Many years ago, arthritis and senility took their toll. Gnarled fingers and a crippled mind.

Sometimes she orders lemon and honey tea, sometimes its scotch on the rocks. More often than not, she asks for cherry Kool-Aid with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

In the far corner, a dark stranger watches the toothless old woman struggle with a fork and lime Jello. He smirks as she gums her way through lunch.

Smug with the knowledge that he has roughly fifteen minutes to kill before his collection is ready for pick-up and transport to hell, the Grim Reaper orders a slice of apple pie ala mode.

(First published in the Science Fiction Poetry Review in 2001)

In the Garden of Flesh

by Cathy Buburuz

Time passes quickly for the condemned. Hours are heartbeats drowning in tidal waves of fear. Thoughts are technicolor mind paintings spilling forth visions of personified agony. Too soon the razor lined jaws of the rapacious blade bugs will seek and devour the nourishment so vital to the ongoing quest and zest for black flesh.

The prisoners lay spread-eagle on an emerald blanket of frilled and tattered moss; hands, feet and necks bound to Mother Earth by ribbons of tiger skin tied tightly to the knotted roots of ancient ganga trees. A thousand pairs of silver armoured legs march toward this garden of flesh, the hairy nostrils of the blades sucking deep the sweet scents of flesh, blood and bone. They are pirates of the jungle in a bold and brazen march toward human booty.

A shivery hush falls over the writhing bodies of murderers, rapists and child molesters as their captors depart on foot for safer, higher ground from which to witness the just reward of the damned.

The queen blade, keen of scent and sound, leads her grisly troups over matted ferns, braided vines and exotic flowers. Her moist and spotted body sparkles in and out of jungle shadows alive and green in this majestic forest of rain and sun and gnawing hunger. An abundance of lizards, snakes and the odd monkey has not dulled the craving nor the anticipation as they approach the first of the jerking, screaming, bulbous heads of the damned.

(First published in Black Tears Magazine in England in 1994)