Sh-sh-shut up, not real.

Iris wheeled up to Blenny, cutting off his frightful daydreams. "It's almost time for your surprise, Blenny," she said. "This is certainly a very special mission that only one special boy could accomplish. Are you excited to discover what it is?"

Blenny cringed. Up close, he saw that Iris' dentures were wooden. Cracked and ancient, she looked very much like one of her dolls.

"Can you-c-c-can you-"

Suddenly, something moved. At the rear of the bus, one doll stood out from the rest.

Her wide cornflower-blue eyes stared brightly beneath wispy black lashes. She smiled at Blenny with fissured apple cheeks and fading, delicately painted freckles. She wore a frilly blue dress with a white ap.r.o.n, frilly white socks, and black patent leather shoes. Her auburn pigtails shook. She was gyrating rapidly.

At first, Blenny's eyes did not register the horror of what they were witnessing-however, it took only seconds for horrid comprehension to dawn.

The doll was masturbating with a toy shovel.

For the second time that day, everything. Went. Black.

The bus blurred back into vision some time later. Blenny raised his head and saw Iris p.u.b.efant rocking back and forth in her wheelchair. She was smiling in an empty way that, to a wiser observer, would have indicated an imminent walk through dementia's doors. Her hands were folded neatly over a pig-tailed doll on her lap.

"Do you like my collection?" she inquired.

"I g-gotta go now. Gotta go home. B-bye." Blenny jumped up.

"But you haven't yet received your surprise, Blenny. You can't possibly return home with unfinished business." Blenny watched, horridly mesmerized, as she plucked hairs out of the pig-tailed doll on her lap. "It simply isn't done, you know." Pluck. "Not in polite society." Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.

The lascivious doll in the back of the bus stared gla.s.sily into s.p.a.ce, completely motionless. Blenny stumbled toward the door. "For crying out loud!" he brayed. "This is a bad, bad place, and I'm going home right now!"

Iris stopped rocking. This time she was not smiling. She spoke quietly. "I object."

Blenny froze. An invisible force stayed him. He tried with all his might to run, but to no avail. He yelled.

Iris resumed rocking, this time furiously. "When I was a little girl, disobedience was punishable by forty whacks from a wooden ruler. We were taught to have manners, you filthy little ingrate. Manners!" She made a hawking sound, and pointed at him. "And you, you spoiled creature, you have the presence of mind to be an ungrateful guest!"

Blenny was wailing now. "Leave me alone, for crying out loud!" He tried to shake free of his invisible bonds, but couldn't. "I'm getting out of here!"

"Did Cyrus not inform you of your surprise, Blenny?"

He blubbered.

Iris stopped rocking.

"Blenny."

Blenny felt himself walking backwards, being pulled inexorably toward the mottled scarecrow in the wheelchair. His will was limp. Struggling invisibly, he was pulled backward to stand before the witch.

"I can't move! I can't move!"

Iris grinned nefariously. "Did you know that one can often tell a person's age by the rings around their r.e.c.t.u.m?" she cackled. "How old am I, Blenny?"

Blenny found himself tearing mindlessly at Iris' petticoats. "S-s-s-stop, stop!" he yelled. "Help! P-Police!"

He hoisted Iris up and rolled her onto her stomach on the floor with a strength he didn't know he had. Her bones emitted an almost flatulent creak as he did so. He whimpered.

"Tie me to my wheelchair, sugarp.u.b.es!" Iris cried, cackling with horrific glee.

He lowered her bloomers and gagged as her old-lady queefstench corrupted the air. Screaming, Blenny peeled Iris' runneled b.u.t.t-loaves aside, revealing a sphincter that was winking and blinking in gelatinous antic.i.p.ation. The grotesque Cyclops winked at him obscenely. He filled his pants.

"No, you little nitwit!" shrieked Iris. "Turn me over the other way! Other Way!"

Blenny tried with all his might to resist, but to no avail. His will was hers.

He flipped her over. A huge puff of elderly gray m.u.f.f bushed up at his face; it sprang in kinky tufts around something that looked like a hanged worm.

The surrounding dolls were now t.i.ttering like insane cicadas. In a horrible moment of insight, Blenny realized that they were the source of the humming he'd heard in the village.

Iris lifted her petticoats higher. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s oozed over the sides of her ribcage. An oozing, gaping stoma smiled out at him from her chest. It pulsed and throbbed, opening its lips wide to receive.

Iris screamed "You little b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Listen here!"

Blenny felt another contraction-like, invisible pull-the strongest yet. Shouting and bawling, he unzipped his corduroys and plunged his manbit into the scabrous stoma.

Ruptured pustules bled burning sputum into his urethra. Blenny heaved, and then vomited hard. The afternoon's half-digested corndogs ran down Iris' back.

She grunted like a farm hog in heat. The stoma held an iron grip on Blenny's member, gulping him in further as he beat at Iris' face with his free hand. Fragile bones crunched beneath rotted pumpkin skin, yet Iris' invisible hold on him was relentless.

Suddenly, Blenny felt a shocking coldness around his disappearing member. He looked down. Incredibly, the stoma had expanded to reveal a set of metallic jaws yawning around his shaft. Before he could scream, the jaws grinned wide, expanded, and snapped shut around him.

"Uuuuhhhh!"

The windows were s.p.a.ckled crimson. Limb by limb, the poor Down syndrome man's body was chewed into the vortex of the glittering stomatic bear trap. Bone, gristle, and orange cotton fibers flew. The dolls were gone; in their place sat tiny skeletons chattering madly in the bus seats.

"Surprise, Blenny!" Iris keened.

When all was screamed and bled, Mrs. Iris p.u.b.efant dragged herself back to her wheelchair and rested: her work here was done. She rocked serenely, croaking softly to

herself.

"The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round..."

Somewhere in a distant, obscene pocket of the universe called Bleak Street, Iris p.u.b.efant's sphincter dilated and contracted spasmodically. Near the Route 6 bus stop, a

midnight man in dreadlocks and rags startled a pa.s.sing officer with loud, unwarranted screams of laughter.

Also on Bleak Street, in a graveyard of abandoned busses lying like felled whales beneath a stand of quivering pine trees, an obese mustachioed man was dragged along in a wheelchair by a s...o...b..ring, legless black dog. In a neighboring bus, an old lady asked the nothingness where the kitty' went.

All was fine and well in this corner of the universe...at least until the next surprise.

About the Authors.

John Mcnee.

An unemployed journalism graduate living on the west coast of Scotland. He writes solely to distract himself from the crushing boredom.

Daniel Fabiani.

A 22 year old kid from NYC with the accent to prove it! He loves all things horror and works in a hospital, witnessing horrific things and getting paid for it. He is a fanatic for cooking and romance languages and is also a wine lover. He writes existential horror and feels it is sewed to his soul. He is a self-proclaimed bookworm and is not afraid to show it.

Lucas Pederson.

The undisputible Dark Lord of Earth and at this very moment he's sending his minions into children's closets, stuffing them under beds, and filling every dark shadow in every corner of every room. He will kill you if you so much as utter his name and- -he's also the published author of over fifteen short stories in various anthologies and ezines.

He lives in Iowa with his beautiful wife and three wonderful daughters...

...or does he...?

Danny Hill.

Your Tender Loving Touch was one of those fun stories that took an impossibly short short time to write. Once I had the germ of the idea the writing process took only a few hours. It was only once I'd read back the first draft that I suddenly realized just how... wrong it was, just how terribly sick and disturbed. Even my mother read it. She hasn't called for a while. I had one of those "Give yourself a little talking to" moments and resolved that no publisher's gonna touch this with an eleven foot pole.

Or will they?

Jessy Marie Roberts.

Jessy Marie Roberts lives in a "haunted" house in Western Nebraska, though she grew up in Morgan Hill, California. She writes in an office where a doctor put a bullet through his brain about 100 years ago. The west bas.e.m.e.nt of the house has a morbid history of people hanged from the rafters whereas the east bas.e.m.e.nt was once lined with deep freezers stuffed full of dead cats stored in plastic baggies.

Shane McKenzie.

He has no idea what's going on. Who are you people? He lives in Austin, TX where he writes down what the voices tell him to, then runs and hides under his bed. The voices have published over twenty short stories in various ezines and anthologies. Their hungry for more.

Jared Donald Blair I am twenty years old and currently in my junior year at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. My mind is constantly running off with ridiculous and fanciful *what ifs', most of which usually include quite a lot of blood. So I have decided to put my imagination to work, taking these macabre scenarios as far as my words will allow. My main intention is to make my readers squirm and writhe, laughing as they go. I hope to describe brutality and gore as both beautiful and surreal; and prove that the happy ending is not always the right one.

Lesley Conner A closet serial killer, plucking victims from her imagination and eviscerating them on the page....well, when's she not too busy raising two kids (and a husband) anyway. It is this double life which has kept the authorities in Maryland (where she lives) off of her trail, for now anyway. Which victim will be her last?? For

details, visit www.lesleyconner.com.