Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

But here’s the thing. We’re trying. We’re trying to earn enough to pay them. Jessica’s got her job, and I’m working from home, but they don’t care about that; they keep calling, the phone ringing every ten, twenty minutes, and you can tell who it is by the caller ID, and you’d think we just wouldn’t bother, wouldn’t be such slaves to the phone, but what if it was actually someone important, you know? Like a neighbor, or someone with work to do. So we have to at least look at the caller ID.

“It’s all about persistence,” Jessica tells me. “They just keep calling and calling knowing that at some point you’ll pay them just to get them off your back.”

“It’s not that we’re holding out on them to be spiteful,” I say. “We really don’t have the money they’re asking for.”

Jessica says, “They count on you to have a tipping point. They count on you to get so annoyed, so bat-shit crazy from the sound of the ringing phone that you’ll do anything to make it stop. They don’t care how you get the money. They just know that somehow, at some point, you’ll reach critical mass, and you’ll get them their money.” She nods. “It’s all about persistence.”

The phone rings. I look at the caller ID. Damn.

Persistence.

But Jessica says, “Give me the phone.”

I hand it over.

To them it’s just a job, and they sit at their little consoles, or switchboards, or computers or whatever the hell it is they sit by, and wait until a computer tells them one of us poor schmucks have picked up the phone, and then they swoop in like vultures.

Jessica winks at me. “Where are you from,” she asks the caller flirtatiously. “I know what company you’re from, but where? Where are you calling from?” She smiles, and asks, “What’s your name?”

She does this with every call now. We still haven’t paid. We still don’t have the money. But she answers every damn call after she gets home from work. And they still call.

Most of the time, they don’t answer Jessica’s questions. That’s not why they’re calling. But sometimes she gets names. Locations.

She’s persistent.

And with a name and a location…

Jessica has been away for five weeks now. I didn’t realize how much money she had stashed away in her personal savings account. She’s way more frugal than I realized.

So far the killings appear random. As far as I can tell, nobody’s figured out a pattern.

She sends me postcards. “Having a grand time in Michigan!” or “Getting my kicks on Route 66” or “Loving the food here in India.”

You’d think they wouldn’t be so forthcoming with names and locations. But like I said, it’s all about persistence, and if I had to find one flaw with Jessica, it’s her damn persistence.

Cowboy Cthulhu

Deep within the midnight ink of ocean
upon a Cyclopean nest of rock
Cthulhu sits waiting, dreaming
of being—
A cowboy

He squats upon steeds dragged braying from the apocalypse,
and mosies across the ocean currents
with chaps fashioned from the cool hide of squid,
a Stetson coaxed from the leather of whales.
His spurs jingle, jangle, jingle
a pestilent ditty that drove Azerhed mad,
while four barnacle-cloaked rustlers
scour R’lyeh on bony nightmare feet.

He awaits the alignment of sea-tarnished stars,
and on cool autumnal nights warms himself
over the volcanic heat of telegraphed nightmares.
He smokes cigarettes rolled
from the skins of drowned sailors,
strums tunes on a guitar made of
shipwreck timber and strung tentacles,
lusts for the feel of saddle-horn and stirrup,
the taste of burnt beans and tin-pot coffee,
the smell of rusting barbed wire and blood-soaked rawhide.

When he opens his beak-like maw,
whirlpools birth on the distant surface,
barnacles crumble and octopi burst,
and the thin shellac of sanity melts
from those who dare listen.
The brine-infused dead rise from their vast trenches
and dance, as his fearsome yodel erupts;

Yippi ki yi, ki yi, ki yi!
Yippi ki yi, ki yi, ki yi!
Yippi ki yi, ki yi, ki yi!
Fhtagn!

Director’s Cut

Amazing how one press of a button can change a man’s life forever. A simple transference of electronic impulses. An invisible leap as the remote control breathes life into the components of a television set. There is blackness at first. Then static. Carter sits back in his leather chair. An image pops on the screen, a subtle glow that captures his breath. He leans forward.

EXT. A FOREST — NIGHT.