QUEER HORROR DAY 13 - RIALTO

QUEER HORROR DAY 13 - RIALTO

There is an old (now defunct) theatre in Ohio, called The Rialto, it has one of those old marquee signs out front. It got built on top of an old burned down tenement  — the landlord did it for money. He got the chair for killing 81 people in the process too.

Even before the fire, the tenement was a cesspool of drugs, illness, suicide, and shitty plumbing. Soon after they cleared the ashes, they erected the theater on the same ground.

Theatre patrons regularly reported a man playing with himself in the back row during matinees, but no ushers ever caught sight of him. The area around seat E on row 7 remained inexplicably cold and wet (no matter what), leaving management no choice but section it off permanently. On more than one occasion, women reported seeing a young girl passed out on the lady’s room floor — her skirt over her head — or a person hanging from the rafters in the balcony's flickering dark.

Today you can still hear noises from inside the theater, sounds of a movie even though it’s been empty for over 15 years. I'd reveal its location, but I’d hate for another fool to try and explore it again, only to end up missing.

QUEER HORROR DAY 11 - CHEMICALS

Freshly smelling of bath salts from the shower, John sprayed on his  cologne and took a sip of Moonlight before dragging on his cancer stick. In the kitchen he ironed. He stopped buttoning his shirt in the mirror, took a quick bump off of his car key, gel-styled his hair and drove into the acrid  night.

At the neon bar, he toked with a twink, tasted his cherry lip balm, pulled him closer and said, "I wanna inject you. Like a smoke... like a poison."

They went home. Dropped a tab. Did a bump. Smoked T. Sweated into each other, lipsandhandsblurring a wet humping mess. They woke up a deformed indistinguishable mass — faces connected at the cheek, hair  down the middle, an arm out the other's back, four legs intersecting like two melted plastic fetuses.

QUEER HORROR DAY 17 - MIDNIGHT CHILD

When my pregnant lover fell into a coma, I began sleeping in his hospital room. A few weeks back he began sputtering and convulsing. Weird black squiggles (like dark veins) spread from the center of his abdomen.

“Your child is deformed,” the doctor concluded. “I want it,” I said, massaging my aching stump.

Every night at midnight, my lover speaks. He says, “Daddy, you dare? Is dark n coldie. Pwease hode me.” It’s not sleep-talking; the voice is not his. It’s a toddler’s, gurgling in fluid.

The black veins extend every day. “Daddy dying. Pwease halp.” I cry against the cold stomach whispering, “I promise I promise I promise,” as I fall asleep.

My lover has been brain dead for a few days now. His bedsores stink. I beg the doctor to cut our child from the womb. “It won’t survive,” she replies. Not he or she. It.

The sonogram display a writhing, squirming mass eating away at Ken’s innards — a wormy tangle, a pulsating brain. Please save me. It’s all we have.

“Daddy, I hungee I hungee I hungee,” he says. I rub my wrist  against Ken’s blackened belly. “I cannot wait. I will hold you. I will feed you all that's left of me.”

QUEER HORROR DAY 5 - MEMBER

Regina woke up one morning with a penis. She didn't want it, it just appeared — hairy, long and just a bit too large for her panties. She told her girlfriend who thought it was some kind of joke, and went to the doctor but she could provide no explanation. She thought about removing it but worried that it might grow back or that it would somehow ruin her chances of ever getting her vagina back. Later that month, she started sprouting chest and facial hair; she felt like her boobs and hips were shrinking and that her arms and legs were getting more muscular. For a woman who had always liked her curvy figure, she was mortified. She began wearing frumpy sweatsuits and large overcoats when she went outdoors.

Then, leaving her apartment one day, she noticed that her skinny artistic neighbor downstairs seemed to have sprouted a pair of small breasts (not pectoral muscles, but round, pronounced breasts). "Does he have my vagina" she wondered, but could not bring herself to ask. 

Horace the scribe, Egyptian god of writerly bitches

QUEER HORROR DAY 3 - PORTRAIT

None of us have seen Dorian for several weeks, but he keeps posting weird shit on his blog. First, it was naked pictures of his ex — a guy who until then was still friends with him. Then there were several tweets about an unnamed relative dying in a house fire, a comment about how meth gave him  diarrhea and a post that read "Just lost my job because of porn." Then a week later, there was this image with red letters that just said "I have already infected 4 people with HIV." None of us can get a hold of Dorian. We're not even sure if it's really him  updating his blog.