Sex and Murder Magazine

Stephen Jarrell Williams

The flight had taken thirteen years.A good number
through a kaleidoscope of stars and peppered planets.

I dug out of my starship's crash-landing.
The suffocating fire only inflamed my hunger.

My dreams had envisioned this world.
A pinkish glow reminding me when Mars was rabid
with those skinny-assed intellectuals.
But their voluptuous women knew how to ride
death in my arms, regenerating blood
almost as fast as I could drink.

I overpopulated Mars with an army
made in my godless image.
They were merciless in their butchery for blood.
My vamparic armythe planet.
I left them sucking their own sliced wrists.

So many worlds...Feasting...Escaping...Undying......

But alas, I'm here on this ball of dirt.
Redwood trees standing sky-high andeverywhere.
My robe pitted with burnt holes.
My staff still red hot at its arrowed tip.
A breeze fluttering ashes into the night.

They flew over the gargantuan trees, two of them
circling high above, sizing me up,
their language a jamble of tongue-clicks and dull whistles.

They descended under their canopy of wings,
these bird people equal to my height,
but void in the voraciousness of killing.

I jabbed the male through with my staff.
He collapsed in disbelief.

My luck was holding.woman
had the beauty of their species:
a majestic spread of wings on her back,
aof miniature feathers around her ankles,
and the rest all feminine flesh.


Her name was Nyla.
I hypnotized her into remembering
nothing about her lover's death.

I changedinto my blood-love.
Her appetite grew.fed upon her village
perchedthetrees,
roofs thick of wood against the winds.

We would hunt and dine together.
I would hold her hand as we flew,
her graceful wings flapping and gliding,
as I levitated and pointed down to our victims.

I taught her to speak.taught her to sigh.
I taught her to gorge on the blood of her people.

I had picked a desolate nest castle
at the outer rim of thevillage.
Years of blood and sex feasts with Nyla
madecomplacentthe sway of our treetop utopia.

I had not loved in a thousand years until my sweet Nyla.
She counterbalanced the heavy weight of all my hatred.
But Karmathe bleeding heart of time...

The snake was an ancient enemy of the bird people.
It slithered up our tree trunk, slick skin and rib muscles.
It rammed headfirst into our chamber
as I made love to Nyla.
It had me in its jaws before I could react.

It thought I was a stick to snap.
My arms and legs stuck out of its jaws.
Imy fist and arm down its nostril,
raking out blood and meat.
The snake burst through the roof opening its mouth.
I stood on its tongue, the night wind howling.
Nylame my staff.
Ithe snake'sopen
and proceeded to yank its guts out.

When it fell in a gag of blood,
it crushed Nyla...

She died screaming, trance broken,
remembering howkilled her love...

I levitated into the night sky,
in shock and utter defeat.
Higher and higher into the endlessness,
slumping my face and shoulders
into the cold press of space.
And once again that ancient earth sickness of love
became my master,
centuries of sorrow beginning again.