by
R. S. Wells
The rain fell in torrents. In deluges it descended. In cascades it came crashing down. It fell as a maelstrom of tiny worlds converging on the soul, as a barrage of overpowering, endless streams of liquid, soaking through the fabric of being. It reminded one of a land drenched in water, flooded as if the very sky above were rent asunder.
Except, that is, at occasional, brief, minor, slight intervals, when it was checked, held back, momentarily restrained by a violent, cataclysmic, devastating, overwhelming gust of wind which swept up the streets, across the avenues, along the boulevards, through the back alleys, down the by-ways. (For, indeed, it is in London, Londres, Londinium, that great city on the Thames, that once-proud capital of an empire upon which that now-dissipated sun never set, that our scene lies.) Rattling as it did along the housetops, over the chimneys, through the fields, against the buttresses, and fiercely agitating the slim, slight, waspish, scanty flame of the lamps that struggled so ineffectively--much as a small, domesticated Chihuahua might struggle against a large, intimidating English bulldog, cowering in a corner, its faded dog-collar (perhaps given as a gift from an elderly aunt in Bournemouth) tangled in its hair--against the deep, cold, black, overwhelming Cimmerian darkness.
By
Romatica boyd
Barely a moment had passed on those islands before Ructus Jones, sharp-shooter, and Ecuadorian seafood restaurateur, found himself raising his glistening Savage 110 bolt action rifle, positioning the three-position thumb safety with his thumb, reveling in the tightness of its barrel nut, deeply comforted by the simplicity of the locking lugs nestled inside its gleaming stock.
He aimed his beloved gun at the crustacean before him. Ructus's love affair with is poised weapon was only equaled in intensity with love affair with Mirabella Darwin, held aloft in the serrated, barbed, cuspidate, salient, scimitared, pincers of the sally light-foot crab that had so innocently and benignly scampered across the demure sands of the equator bisecting island of Isabela. But this fateful morning, the galapagan madman, Cristobal Wenman had inhumanely and inexorably distorted the crustacean's coy affability with his cruel stature extending, soft and firm, yet maniacal sand bath! A depraved villainous sand bath that lay, its beguiling granules, tempting and warm, beneath the rosy quavering legs of the gigantic insane crab.
Mirabella had shrieked with the intensity of the lift-off of an angry hell-bound demon-possessed mechanical flying thing as the creature grabbed her slender waist, emerging from beneath the edge of the corrupting sands.
Ructus was enraged at the sight of his girlfriend wailing with magnanimous fright, terror-stricken to her supple, luscious, kindly and angelic core. A core that was bereft of unkind words until now.
"Ructus, you nit-wit! It has me!" sputtered from Mirabella's ruby trembling lips.
Ructus unsheathed the rifle, loaded the clip, readying, steadying, and releasing the shot from its lonesome captivity in the gun. The bullet streaked outwards into the light and then into the beast's flesh. The crab squealed, its dark shadow passing over Ructus, a shadow so dark and black that the unluckiest and deepest of the most lost and confused of coal miners in the very depths of the very depths of the deepest and blackest of the black hells could not contemplate such blackness! But the darkness past as the beast fell, dead, expired, exterminated, no longer retaining its life force, its only force remaining being that of its horizontal to vertical change of position.
Mirabella leapt away from the fallen creature, landing in the arms of her beloved who was already contemplating the flesh of the expired creature, so fresh and abundant underneath the stiff chitinous exoskeleton that was the nadir compared to the apex of his girlfriend's sensual curves.
"Got it, and you, darling. We'll head back to Quito and get this on the dinner tables by tomorrow night!" Ructus said, cogitating in a shrewd thinking manner.
"Sure, sweety," Mirabella said, softening her voice in a way that directly contrasted with her previous shrill bellowing and wining, unwilling to let the harsh acidity of this incident corrode her mind as if she were a crusty battery. Willing to let the dead creature's flesh renew her trust, love prevailed.