Crossroads

You never know who’ll give way
at a crossroads.
One time, a snarling black hummer,
a heaving heavyset beast—
windows dripping
with thick, opaque pus
growled to a halt before me.
Exhaust fumes
smelling like boiling turkey necks
swirled and
swamped my six-month-old baby boy
in his collapsible pram.
Squirrels and rats
were lanced on spikes
lining the car’s rims,
and Nordic techno raged from the woofers—
the noise
bouncing off the asphalt
stunning low flying crows.
The rear windows rolled down
and skeletal Rottweilers
poked their heads outside—
mouths frothing like sudsy soap.
They snapped at my child
who fell into fits of tears
then rocked in his pram
straining his safety belt.
Behind the dogs
inside the gloom
of the car
was a girl
bound with jagged wire cuffs,
her lips sewn together
like a rag doll.
She gave a muffled primal scream
then the windows
slid shut
and silence prevailed.
As I stood
paralysed, aghast,
a face appeared
in the driver’s seat.
A man with slabs of rusty brown teeth
and shrivelled potato ears,
formed a broken smile
with his painted lips.
By his side was a baby
looking studious and still.
He had a single sprig of red hair
on his otherwise bald scalp,
a slim nose,
dribbling yellow snot,
and charred pits for eyes.
The two babies looked identical,
except the child in the car
was smoking
a slow burning cigarette
and had tattoos
scrawled
over his mildewed neck.
I quickly turned
the other way
and charged back up the road,
where crossroads dissected
every city block
as my baby
let out a torturous laugh
that hooked my mind
in sick sticky spirals.'

The Suicide Gameshow

Christine, the virginal
never-needs-caffeine or
prescription happy pills,
nervously fingers
a twisted bronze cross
hanging
around her frail
neck.
She’s a contestant on
The Suicide Gameshow
the all-new
visionary shit-show,
always seeking the feeble
the pious
and the crazy brave.
Fear the prime time
beast
bleeding through your satellite dish—
terms and conditions apply,
suckers.
“Don’t kill yourself, Christine!”
the audience laughs.
Christine weeps for all the homeless
junky outcasts
and the rotting street amputees
and she will fling her prize money
at their tender feet—
that is, if she lives.
She so precious,
so gentle,
and so ripe for the sinister show.
Christine is tested;
she must watch
as a rancid black flag
is stuffed inside the mouth
of her beloved niece
who gags and pukes up
blood and Cheerios;
she must inhale the stench
of burning flesh
from war zones
in faraway lands;
and she must swallow
six tabs of acid
chased with slugs of gin,
then watch snuff movies
from the dark web.
Christine is rocked.
She chokes on her tears,
and wonders
what kind of God
could allow this horror
on His beloved, sacred Earth.
But she’s strong
under the roving hot lights,
and resists the lure
to seize the noose
dangling beside her,
like a glinting crimson flower
from hell.
The viewers sigh, defeated.
It’s never fun to lose,
especially to someone
as delicate and dumb
as poor Christine.
And yet, that night
some of the audience
journey home
violently depressed,
desperate to end it all,
and place a shotgun
on their parched tongues
then splash their brains
onto their carpets
like minestrone soup,
as they hum
The Suicide Gameshow’s
lilting, demented
theme tune.
What a relief.

Tongues

The day Yosef joined
his dad’s pest control business
he began work with a home-brewed
odourless powder
that filled
his soft lungs
like dirt in a vacuum.
That night, in a dingy hotel room,
his skin turned a jaundiced yellow hue
and he could taste acetone
on his stale blue tongue.
“You’ll be fine,” Yosef’s dad grunted,
as he scratched the flakes
circling his hooded eyes.
In the next few months,
the men travelled
down the coast,
into small towns,
and through vibrant city centres.
Yosef worked
and Yosef changed.
At first, varicose veins,
oozing dabs of blood and fluid,
appeared
around his hairless stomach.
Then his feet swelled
like an obese old woman’s,
and sharp stabbing
pains shot through his aching joints.
When Yosef
snapped his wrist
like a dry strand of dry spaghetti,
he broke down.
“What’s happening to me? I can’t take this.”
But his dad just scoffed,
saying, “Don’t complain. This is the work,
this is what we do.”
Then Yosef’s dad rolled up his sleeves
revealing tracks of festering
bulbous boils.
“This is the work,” he repeated,
“now go to sleep.”
That night the men slept—
their minds plunging
into dark seas
of perpetual gloom.
In their twin beds
both men’s stomachs bubbled
with hunger,
then their bellies split open,
and dozens of hand-sized
tongues
poked out.
The new organs formed discordant
words
with deep, lapping slurps
of phlegm and bile.
“Yosef, my son,
we are one now.”
“Yes, dad, I believe.”
“Never forget, Yosef.”
“No, never.”
The tongues gushed and grew.
They licked the walls,
and soaked the murky windows.
The men stuttered and spewed
all night,
as the whole room teemed
with folds of cerulean flesh.
The next day they would go back to work,
and every night they would talk and talk and talk
with gaping stomachs and salivating tongues.
They were father and son,
together.

Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Metaworker and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24)

Twitter: @TimFrankquill