first edition

Freakcidents © 2004 Michael A. ArnzenCover artwork © 2004 GakInterior artwork © 2004 Gak

this edition December 2004 © Shocklines Press

book design & typesetting:David G. BarnettfaT caT Design

PO BOX 540298Orlando, FL 32854-0298

Shocklines Press302 A W. 12th Street #241

New York, NY 10014matt@shocklines.com

Printed byPublishers’ Graphics

Carol Stream, IL

CONTENTS

THE ORPHANED 10

Umbilicile 11The Scab 12Genetic Defect Jennie 13Test Tube Tommy 14Soft Spot Sally 15Mutant Marcus 16The Conjoined Triplets 17Triple Face 19The Hairy Baby 20Spiderboy 21Girl Abandoned at Birth Raised by Rattlesnakes 22Siamese Blood Brothers 23Needle Baby 25Woman Gives Birth to Full Grown Man 26Boy’s Heart is on the Outside of His Body 27

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THE EMPLOYED 29

Born Every Minute 31Werecat Wally 32Mad Head 33Polka Clots 34A Personal Computer 35Stripper 36Freakshow Breakup 37Freaky Deak’s Splatfall 38Upon Suicidal Tendencies Among Sword-

Swallowing Shellfish-Eating Circus Freaks 39

Claw Head 41Venting Frustrations 42The Incredible Edible Fred 43Smoker 44The Creep with No Head 45Inside The Man With No Eyelids 46

Acknowledgments 49About the Author 51

I.

the orphaned

UMBILICILEthe placentae of stillborn thoughtsrot inside this skullcap wombsickeningly nestled against bonelike gum on a shoe sole

and every timeI open my eyes, my mouth, my mindI push:dilating nostalgiacontracting the future

and as I breathethrough spittle and bloodmy teeth chompcrisply on the cord

11

FREAKCIDENTS

THE SCAB

People line up to pick The Scab. She’s a ten year old kid completely dressed in nothing more than a ruddy brown coverallof crumbly rust, her eyes squirting around behind crusty lids, breathing througha wet nose hole that keeps shedding dust which falls down and tickles the hands of the pickerswho march endlessly by gathering crisp tokens of fragile memorabilia.They giggle and gag as they pass,touching this and caressing that. Some knock on her like a tree trunk.But she does not stir inside her heavy house of hardened wounds.She waits, stewing in her juices,studying the people who pick on her,patient enough to believe somedayshe’ll grow out of her shell.

12

MICHAEL A. ARNZEN

GENETIC DEFECTJENNIE

the eyeball on Baby Jennie’s big toecan’t blink but it triggers the lidsover her exposed shoulder socketswhich flutters like gills in airas her belly swells, bloatedwith the tears that have been leakingdown ducts lost somewhere insideever since the surgical glove slappedwhat almost resembled a face

13

FREAKCIDENTS

TEST TUBE TOMMY

Shaken foetal cocktailwill grow oblong and armless,albino pink as bloody silica gel.He’ll fear light because it will burnalmost as much as the stares.His fingers and biceps and elbowswill often scramble inside his rib cagegrasping for organs to cover as ifsuch hands could shield his shame.

14

MICHAEL A. ARNZEN

SOFT SPOT SALLY

Her entire skull is spongyand so soft to the touchyou can feel her brainthrobbing in therelike a baby kickingand when she flirtsor gets angryher head blushes pretty in pink webs of capillaryso bright the boys would squeeze her if she wasn’t one big fissure ready to blow.

15

FREAKCIDENTS

CLAW HEAD

claw head cowers in the corner,his neck bent from the weightof heaving his carapace humbly

his exoskeletal skull is nothingmore than a large pair of pliers,pincers meant to snap shells

and crush the juice from flesh fruithoisted above his masticating mawto drain into his freaky fingered face

but his neck is weary from the workand he wonders if he’s merely a wrench

41

FREAKCIDENTS

THE CREEP WITH NO HEAD

Headless, he has no mouthbut he must feed all the sameand he chases me clutchingat my neck with his pincers.I wonder how he’ll eat meas the claws part my throatand then I see the teethin his palm where a life line should be as my bloodsplurts up and I tumble down my own chin and into his hungry hands.

45

FREAKCIDENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael A. Arnzen is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, Grave Markings (Dell Books/DeliriumBooks). His short story collection, Fluid Mosaic (WildsidePress) collects his best stories from the 1990s. More recently,100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories (Raw Dog ScreamingPress) features one hundred works of Arnzen’s flash fiction.His other poetry chapbooks include Gorelets: UnpleasantPoetry, Dying (With No Apologies to Martha Stewart),Paratabloids, Chew, Sportuary and Writhing in Darkness.

Arnzen holds a Ph.D. in English and presently teaches grad-uate studies in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton HillUniversity in Western Pennsylvania, where he lives with hiswife and cats. He maintains a popular horror website and freee-newsletter at http://www.gorelets.com.

Pre-release Acclaim:

“Welcome to the barbed brain of Michael Arnzen, whereevery axon is a steel trap, every dendrite a hid-den snare,every synapse a cul de sac, and every myelin sheath an elixirenabling us to find affirmation in ugliness and to smile when-ever the dog eats God’s homework.”

—James Morrow, author of THE ETERNAL FOOTMANand THE LAST WITCHFINDER

“The human scab, the boy with a face full of eyes, the self-eating man—proof again that Arnzen’s outrageous imaginationis mainlining our culture’s nightsweats to engender a beautifulaesthetics of monstros-ity. These poems are maniacally ener-gized, transgressively funny, and perpetually haunted by thesad-dest awareness of all: freaks are us, only inside out.”

—Lance Olsen, author of TONGUING THE ZEITGEISTand FREAKNEST

“Mike Arnzen’s Freakcidents is a wickedly gleeful kaleido-scope of hideous horrors. And yet amidst all this colorful car-nage, one will find a heart—beating with sympathy, evenaffection, for the bizarre characters that make up this amazingpoetry collection.”

—Mark McLaughlin, author of SHAGGOTH CACCIA-TORE and ONCE UPON A SLIME

“Tight and succinct…visionary fragments, sharp little pic-tures that make your stomach squirm…in regular English,avoiding the pretense that consumes so many other poets.”

—Mikey Huyck, feoamante.com

“I imagine that if the British poet Ted Hughes had written theGarbage Pail Kids those cards might have read very much likeMichael Arnzen’s FREAKCIDENTS. These poems are crueland sad at the same time. These figures appall us the waythose kids in school appalled us: if we possssed a modicum ofdecency at that age (always debatable), we didn’t knowwhether to laugh at them or cry for them. They wore theirscars on their sleeves. They saved us from being embarrassedby our own wounds.”

—Steve Rasnic Tem, author of THE MAN IN THE CEILING

“Michael A. Arnzen, award winning poet and fiction writer,can always be counted on to approach the grotesque and thevisceral with wit and, often, compassion….but be prepared:Arnzen doesn’t hold back, and his imagery is both visceraland explicit. FREAKCIDENTS is smart, nasty, and very well-written—horror poetry doesn’t get much better than this.”

—Tim Pratt, STAR*LINE

“SCARY. Achieves in your face, punching rhythmical effects.Coupled with Arnzen’s vivid visuals…these rhythms are con-frontational, leaving readers no place to run and hide.”

—Clayton Couch, SIDEREALITY

“If you are not a fan of poetry, then you are missing a newtranscending voice in horror…shit, literature, okay?”

—Mike Purfield, B-INDEPENDENT