive compulsion, huffing and puffing in the tiny sanctuary of her room. She also bought beauty magazines and studied them by flashlight deep into the night. The glossy pictures and self-help articles became her sacred text, pointing the way to the promised land of beauty. Some modest gains were made, but that was all, a different hairdo, more pleasing make-up, some fat sweated off.
  
  But even with that, the daily abuse didn't let up, because once the mean girls and bullies chose you as prey they couldn't be fooled by anything minor and modest.
  
  In that secret place, the festering thing told her more radical measures were needed, because the problem was way too severe for small accomplishments. And the pain had gotten even worse, like a throbbing ache that had no limits either.
  
  The next course of action presented itself when she was pushed down a flight of stairs at school by a football player and her plump face was horribly crushed by the tumbling fall. She was used to taunts and mocking sneers, but now it was obvious they wanted her dead. She was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, and taken to surgery right away. And that's where her life was changed forever. Under the sizzling lights in the operating room, she met the gleaming metal god that had the power to change human flesh.
  
  Her face had been smashed to a bloody pulp, so bones were rearranged, sinew attached, and the battered skin was sewn back together. The operation was deemed a success, but her face was even more revolting, a swollen atrocity mashed together with stitches.
  
  The recovery process took months, another wrenching crucible of pain. When the healing was finally completed, the result was a surprise she didn't expect. It may have been the surgeon's miraculous skill, or just an unexpected accident, because her features weren't as dreary and dreadful as before. It wasn't a total transformation, but it was definitely better than what the exercise and make-up had been able to achieve.
  
  All because of the gleaming god of surgical steel.
  
  "This is your life..." she heard from that secret dark place.
  
  The taunts and bullying continued through her teenaged years, then finally slacked off in college, only because the torment was now to make her invisible, as if she didn't exist at all. The beautiful people decided this was even more cunning and mean, to pretend they couldn't even see her. By this time though, she was so focused on becoming a doctor the new torture was something she could finally ignore.
  
  But she didn't want to be just any doctor, she wanted to wield the metal god that could transform flesh.
  
  She learned the mysteries of the human body in medical school, then studied the magic of plastic surgery after that. Late at night, in that secret place where her nightmares dwelled, the misery of her younger years still howled with an unforgettable agony and pain. But now she knew the slab of flesh that covered her body was not a physical prison, but merely a mushy facade that could be easily changed.
  
  The years of study and building her practice were grueling, like climbing a mountain where her only desire was to get to the top. When money finally came, she quickly utilized the benefits of her chosen profession, sculpting her face and figure into a form that was unrecognizable from the pitiful creature she'd been before. She transformed her flesh into a captivating shape that wasn't that different from the glossy pictures in the beauty magazines from long ago.
  
  With her new allure, suitors arrived and she picked the one that seemed the most pleasant. She'd never been overly attracted to men because of the psychic cruelty that still lingered inside, but she wanted a child so she accepted marriage as a necessary part of the process.
  
  When her daughter was born, the flesh of her flesh, she felt a joy she'd never experienced before. Cradling the tiny bundle in her arms unleashed a part of her heart she never knew existed, the part where love was the most powerful feeling imaginable.
  
  But then another emotion suddenly appeared one night when she realized her child was indeed the flesh of her flesh, but before her sculpted transformation. Her eyes were becoming dark and gloomy, and her wiggling body was twisting into a misshapen form.
  
  They say the greatest heartache a parent can feel is to witness their child in pain and it echoes the same pain they felt as a child.
  
  Down where her nightmares dwelled, and the memory of her tortured years still howled with pain, a plan formed that she accepted as the only right course of action. No loving mother would ever allow cruelty to the flesh of her flesh, so if ugliness was going to be her daughter's inheritance, then changes had to be made.
  
  She divorced her husband, in case he didn't understand what needed to be done, then set up a make-shift operating room in the basement. She'd acquired skills that few people had, as a worshipper of surgical steel.
  
  It was a slow process that wouldn't be detected by others, but it was extreme and radical in its own way.
  
  She gradually transformed her daughter into a teenaged beauty, but it didn't stop at just that. She made her a bombshell beyond the limits of good taste, with a sexy figure, lusty lips, and cascading hair. She'd been attacked for being ugly, so she made the flesh of her flesh something totally new, seductive perfection in every way. And that's when it happened, the horror of horrors that no child should ever experience.
  
  Her daughter came home in tears after a date with the captain of the football team, and the evidence was easy to see. Her clothes were ripped and her body was bruised, but the assault had gone much deeper than that.
  
  Down where her nightmares dwelled, her rage erupted to monstrous proportions and she prayed to the metal god for an appropriate response. It came with a clarity that startled her with its stunning cruelty, but she accepted its depravity.
  
  She needed her daughter's help, which she offered with the same need for payback and punishment.
  
  With a soft and luscious voice, her daughter told the lumbering football player how much she wanted another date as soon as possible. This fed his brutish ego like a game winning touchdown run, so the trap was set.
  
  "My Mom is away this weekend," she whispered in his ear at school. "Why don't you come over and we can have more fun..."
  
  When he arrived lugging a bottle of cheap booze and flashing a horny grin, it was easy to knock him out with a super powerful tranquilizer slipped into his drink. It took both the mother and daughter to drag his bulky body down the thumping stairs to the make-shift operating room in the basement, then push him up on the table.
  
  He was missing for a couple of days, because the operation was extreme and radical, not an easy fix.
  
  He was one of the beautiful people, with sunny blonde hair, a square jaw, and blue-sky eyes.
  
  It was close to midnight when his parents heard a scraping at the front door and stumbled downstairs. When they opened the door, it took a few seconds to see the whimpering thing on the stoop was their son, but now the flesh of their flesh was something brand new. He looked more like a pig than a human, with four stubby legs, a limp tail, pointed ears, and a snout that came from between his legs. The horror in his eyes was a pain no parent should ever have to see, but down where her nightmares dwelled, she knew the operation was a success.