First Place: BRAINS

By Casey Nissenbaum

My head feels like it’s full of cotton. Last night was October 31, 2013. Funnest night of the year. Cold as hell, too. Anita and I walked home from the festivities dressed as a robot and a French maid. When I ducked out to take a leak, which ain’t easy with a robot costume on, Anita got jostled by a drunk guy dressed up as a zombie, a frat boy zombie. Townies. You gotta love Halloween in this townie town.

She was pretty shook up, though, because the guy’s fingernails ripped at her shoulder. She doesn’t have health insurance, and it was after the after-party, so we decided to go home, bandage up her shoulder, which was bleeding pretty heavily, and forget it. 

Her home. I live in a hallway room downtown with no windows and only one door. Fred’s Crib, my ass. More like Fred’s Portal to Hell. I’m stuck here, though, until I can save up for a deposit on a better place, which will be never, since I’m a minimum wage slave at a downtown fusion restaurant. My band just broke up and I owe my “friend” $600 for my half of the studio. On top of that, the student loan people found me and won’t stop calling. What the hell am I going to do with an English degree?  I could be a teacher. Now that’s a scary thought.

I’m broke. There’s just no way around it. Anita’s birthday is on Thursday, and she has her heart set on going to see Television at the Georgia Theatre. I told her I got tickets, but they sold out before I could come up with the dough for them. I know someone who’s selling some for 80 bucks apiece.

So here I am at the Biotest lab; I’m gonna sell my plasma. This hot chick is leading me down an unbelievably long hallway, which is weird. I didn’t know that this building was so big. At the end of what seems like forever, the “nurse,” or whoever she is, takes me into a dark room and tells me in a seductive voice that the doctor would be with me soon. I kid you not, this dude comes in, who looks just like Paul Broun, asks me if I have insurance, and that if I don’t have it, I’m gonna get fined. He tells me that my premium is going to go up, and I’m not going to be able to afford it, so I’m gonna be fined. He’s up in my face. I can feel the spittle landing on my cheeks. This is weird, dude, is what I say to him. Then he offers me a cheap way to outfox Obamacare and make a “little extra cash." He offers to take out my kidney, in his office, for $50,000, and I could get disability and qualify for Medicaid. I am pretty blown away. $50,000 would solve all my problems, and it’s an outpatient procedure. I tell him that I have to think about it. He grabs my leg, and gives me a hard look, his fingers digging into my knee. From the depths of his lungs he screams at me, “Obamacare!” I bolt out of the office and run so fast that I almost trip over that damned Biotest bulldog.

I unlock my bike and ride as fast as I can to Anita’s. Anita. The answer to a bad day. The salve on my wounds. The darling of my dreams. When I get there, the shower’s running, so I silently undress and slip in with her. I scream. She is covered in carnage. Blood and pulpy flesh. She looks at me with vacant eyes and the last thing I hear her say is, “Brains.”

Second Place: THE BALSAMIC MOON

By John Gaither

The carcass of a young deer hit by a car was on the side of the road, a tangle of brown fur and bloody red meat, worked over by a coyote or vulture, or some other creature of the night or day.

He shook his head. Waste of good meat.

Jason drove in the hour before dawn. The low red sickle of the last-quarter moon spilled its light over the road. He was almost there. Carl had been excited when he called—too excited. He’d said Obamacare was just a sham, a diversion, so that the reptoids could strengthen their hold over humanity. Reptoids: super-intelligent reptiles, humanoid in shape but green and scaly and with a taste for human flesh.

Carl had had delusional episodes before, like when he thought Bill Clinton wanted to explode an atomic bomb on Jekyll Island. That ended with a few days in Athens Regional.

All the heated talk about the Affordable Care Act must have triggered something. He wondered if Carl had enough money for his medication. It would take time to talk him down and get him some help.

He turned beside a battered mailbox and bumped along a dirt track to the house. Too bad nobody lived nearby. Carl looked the same, just a little more so. Hair wild, eyes restless, hands always in motion. 

“Jason, have a seat,” he said. He looked like he was trying to hold himself in.

“They’re all the same, you know,” Carl said, pointing to the silent talking heads on the TV screen. “They try to change the subject, keep us focusing on the wrong things. I mean, look at Barney on PBS—that’s trying to cover it up and get us used to it at the same time, you know?”

“Have you been taking your medication?”

Carl shook his head. “It keeps me from focusing.”

“On the reptoids, you mean.”

Carl started talking like a faucet had been opened.

“They control everything. They’re descended from dinosaurs, so their technology is millions of years advanced. They can travel to places instantly, like "Star Trek;" they can transform themselves to look like people, like George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth. I read an eyewitness account of Queen Elizabeth in a blood frenzy, how she nearly tore the head off of one of her human sacrifices. I mean, the tunnels underneath the Capitol and White House, they’re connected to the hatcheries deep underground, so new ones can come up to take the place of world leaders and all, who come there to talk to Obama and stuff.”

“Hatcheries?”

“Yeah, man. Reptoids are hatched.” Carl’s agitation level ticked up a notch. “All that talk about Obama’s birth was a smokescreen. The question's not, where was he born? The question is, where was he hatched?”

It took six hours to slow Carl down, six hours to talk him into going to the hospital and six hours of waiting, because Carl had a violent episode when they arrived. Jason’s credit card was requested. How much is too much to help a friend? Find out soon, he thought. Obamacare in Athens was not going to make much of a difference.

The nurse returned, the one who had met them hours before, her voice oddly sibilant against the glass walls. “He’s resting.” She smiled. “Can you help us with one more thing?”

“Well…”

“Can you tell us what medications he has at his house? You can call us from there. We don’t have his current records, so it would certainly help us to help him.”

He nodded. “No problem,” and he turned away.

Her smile dropped. Her lips parted and six inches of blue tongue flickered out, the forked end fluttering in the space he’d just left. She smiled again. His scent was tasty.

He stopped the car and got out. The wind moaned above him, and the pine needles whispered in the night. The darkness was cool against his brow. 

They were waiting for him at the house. He was surprised to see the nurse there, but he didn’t have much time to think about it. The balsamic moon bled through the trees, and an orange blanket of light fell over the horde of gorging beasts, grunting and growling in their effort and satisfaction. 

When they were done, they transformed what was left into the carcass of a deer and left it on the side of the road.

Third Place: SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

By Jenna Bilbrey

A click echoed through the barrel as Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner cocked the shotgun. Empty. He reached his hand back to Majority Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy and felt two cylindrical shells drop into his open palm.

“Socialist! Hater of democracy!” yelled McCarthy. Then, dropping his voice and pointing his finger dead ahead, “Communist.”

Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers gasped.

Boehner fired at House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer. A scream followed the blast of the shotgun as the bullet ripped through his head. His blue tie flapped in the space where his face had previously been.

“Whipped him good,” Boehner chuckled.

The Republican members of the house patted each other on the back and shook hands.

The Affordable Care Act had insured access to health care treatment even to the poorest of American citizens. So when flu season rolled around, lines at pharmacies, grocery stores, and healthcare centers snaked around the block, waiting hours for a shot. Those with respectable, capitalistic health insurance were no longer able to skip to the front. Many refused to wait in line, especially for something prized by the working class.

But something went horribly wrong. Everyone injected with the vaccine transformed into mindless zombies. The poor and the old wondered the streets begging for brains. They got one handout, why shouldn’t they get another, they reasoned, not realizing that the first handout had gotten them into this undying mess.

The House GOP did the only thing they could. They went to Athens, GA. Escaping the poor and homeless of Washington D.C., they thought they had found refuge in the streets of this little college town.

“Quick! Into the Georgia Theatre,” Boehner called, hoping to find shelter where they could wait out the zombie apocalypse.

As the doors swung open, distorted guitars and thumping bass blasted out. “Heavy petting,” the singer wailed. “Eat the living!” The singer leapt from the stage, his shirt declaring in bold block font “I Smell Hippies.” Gray-skinned and jaw bone hanging limp, he ran for the representatives. Boehner cocked his gun and sent the dead singer’s jaw bone flying.

“That’ll teach him to play the devil’s music,” Boehner said.
The House GOP, unnerved by the rock and roll, left for a safer sounding location—The Classic Center. Boehner ran down Clayton Street, firing the shotgun at anything that moved, zombie and frat boy alike, and stepping over the trail of dead.

Waiting for them in the grand hall, manicured hands on professionally-dressed hips, was Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the last of the House minority. McCarthy searched desperately in the pockets of his khaki pants for more shotgun shells, but found none.

“We won, Boehner,” she said. “It’s over. Eighty-seven percent of Americans have been converted, and our polling data suggests the majority approves of the changes brought about by zombification. They respond only to Democratic Party propaganda now. A Republican will never be elected to public office again. Enjoy your term while it lasts.”

Pelosi threw her head back and laughed. The sound bounced off the walls and high ceilings, hitting Boehner with magnified force. The laughing scratched at his brain and gouged his heart. It was time to use it, the shell he had named after its intended recipient. Five single letters not designed for Pelosi.

“The poor are dying,” Boehner started, “and you think we didn’t have a hand in it?”

He pulled the trigger and Pelosi’s chest ripped open. Blood spewed from the gaping hole and vomited out from her mouth. Her laughing morphed into curdled screams. She dropped to her knees as if begging, pleading, for help. There was no aid for her here.

“I’ve always wanted to shoot that bitch,” Boehner sighed. “Thanks Obama.”

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