Blow Up the Outside World Read Online Free Page B

and Potter says, “You didn’t wash your hands.” Oswald ignores him and continues to walk to their theatre.
    They take a seat in the back row. Both notice they have missed the opening credits for the first film. They watch a killer in black leather gloves holding a razor. The killer slashes a woman, the camera moving wildly across the nude body: blood and purple lace roughly projected onto a soda-stained movie screen.
    Potter nudges Oswald. He says, “Is that woman real? Or is she a Valdrott?”
    Oswald sticks his hand into the contraption that is on his lap. He fiddles with a few wires. “I don’t think it matters now,” he says.
    And then everything explodes… again.
     
    THE END
     
     

BONUS STORIES
    (((())))
     
    OF MOONSHINE & CONSEQUENCES
    Jordan Krall
     
    Saturday Morning
    Eh, look here, son. New Jersey isn’t all Springsteen and scumbags. In my time, I’ve seen so much weird shit, you wouldn’t believe. Clay pits full of gasoline porn, factories that only make fake dog shit. But there’s other….stuff, too.  I’m talking out of this world, you know? Well, there was this one time…
    I must’ve been maybe twelve, thirteen years old and was riding my bike home from school just like a lot of kids my age did because it beat taking the bus which was just a bumpy ride in a sweat box driven by a toothless slob who didn’t believe in showers.
    Anyway, on the way home I had to pass a patch of woods. It wasn’t a big forest or anything. It was really just what I said: a patch of woods in between a bar and a park. The kids called it Dot’s Woods.
    I had never seen anyone actually go into the woods. I thought it was because it was so small it didn’t have anything to interest anyone. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.
    So there I was on my bike and as I passed Dot’s Woods, my tire blew and I found myself on my stomach with a bleeding chin. My leg hurt like hell, too. I looked over at the woods for no reason at all and saw something peeking out from behind a tree.
    I guess I would describe it as a white worm the size of a puppy. It had a handful of eyes that looked like shiny marbles. I really can’t come up with a better description than that, son. It looked like a worm puppy with marble eyes, okay?
    Of course being a boy, I was more than a bit interested in that. I’ve seen monster movies before and I’ve read those comics with all those wild creatures wreaking havoc and whatnot. I got up from the ground, wiped myself off, and walked towards the woods. The thing disappeared by the time I got to the edge of the woods. I wasn’t surprised. Most animals will run off if they see a human coming, you know.
    I won’t lie to you. I was a little bit scared, I guess. I’ve never been in the woods and for all I knew there were rabid dogs or drunken hoodlums waiting to cut some young kid up, you know. A young kid’s mind can come up with all sorts of horrors. I even thought maybe there were some perverted hobos in there who made that small patch of woods their own personal Sodom. I imagined they’d have a whole cache of petroleum jelly and sex toys and baseball cards to lure the boys in. See what I’m saying? I’m still thinking about this, as if my imagination would ever beat the real horrors in Dot’s Woods.
    That’s what I had been afraid of, those perverts. But I approached the woods anyway to see if I could catch a glimpse of whatever weird animal I saw peeking out at me. As soon as I stepped foot into the words, I knew I had made a mistake. Though it was a warm afternoon, the air inside between the trees was cold.
    I continued on and up ahead I could see the tail end of that white worm thing so I ran towards it. I know it was stupid for me to do but I was a kid and didn’t know better. And then, well, that’s when I saw them….aww shit…I’m getting tired. I’ll jaw your ear off later about this, alright?
     
    Saturday Night
    I’m going to tell you the rest of the story now but