Sex Crimes takes the topics of sex and crime, then adds 15 cult and underground authors to the mix to relate tales of depravity, abuse and terror. From mainstream authors like David J. Schow, Lawrence Santoro and Wayne Allen Sallee to comic book outlaws Joseph M. Monks and Hart D. Fisher the project collects a group of "orphans": stories with no homes; stories other publishers were afraid to print. Gruesome and relentless, Sex Crimes straddles the genres of crime fiction, thriller and erotic horror supported by illustrators such as comic mainstay John Cassaday to Stephen R. Bissette and Stephen King's frequently tapped collaborator Bernie Wrightson. The goal of co-editors Monks and Fisher was to unleash some of their favorite authors on an unsuspecting audience. The result is Sex Crimes.
From, "Catching" by Lawrence Santoro, in SEX CRIMES, edited by Joseph Monks and Hart Fisher.
It had been a lousy week in a boogie life.
When it began, she'd had a nice heat vent down Michigan Avenue, a little place in an alley between a couple of buildings. A loading dock sheltered it from the Hawk off the Lake and from the pig eyes on the main stem. There had been lots of boxes, too, big ones and dry. Good to curl up in or to stretch out, ones would hold the heat that rose in white swirls from the building vents.
Downtown was class. There, she could move among people and feel okay about herself. Nights, she could lie in the warmth of her building as it breathed on her and feel the sick run its way inside her.
She moved, days, among the nice downtown folks, their good clothing brushing her Sal Army wardrobe. She sat in coffee shops where, a moment before, a really pretty woman had been. Lou’d sip her tea and when she got up, a clean old man took her place and read the Wall Street paper. She fit.
She wasn't scared of the germs any more. She'd come to terms with that. The docs had told her the AIDS was treatable now. Her friend had died. But now it didn’t have to kill you, they said. There were drugs could make it almost disappear.
So that was it. Too bad for friend. Good for her. That made her feel good.
Oh, she wouldn’t take the drugs, couldn’t afford them, didn't think she wanted them. But, now the AIDS was treatable, she'd be alright. This big disease was like the polio, now, like the flu and T.B., the other things you didn’t die from anymore. She’d be okay with the AIDS. And the others.
Nights she felt it all crawling through her, touching her inside. At first, she hated those little fingers of disease, like little babies growing in her, shoving parts aside, moving heart and liver a little as they needed room. First, she wanted to push them out. Now, she accepted them. They were part of her, they were her. They fit.
Then the City came, Human Service suits and bunnies just behind the Pork and the Streets and San guys. Mayor wanted them OUTTA there, cops said, their sight did infect his eyes, one said. So out they went. Out, out, out! In came the Hy-lifts and the dumpsters. San guys hooting, looking down from the big trucks. All that stuff, their warm stuff, was gone like that. Human Services taking notes and handing out addresses, places to go, watery soups to suck down.
After Satan negotiates a pact with God and unleashes his army of demons, a secret sect battles a diabolical prophecy that threatens humanity.
Release Date: November 21, 2018
WEIRD RHODY is a short story collection featuring five strange tales all set in Rhode Island and written by five Rhode Island authors. The anthology is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, the Ocean State's famed author of pulp horror.
The Butcher's Boy
- 2011 Readers Favorite Award Silver Medal Winner in Horror - Fiction
A Paranormal/Chiller by Michael Robb
Thirty-one years ago, Buxly the Butcher went to trial for killing h
