Below you’ll find Alan M. Clark’s weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture, read the caption, above and below the image, and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If the artwork inspires an idea, please use the comment feature to tell us something about it. Need a further explanation? Go to Imagination Workout—The Dilation Exercises.

Several times he screwed up his courage to reach into the darkness for what he wanted, but his efforts were frustrated by the bars of iron.

Although desperately hungry, she was unwilling to reach through the bars of light for the boy, and could only hope he would try again once the sun had set.

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

If you like Alan M. Clark’s artwork, please try his writing in both short fiction and novels.

Artwork: “Out of the Darkness” copyright © 2006 Alan M. Clark. Cover for Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark, published by Cemetery Dance Publications.

Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.

By Sam Reeve

Today’s featured movie for Japanese Horror Month is Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. One of the directors, Yoshihiro Nishimura, is probably better known for having directed Tokyo Gore Police. If you’ve seen it then you’re familiar with the style of this movie.

If you aren’t familiar with these movies but are a fan of bizarro, I urge you to get into them. Blood showers, cyborg-franken-human-hybrids like you’ve never seen and always lots of adorable (but violent) Japanese girls – what more could you ask for?

It’s a pretty simple tale of rivalry: Monami, the Vampire Girl and new student at a Tokyo high school, steals (and converts) another girl’s boyfriend. Of course this leads to the girls fighting over this poor guy who seemed at first to want nothing to do with either of them. Monami’s rival, Keiko, ends up dying after falling off the school’s roof. Luckily her father, the vice principal, also moonlights as a mad scientist trying to re-animate corpses. You can guess who gets to become Frankenstein Girl. The fight over the boy continues on, though it’s not any real surprise who wins since the opening scene in the film is of the final fight between the opposing girls.

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT: This movie is the epitome of ridiculousness. First I’ll show you this clip of the intro, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Besides having a lot of bizarre gore and violence, they make fun of some of Japan’s subcultures in the most satisfying way. This is the perfect kind of movie to watch with a group of friends during the Halloween season. It’s a WTF goldmine!

Here I’ve posted one of my favourite scenes, and below that you’ll find an English subtitled copy of the full movie. If you’ve seen Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, let us know what you thought in a comment below!

By Sam Reeve

Today I’m sharing with you folks the anime series Hellsing, which had an original run of only 13 episodes. It’s based on a manga series of the same name by Kouta Hirano.

Set in modern-day England, the series follows several members of the vampire-extermination group called The Hellsing Organization. The series starts off with Alucard (‘Dracula’ backwards), a powerful vampire employed by the organization, converting a young female police officer during a mission. She joins the organization as well but doesn’t immediately take to being a vampire, and initially she refuses to drink blood.

The organization is seeing more and more vampires turn up, and finds out they’re being artificially created with some kind of micro-chip.

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT: Alucard, though he actually doesn’t appear much in each episode, is a pretty bad ass anti-hero. He’s a pretty old vampire and has a lot of pride for the vampire race, and enjoys nothing more than destroying the immature, freshly-turned nobodies who just want to be vampires for kicks.

There are some pretty good scenes with creepy ghouls and vampires attacking people, and though I’ve only seen half of the episodes so far, it’s good enough that I’ll continue to the end of the series.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: The only thing that really gets to me is the new vampire girl, Seras Victoria. She’s dumb, weak, and annoys the fucking pants off me because she can’t decide what the hell she wants to do or how she feels about anything. Maybe I’m just being picky, but every episode there’s at least one moment where I want to reach into the screen and give her a good smack.

It also sucks that Alucard, the coolest character, isn’t actually the one we see the most of, like I initially thought after the first episode. There’s another series called Hellsing Ultimate, which I haven’t gotten to yet, that seems to focus more on Alucard.

The show isn’t the creepiest, so if you’re looking to be scared this won’t be your cup of tea. The soundtrack actually does little to help it have a scarier or more actiony feel, since a lot of the music is pretty jazzy and seems like an odd fit for the show.

Here’s a trailer for the series, and below that I’ve posted the first episode in its original Japanese, with English subtitles. Cheers!

By Pat Douglas

Guts is a bad motherfucker in a bad, bad world. The government nuked the sky ten years ago to combat a super fast spreading virus that turns humans into blood thirsty, ravenous killing machines that look more like giant, mutated bats than people. The new sky kills these “vampires” instantly, but at a cost. The entire planet is slammed with mega-high doses of radiation every time the sun comes up, completely changing life on earth as we know it, and completely decimating what little civilization there is left. In Nuke Town, Guts wakes up in a strange motel with no memory of how he got there. A brother and sister duo are the only two humans in sight, but are they friend or foe? As the paranoia sets in, and Guts begins to understand the true implications of a nest of sophisticated, mutated vampires, he must use all the cunning and skills that his years in the wasteland have taught him if he hopes to survive the horror that awaits him in …VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKETOWN!

Vampire Guts in Nuke Town, by Kevin Strange.
This book is splatter-thrash-gore fest-frenzy-smash! If that were a genre, I guess. Ha, anyway… this was my first time picking up a book by author, Kevin Strange. So I didn’t really know what to expect. The cover it strange. The publisher is strange. The author is even strange. Well that’s just a lot of strange! And it fits: This book is strange. And the truth is, that is the best way to describe it. The opening chapter lays the work for the world you will be entering. From there we meet the main character and move forward into a weird tale. If you can get past that first little loll in the book then you will be glad you did. The farther in you get the grosser it gets. Kevin has a knack for the descriptive. When the guts and goo are splattering across the page you can smell it. You taste it. It’s nasty. And when you think it couldn’t get any deeper, the gritty grime keeps on coming. This is what I liked and hated about the book. I enjoy a book that can make my stomach turn, but at the same time I felt like it was a little over done at times. Gore just for the sake of gore rather than letting the story flow. Although there were some up and downs with pace, over all, I was happy with the story. I loved the characters and all their quirky little defects. The pace was strong and engaging.

If you’re looking for a new twist on vampires… a bizarro twist that laughs mockingly at Twilight, then look no further. This book will make you throw up while laughing.

—
Have a book you want reviewed?
My name is Pat and I frequently stop in with bizarro book reviews. The types of reviews I do are simple, short, and to the point. If you want me to review your book just shoot me a message. My goal is to do at least one Bizarro Central Review a month. If I can get around to more than that, awesome. But no promises. You can check me out at http://indie-inside.com

17 days until Halloween!

Time for a bit of weird history and the sad tale of a stinky vampire by the name of Cuntius…

Via Alpha History

In 1582 residents in a village in Silesia complained of visitations from a bad-breathed vampire named Cuntius. Before joining the ranks of the undead, Johannes Cuntius had been a respected citizen and aldermen in Pentsch. In February 1582 Cuntius was fatally injured after being kicked by one of his “lusty geldings”. Before expiring Cuntius lingered for several days, complaining of ghostly visions and feeling like he was on fire. According to one witness, at the moment of his death a black cat entered the room and jumped onto his bed. As befitted his civic status, Cuntius was entombed near the altar of his local church. But within a few days several townspeople reported receiving visits from the dead man. All described a “most grievous stink” and “an exceedingly cold breath of so intolerable stinking and malignant a scent as is beyond all imagination and expression”. A whole litany of annoyances and harassments was attributed to the vampire, including accusations of: 

“…Galloping up and down like a wanton horse in the court of his house… Miserably tugging all night with a Jew [and] tossing him up and down in his lodgings… dreadfully accosting a wagoner, an old acquaintance of his, while he was busy in the stable [and] biting him so cruelly in the foot that he made him lame… [Entering a] master’s chamber, making a noise like a hog that eats grains, smacking and grunting very sonorously…”

The people of Pentsch tolerated these nocturnal visits until late July, when they resolved to exhume Cuntius’ coffin and deal with his wandering corpse. They found that his:

“…skin was tender and florid, his joints not at all stiff but limber and moveable… a staff being put into his hand, he grasped with his fingers… they opened a vein in his leg and the blood sprang out fresh as in the living.”

After a brief judicial hearing Cuntius’ body was thrown onto a bonfire and burned, then hacked to pieces and crushed to ashes. As might be expected, the spirit of Cuntius ceased its nocturnal visits. By coincidence, the village of Pentsch became the town of Horni Benesov – the ancestral home of US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Source: Various inc. Henry More, An Antidote against Atheism (Book III), 1655.

By Sam Reeve

Title: Alucarda

Year: 1978

Language: English

My rating: 7/10

This forgotten classic has it all: Satanism, murder, burning crosses, demonic possession, orgies and hot lesbian action! Despite being a Mexican film, Alucarda was originally filmed in English and many copies you’ll find today have even been dubbed over with new English dialogue. It sparked controversy upon its release for the imagery and themes, but has maintained a healthy following throughout the years.

Justine, a teenage orphan, arrives at a convent and is instantly befriended by Alucarda, a mischievous girl of the same age. They romp around the countryside together, meet gypsies, make a blood oath to die together, and then unleash evil forces in an abandoned church – all on Justine’s first day. The two girls become possessed by Satan and wreak havoc on the convent and its inhabitants.

The film was by no means high quality in terms of acting, dialogue, or really anything, but did that lessen the enjoyment? Hell no! Alucarda is a gem, a ridiculous gaudy gem that you’d find at a thrift store and never want to let go of. The final scene when everything gets lit on fire and all the nuns are running around like mad – genius. The worst part of the whole movie is the screaming, which there’s a lot of, but everything else is fun and crazy. Also, if you like female nudity, there’s a lot of that, and sometimes they even make out. It definitely makes up for the lack of sexy nuns, because they literally dress like Egyptian mummies (see below).

So, hopefully you’ve been convinced that this is a must-see horror film, but if you’re still unsure, check out the clip below. Lots of fluffy hair and nuns who appear to be wrapped in bacon. Below that is the full movie, dubbed over in English for unknown reasons.

Have you seen Alucarda? Let us know what you think in a comment below!

14 days until Halloween!

When people think of vampire animals the first thing that typically comes to mind are vampire bats. The vampire/bat link in vampire folklore could have originated from observations of vampire bats feeding on livestock and people. It isn’t clear if Bram Stoker got this idea from observing vampire bats before writing Dracula but it’s possible.

But vampire bats aren’t the only haematophagous animals. Here are 9 bloodsuckers found in nature that you may not have heard of:

I) The vampire finch, or Geospiza difficilis septentrionalis, feeds on the blood of other birds. They live in the Galapagos Islands and are endangered.

II) Vampire moths have been discovered throughout the world, prominently in Europe, Asia, and Africa. They feed mostly on animals but have been known to fill up on human blood as well. There is even a species of vampire butterfly which feeds of the blood of the dead!

III) The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis, lit. “vampire squid of Hell”) are deep-sea cephalopods which haven’t changed much since the 300 MILLION years that they’ve been around! When they feel threatened, they turn inside out into a “pumpkin posture.” Scientists are still trying to figure out their feeding behavior and how their filaments work since they do not grasp at prey like other cephalopods.

IV) Oxpeckers are a species of parasitic bird which feeds not only on the blood or large mammals, but also ticks, earwax, and dandruff.

V) Kissing bugs are dangerous bloodsuckers that like to bite people on the lips but bite other parts as well. Their bite can spread Chagas disease to humans and is life-threatening.

VI) Vandellia cirrhosa, also known as vampire fish, are a parasitic Amazonian catfish which has been alleged to climb up human urethra by climbing up with the bony spikes on its head where it then attaches itself to feed on blood. Fun!

VII) Evarcha culicivora, or vampire spiders, reside in Kenya and ironically feed on the most common bloodsucker, the mosquito.

VIII) Leeches have been used for medicine and getting attacked by them fucking sucks, especially since there is never just one leech, there are hundreds of them. The ones here in Thailand actually leap out at you. Imagine walking through the woods during monsoon season, checking out some nature, and suddenly every few steps, little black slimy things leap out at you and stick to your feet and legs sucking your yummy blood. I had no idea they could leap! That shit was scary and of course reminded me of this:

IX) Lamprey eels are the most fucking creepy blood-sucking animals out there! With that cluster of little razor-sharp teeth they use to latch onto passing animals in the water to suck their blood, it’s hard not to look at pics of them and not get the creeps. They rarely attack humans though and there is a tribe which still hunts and eats them. It’s an acquired taste…

For more spooky shit found in nature, check out my “Zombies in Nature” post.

#1) Vampira! By far the hottest and original of the old school monster chicks. Best known for starring in Ed Wood’s campy horror classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space and “The Vampira Show,” Vampira created her character in the 50’s and was inspired by The New Yorker comic version of Morticia Addams, Dragon Lady from an old comic called “Terry and the Pirates,” and the evil queen from Snow White.  The top pic was from a publicity stunt for her show where she was driven around Hollywood in a gorgeous black Packard.

#2) Morticia Addams (1991 movie version) is the hottest Morticia. I think the original TV version is just too cutesy for my liking, whereas Angelica Houston’s role as Morticia is properly sexy and morbid. The idea for Morticia Addams and the Addams Family came from the cartoons by Charles Addams for The New Yorker, which debuted in 1938.

Movie version Morticia certainly has the best memes:

#3) Lily Munster was originally going to be “Phoebe” and look like an exact replica of Morticia Addams but the studio decided to be more original and come up with something different. Lily Munster’s character is a true vampire who was born in 1827 in Transylvania. Sporting a white muslin dress with vampire wings instead of the tight, black hobble dresses of the other vamps, Lily was still sexy and the actress who played her, Yvonne De Carlo, was quite the looker and in numerous films.

BTW did you know there was a Munsters movie? I didn’t until just now!

#4) Elvira’s style was certainly influenced by the vintage vamps, especially Vampira, and improved upon the skintight black vamp dress with her sexed-up, silly valley girl sense of humor and incredible cleavage. Elvira began her career as a host for “Elvira’s Movie Macabre” in 1981 and starred in her own films like the classic Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She is still working, doing TV specials, movies, shows at Knott’s Scary Farm, and even has some Halloween-themed singles out on iTunes right now! She hasn’t aged at all. Perhaps she really is a vampire?

#5) Morticia Addams (tv show version) was the original TV Morticia in 1964. Carolyn Jones, the actress who played her, was nominated for a Golden Globe. Even with the cutesy Betty Boop face, her role as the matriarch of a macabre monster family was pretty punk rock for the 60’s and she was a sexy vintage vamp.

#6) Ingrid Pitt, played a sexy vampire in many films in the 60’s and 70’s, including The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula based on Elizabeth Bathory. She sexed up the vampire stereotype in her films and wasn’t afraid to bare it all for the screen.

Do you have any favorite hot vamp/monster chicks?

8 days until Halloween!

By Sam Reeve

Title: Dracula in Istanbul

Year: 1953

Language: Turkish

My rating: 5/10

My introduction to Turkish cinema was the ripoff of Star Wars, a film that was too bad to finish and had such low production quality that I just couldn’t cope. Although I finished Dracula in Istanbul, the quality wasn’t much better, but that may have been the specific copy I found on Youtube. The subtitles weren’t consistently there, and in some parts there was no dialogue in Turkish but everyone’s mouths were moving. It also looked like something from the 30’s, when in fact it came out in 1953.

As with the Turkish Star Wars, this was a ripoff story too. If you’ve read Bram Stoker’s classic vampire book, or even seen any of its truer adaptations, then you’ll know the drill here. Actually, Dracula in Istanbul is based on a book that majorly ripped off Stoker’s, and some people just consider it a translation.

Anyway, Lawyer dude shows up in countryside, meets Dracula. Finds out he’s a vampire. Some chicks get involved and some people get their blood sucked. One difference here is one of the ladies was an exotic dancer or something like that, so she was scantily clad compared to the dames in other old Dracula films.

Die hard fans of black and white horror will still get a kick out of this, but more so if you speak Turkish, because the subtitles sucked shit. I’m glad I knocked it off my list, and it’s apparently a major classic in its home country, so it’s also an important one foreign film lovers.

Here you have it folks, the stuff of legends, complete with the “English” subtitles. Enjoy!

By Sam Reeve

Title: Black Sabbath

Year: 1963

Language: Italian

My rating: 6.5/10

Directed by the legendary Mario Bava, Black Sabbath is quite a noteworthy horror anthology film. The piece titled The Wurdulak stars the equally legendary Boris Karloff, and all the actresses from the movie are total babes. You can’t go wrong!

Fun fact: the famous band Black Sabbath apparently named themselves after this film.

In The Telephone we have a beautiful woman who’s terrorized by phone calls and a vengeful acquaintance. In The Wurdulak, Boris Karloff comes back as a vampire and attacks his family of peasants. Our final piece, The Drop of Water, is a ghostly tale about a nurse who steals a ring from a dead woman and gets haunted.

All three are fairly suspenseful and well acted, but the final one was probably the creepiest. The lady’s corpse had a pretty terrifying expression on her face:

There you have it! Check out this trailer, or watch the full movie below with English subtitles. Enjoy!

It’s September Bizarros! That means it’s time to get serious with the Halloween spirit. So grab your pumpkin spice dildos and get ready!

If this music video of Tim Curry dressed as an 80’s vampire and channeling David Bowie doesn’t put you in the Halloween mood, nothing will! I’ve never watched The Worst Witch, but apparently it’s pretty dull aside from this incredible music video that comes out of nowhere.

As you might have noticed, I watch a lot of youtube. One of my favorite youtube channels is “Ask a Mortician” where a mortician answers cool questions about death, from death shits to foreskin wedding rings. I love Caitlin!

Typing of death, here is my favorite Nightmare on Elm Street death of all time. It involves twink Johnny Depp, a bed, and a lot of blood! Thanks Wes Craven for giving the world one of the best monsters of all time and inspiring some inventive kills.

Nothing says Halloween like Vincent Price dressed as a polar bear, in a wine cooler commercial. Nothing.

I’ve been binge watching Key & Peele lately because they’re hilarious. It’s great to see comedy taken to its full artistic potential with social commentary and theatrical silliness. Key & Peele are talented as fuck. Their range of characters is impressive. I’m sad that this will be their last season but they put out some amazing comedic content that I’ve been watching over and over again. Their “Sexy Vampires” sketch is a must watch. It brings up the serious question of vampire stereotyping in films.

Watching horror movies is the best way to get into the spirit of the season. Blood for Dracula is on my Halloween rotation every year and still makes me laugh. I love Udo Kier so much. In this film, he’s is a sexy vampire who is having some trouble finding virgin blood to keep him alive. I’m sure I’ve posted this before since this is such a classic movie with one of my favorite movie lines of all time:

You can watch the full movie here for now:

So Bizarros, what are your favorite things to do to get you into the Halloween spirit? Any favorite movies or creepy places in your area?

by: Sean Noah Noah

Y2K came and went and pretty much everyone could agree that the world had ended, but nobody could figure out exactly how. Just days before, everything had seemed so certain: all the computers wouldn’t be able to change the dates correctly and they’d break down and take the public infrastructure with them. But the date passed and no, that wasn’t it. Something large and awful had happened, and civilization would never recover, that was for sure, but it seemed like everyone felt a different apocalypse break the world as the sun rose over a new millennium.

By midday January second, Alex and Annemarie were meeting by the water cooler of their old workplace, Alex dodging around the carpet in an effort to avoid the burned spots, Annemarie not even walking through the shattered front door. Neither of them drank any of the water. Annemarie claimed, as she leaned against the cooler, that it had been destroyed by the nuclear blast, like most of the building, and even if it were still standing it would be too contaminated with fallout to drink. She dressed head to toe in whatever rags she could find that looked safe, and she felt protected. Alex was bent over, sweating and wearing very little, saying that the plastic of the cooler had melted and the water had evaporated in the heat of the exploding sun. Jane Abbott pointed out from across the room, helpfully, that if the sun had exploded, he wouldn’t be alive to complain about it. Alex and Annemarie ignored her; both agreed she was dead.

Jane, for her part, was happy enough to be dead, and she went back home to tell Henry the good news. They were both dead, and they spent the coming months lying inert on their living room floor, big rigor mortis smiles on their faces, watching groups of bored teenagers matter-of-factly loot their house as their muscles atrophied.

Jake Edison, whose friends called him Eddie, was part of the fifth band to raid the Abbott residence, and he felt sorry for them. They were less people and more messes on the floor at that point. He asked his pals if he could turn them; he was pale and low on vitamin D because he’d spent no time out in the sunlight since the Y2K vampire apocalypse. His friends said sure, why not, and he bit each Abbott on the neck once, but they were long gone by then and he shrugged and said, mostly to himself, that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

People camped in their houses with guns and canned food, or came out of what they called rubble to share horror stories, but in the bigger cities, there was another group: the denialists, the naysayers, the Y2K truthers; the frustrated, confused, and angry who yelled at the world that they’d seen no apocalypse save the sudden transformation of all their friends into complete idiots. And as they marched through the streets with signs proclaiming YOU’RE NOT DEAD and GET BACK TO WORK, stepping over fissures and sinkholes like they didn’t exist, walking through fire and paying falling debris no mind, they were treated like the ravenous hordes of the undead. Or ignored.

________

Sean Noah Noah is a writer, stand-up comic, and graphic designer living somewhere in the Northeast. Want more? Watch this comedy set on YouTube, read another story in PLUS+, or follow Sean on twitter @SeanNoahNoah.

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Send your weird little stories to flashfictionfridaysubmissions@gmail.com.

If you’ve been around the bizarro genre long enough, then you know that Takashi Miike is one of our patron saints. Miike has made a ton of different movies but he’s never afraid to unleash mass cinematic insanity, whether it’s a horror film, a samurai film, or even children’s movies. His latest is Yakuza Apocalypse, a gangster flick involving bloodsucking vampires and an unstoppable frog monster.

And besides a man-sized muppet who can unvelcro his mouth and breathe fire, Yakuza Apocalypse has a badass vampire nerd, a turtle guy, Mad Dog from The Raid, and human babies grown in a garden. It’s one of the best weird flicks you’ll see. Check out the trailer below.

By John Bruni

My eye cracks open. It’s unusual for me to wake up before my alarm clock goes off. I check my phone and—holy shit! It’s 8:29 am! I have to be at work in one minute!

I don’t have time to eat or brush my teeth. The commute from Elmhurst to Schaumburg can take between twenty to forty minutes. I can’t afford to be so late.

I dress and rush out the door to my car. I drive as fast as I can to the expressway. Thank Christ it looks like traffic is moving swiftly. I get over to the left lane and get up to eighty-five miles per hour. No one’s ahead of me, so I gun it to ninety-five.

I check the dashboard. Still 8:29. Good.

Oh shit. I just passed a cop. Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me. Please—

Fuck. He saw me. Lights flash, and he zooms up to my ass. He’s gotta be pissed, but I can’t be late. I press my foot down as far as it can go. I check the time. Still 8:29.

I look up just in time to see that traffic has stopped, and I’m about to crash into the car that has magically appeared in front of me. I scream, twisting the wheel to the left. I veer away from the jam and hit the ditch so hard that my car flips. The roof caves in, and I hang from my seatbelt. The airbag goes off and punches me in the face.

Son of a bitch. I’m not going to make it to work on time. The dashboard is crumpled, so I can’t check the clock.

Someone knocks on the driver’s side window, and I remember the cop car. I’m in serious shit. I see the cop’s legs, and they seem too white for this world.

He opens the door and cuts me free of my seatbelt. He helps me out of the car, and when I straighten out, I see it’s Andy Griffith. Or Andy Taylor, rather.

“You’re in a spot of trouble, son,” he says.

“You’re darned tootin’!”

I look around Andy to see Barney Fife rushing up to me, wagging his finger in my face. Both he and Andy are in glorious black and white.

“Am I going to jail?” I ask. “I need to call my boss if I am.”

“You know what we oughta do, Andy? I think we oughta rape him!”

What. The. Fuck.

“Now, now, Barn. We can’t just go around rapin’ folks. He is going to jail, though. Turn around, son.”

Shit. I comply. He fits the handcuffs on. They’re tight and cold against my skin. He pushes me forward until we reach the cruiser. Barney opens the back, and Andy gently eases me in.

But I’m not in the back of a car. I’m in a castle. I turn around to see a door-shaped hole, but when Andy closes it, reality fills in.

“Good evening.”

I turn back around to see Dracula standing at the top of a staircase. Not Lugosi or Lee or even Langella. It’s Gary Oldman.

“Um,” I say, “do you have the time? I’m going to be late for work.”

“You shall be much later, then. Girls?” He gestures at me.

There are three women suddenly around me. All are incredibly hot, and they wear gauzy see-through gowns. They grin, showing off their fangs.

“Take good care of my guest. Don’t hurt him . . . too much.”

They lead me into the next room, a bedroom. They tie me up to a chair and drag me over to a computer on a table in the corner. They start to bicker over who gets to show me their blog first. They settle on Cauldron of Goth. It’s so bad I kind of wish they’d drain me of blood and be done with it.

Just when I consider chewing my own tongue off to choke myself, the door explodes. I whip my head around to see Alex Jones bearing a cross and holy water. He charges the brides of Dracula, driving them back hissing and glaring.

“That’s right, you undead concubines!” he says. “Stay back! I’ll toast your ass!”

“When did you become a vampire slayer?” I ask.

“Just after I was Bill Hicks. I created Alex Jones as a cover. I’ve been killin’ vamps ever since.”

He makes short work of my bonds—even the handcuffs—so I thank him as I stand.

“I’ll hold ‘em off,” Alex Jones says.

The door he came through is gone, just a brick wall, so the only way out is the window. But we must be a hundred feet up. There’s no way I can do this.

“You have to climb down the wall!” Alex Jones shouts. “Hurry! I can’t hold ‘em off much longer!”

Here goes nothing. I grab a hold of the wall, and I’m shocked by how easy this is. It’s like I’m Spider-Man. I crawl down face-first until I reach the ground.

There! About a block away! I see my office building! I rush across the grassy field and feverishly work at opening the door with my badge. I dart in and slam my ID card against the machine that punches me in.

It beeps.

The time switches from 8:29 to 8:30.

Whew!

________

John Bruni once killed a man and proved it by clipping the toenails of his victim and cloning him. He usually writes some kind of drunken gibberish on his blog, Goodnight, Fuckers. He is the author of several novels and short stories, many of which can be found here.

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Want in on this? Submit up to three bizarro flash fiction stories at a time, pasted into the body of an email (no attachments) to FlashFictionFridaySubmissions@gmail.com and include a brief bio. Put the title of your submission in the subject line of the email.