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  Dury, Colorado is best known for its hot springs, and the Rynoss sure made good use of them. At first I didn't mind sharing, because there's nothing that'll bridge an interspecies gap like stewing together when the weather dips below freezing. I tried to make conversation, asking the Rynoss more about their culture and what brought them to Earth, but they only stared back and snorted. One of the Rynoss took out a small cardboard box and emptied its contents into the spring.

  "Hey!" I said, starting to reprimand the Rynoss, but then it jutted its horn in my direction. I swallowed my words. After all, it's not like I'd never snuck mineral oils or Epson salt out here on occasion. Yeah, it was frowned upon, but it happened. I relaxed and ignored the Rynoss, letting the hot water penetrate my muscles. It wasn't until I was showering at home that I noticed my skin smelled faintly of butterscotch.

  * * * * *

  Thirty more Rynoss took up residency during the next year. I hardly ever went to the hot springs after that. The Rynoss were always there, dumping their instant pudding packets into the water, so that even on the rare occasions I could squeeze between the brutes, my skin always ended up sticky and I couldn't get the butterscotch smell out of my hair for weeks.

  We held a town meeting about it and decided to pass an ordinance about contaminating the spring. We posted signs all over in eighteen different languages, but the Rynoss ignored them. Eventually the sheriff's department got involved, attempting to arrest the Rynoss for twenty counts of indecency with an instant dessert product. That didn't end pretty. The funerals were well attended, though, and by some miracle, three out of four of the deputies were able to have open caskets.

  Soon afterwards, the Mayor of Dury received a phone call from the White House.

  * * * * *

  The National Guard rolled into town to "assess the situation." We were told to stay in our homes and to be cooperative if they had questions for us. In my interview I told them that the Rynoss weren't making any efforts to integrate into society, and other than the 80s song lyrics and the occasional "Gag me with a spoon!" or "Totally tubular!" I'd never heard them speak an ounce of English or any other of the US's official languages. I told them everything – about the pudding, about how the Rynoss had snarled at me, wondering how close to death I had come that day. When I started asking questions of my own about whether or not it was safe to stay in Dury, they fed me stock answers. "Everything's going to be okay," they said. "We've got a handle on the situation."

  Boy, I wish I hadn't believed them.

  * * * * *

  It wasn't so bad being a slave, not after I got used to the shock collar and the beatings. But there are definitely worse things than hauling wheelbarrows full of steaming butterscotch, barefoot through the snow while Rynoss guards breathe down your neck. Of course, I couldn't think of anything at the time, but I was still new to slavery then. I'd dump the butterscotch pudding into brick molds where they froze and hardened. They were then hauled up into the mountains to build the Sacred City of Pudding, but I never saw any of that.

  Rumors got around. The most reliable claimed there to be three giant temples of butterscotch, so beautiful when the sun glinted off their frozen bricks. I often imagined it on my treks of hauling butterscotch from the springs.

  "I pray I will be blessed enough to see the Sacred City of Pudding with my own eyes," I'd say each day to one of the guards. There was little else to talk about that didn't end in 3000 volts of electricity surging down my spine and ravaging my bowels.

  "If the Pudding Master wills it, it shall be done," the guard said.

  "A million kisses upon his Sacred Horn," I said in response, the only response permitted.

  We had that conversation a thousand times, never straying by even the slightest inflection in my voice. I couldn't risk it. I wondered sometimes why I even bothered speaking, but at least it reminded me that I was human ... or had been once. Then this one time, the Rynoss guard started humming the tune to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Despite my fear, the lyrics dredged up a part of me that I'd thought I'd lost. I couldn't stop myself. I hummed along.

  The Rynoss stomped his feet firmly into the snow covered ground and stared at me, fierce eyes drilling into mine. I knew I'd made a mistake. I clenched my bowels tight in anticipation, bracing for the ensuing shock. But it didn't come. Instead the Rynoss smiled at me – not an incredibly comforting action, but I took it he meant no harm.

  "You know the hymnals?" the Rynoss asked.

  I nodded and started humming Boy George's "Karma Chameleon." The Rynoss grunted back with approval.

  "Come," the Rynoss said, dragging me away from my wheelbarrow. "I must take you to the Pudding Master."

  * * * * *

  The Sacred City of Pudding was more magnificent than I could have imagined, every brick so meticulously set, like bars of gold lining the streets, the temples, and along an empty canal meandering through the entire city. Rynoss walked about in their legwarmers and curly wigs, unabashed. Butterscotch bells played "Time After Time", each note wrenching my soul with its beauty. The Rynoss led me to the largest of the temples.

  To my surprise, the Great Pudding Master was not Rynoss at all, nor did it have a horn, Sacred or otherwise. It looked more like a zebra, except dressed in a patent leather trench coat, from which escaped an unseemly amount of chest hair.

  "This one knows the sacred hymnals," said the Rynoss, pushing me forward.

  "Does it, now?" the Pudding Master bellowed, caressing my cheek with one of its manicured hooves. "Then perhaps I shall take it as my concubine."

  "Wait!" I yelled, throwing my arms up in alarm, wondering what I'd gotten myself into. "I don't know any hymnals."

  "You waste my time?" the Great Pudding Master asked, before whinnying at the guard. "Take it to join the others then, for sacrifice to the Sacred City of Pudding. Human blood shall run eternally through the canals, and yours shall be the first!"

  "Wait!" I said again, reaching for the Pudding Master. "There's been a mistake. I do know the hymnals. I know them all! Please, just allow me to sing them to you!" And I got down on my knees and belted out every single eighties song I knew, some of them twice. I'd never considered myself a good vocalist, but perhaps it was for the best, because the sharper the notes I hit, the louder the Pudding Master bleated with delight.

  "You shall be mine, human," the Pudding Master purred, drawing back his coat to reveal a long, thorny, swirling horn protruding from his nether regions. The Rynoss dropped its eyes and bowed down before it.

  I took my cue. "A million kisses upon your Sacred Horn," I said somberly. Yes, there are worse things than wheeling butterscotch barefoot through the snow. And every night as I pull thorns and horn slivers from my bleeding lips, I know that there are exactly one million of them.

  ###

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  WRATH OF THE PORCELAIN GODS

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First Published by Daily Science Fiction, 2011

  Being a little curious doesn't make you a deviant. On Vero-Avalon Station, with its hundred and fifteen sapient species, it'd be weirder not to wonder about the alien biology of your cohabitants. You see them in the mess hall, slurping up trans-dimensional slugs, gnawing on Yuvvian bark, sipping pink clouds from see-through thermoses, and dining on the finest spiced lava rock this galaxy has to offer. You don't blink an eye when a proboscis appears from a rift in space-time and oozes purple acid onto freshly killed Frall. And when an Undulite consumes its still living mate right in front of you, you don't judge.

  You're something of an amateur anthropologist, after all, and a curious one at that. Curious enough to enter through that doorway, the one with the symbol on the front that you can't quite decipher. Not the symbol of the humanoid man, nor the humanoid woman. Not the generic fish symbol for the aquatics. Not the avians, nor the giant blue placard for the restroom designed especially for the spatially challenged.

  What goes up, must come down. What goes in, must come out. N
o better way to know a species than to observe how it rids itself of its indigestibles. You've documented almost all of them – one hundred fourteen species, leaving you with just one left.

  You wouldn't have thought twice about the Asiphants if Nadia hadn't warned you. Probably would have gone and got yourself killed, thinking it was another routine piss-n-shit ... sneak in with your personal cloaking device, take a couple of stealth holographs, jot down some notes, onto the next. But Nadia had inside information, vague as it was. Who knows how she'd gotten it, but she'd told you to go in prepared for battle.

  So now you wait, armored to the teeth, hunched in the corner of the restroom with the strange symbol on the door. After a week of surveillance, you'd noticed that the Asiphants used this restroom exclusively. Inside, it isn't the strangest loo you've seen, but it definitely ranks in the top five. A dozen porcelain cones of varying sizes jut up from the floor, like miniature volcanoes cast in equally offensive neon hues. Rubber hoses hang from the ceiling like the cilia of some overgrown beast, and a small pig-like creature is tethered to the far wall, weeping. The whole place reeks of ammonia and tar.

  The Asiphant enters, thin and stalky, something like an ostrich or an emu, except covered all over in green scales. It locks the door behind it – twelve deadbolts, you counted, then proceeds to pace, swerving around the neon volcanoes like traffic cones. It comes close to stepping on you, once, twice, again, so you press yourself closer to the wall and hold your breath.

  Finally, it chooses a cone and settles onto it. The sounds of flatulence come in a hurry, sustained and forceful. Winds hum like foghorns from the other cones, probably due to an interconnected system of pipes beneath the floor. It's almost beautiful, you think, notes playing in a mesmerizing tune. But then the flatulence takes on a soggy note. The piglet squeals in the corner and cowers as the Asiphant cusses it something fierce.

  You fear the worst – any moment a shower of shit is going to surge through those pipes, fecal matter spraying like shrapnel in a dirty bomb. Maybe it's corrosive. Maybe it'll eat right through your armor. Your skin. Last moments of your life thinking why oh why did I have to take up such a disgusting hobby!

  But what happens, it's not like that at all. The Asiphant begins to ululate, a low grating note at first that quickly escalates into a high-pitched shrill rising above your threshold of hearing. The piglet howls in chorus. On cue, the Asiphant grunts as it clamps down tight on the cone, expelling with a force that tremors the entire room. Fountains of silvery liquid rise from the volcanoes, like tendrils of mercury dancing in zero-gee. They coalesce into a form resembling the Asiphant itself, except its movements are docile and peaceful, its face wise and innocent and all-knowing.

  It speaks with words wet and sorrowful in the Asiphant tongue. You're no linguist, but you've picked up enough vocabulary on the station to get the gist. It's a blessing of some sort. Of long life and prosperity.

  You feel sick to your stomach. It's one thing to spy on someone's bodily functions, and yet another equally horrible thing to eavesdrop into someone's holy sacrament.

  The liquid god then politely asks to return to the Asiphant's bowels. The Asiphant says a resolute "No." The liquid god's docile face turns to rage, fangs grow, horns protrude. Thorns writhe and ripple across its skin. It becomes more insistent. "No," the Asiphant says again, then uncorks itself and bum-rushes the largest cone in the middle of the room, the one without an opening at the top. The plug.

  The liquid god enrages as the Asiphant settles upon it. The piglet squeals. You grit your teeth, watching the Asiphant pull at a hose hanging from the ceiling.

  "You can't do this! I am your master!" the liquid god screams as the volcanoes go from blow to suck, and they suck hard. Wind whips through the room, tornadic and stealing your very breath.

  "The kitaque is your vessel now. Take it or leave it," the Asiphant says. The liquid god glares at the piglet in disgust, snarls. Begrudgingly, it makes a move towards the scared creature, but then the liquid god's metallic eyes shift towards you.

  "I sense another..." it seethes.

  You clench your buttocks, but you know resistance is futile. The liquid god pounces in your direction, cuts through your personal cloak, your armor, wraps you up in its slimy embrace. The Asiphant looks on in horror, embarrassment, or something in between.

  "Don't fight it," the Asiphant shouts at you. "It'll only make things worse."

  By the time the liquid god has slithered all the way inside you, you feel like you're about to burst. Your stomach bloats out like you're eighteen months pregnant, and your organs all crowd against the back of your throat. You think your ass might literally be on fire.

  "It's okay," the Asiphant says with compassion. "There are ways to make him leave. The trans-dimensional slugs are best. The fresher, the better." The Asiphant pats you on the back, then goes to unlock the deadbolts, one by one by one. It turns back and gives you a wide-beaked smile. "Just thank the gods you weren't here to witness number two."

  ###

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  WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First Published by Necrotic Tissue, 2009

  Vervek pressed his fingers to his temples, waiting for the migraine to pass. The last few days of the month were always hell for him, catching up with paperwork he'd neglected, forgotten, or outright ignored. Form after form lay sprawled across his desk, awaiting his tallies for travel expenses, souls acquired per day, and brimstone usage down to the nearest ounce.

  Crilloc passed by Vervek's desk, boasting a stuffy suit and hooves buffed to a patent leather shine. Vervek hated Crilloc's smugness, how he tramped around like he owned the place. Crilloc had never been late with his paperwork, not once in the last millennium, but newbies tended to adapt better to change than old-timers like Vervek.

  "Staying late to impress the Boss?" Crilloc said, picking pink man flesh from his teeth with one claw.

  Vervek didn't acknowledge his presence, hoping he'd go away. He waded through the pile of soul receipts before him, relying upon sparse scribblings to jog his memory. How many idle hands had he steered towards darkness? How many sulfurous temptations had he whispered into vulnerable ears?

  "You know, it'd be easier if you reconciled your ledger at the end of each day," Crilloc said, arrogance steaming from his flared nostrils.

  "Aren't there any politicians you could be corrupting? I've got this under control."

  "The devil is in the details," Crilloc said, running his claw under item 13B of form WER-10 leaving a flesh-colored highlight across the text. "You've hardly dipped into your vice allowance. Avarice, sloth, barely touched. A lot of lesser demons don't bother to fill them out, but when it comes time for promotions, the Big Man notices those sorts of things."

  Crilloc popped his collar, tugged at the spiraling bristles of his beard, then strutted off with his tail whipping behind him. Vervek slit his eyes and forced the envy out of his fetid heart. He'd heard the rumors circulating around the blood cooler. Crilloc was a contender for Legion Chief of the Third Circle. Vervek grumbled, wistful over how things used to be – when he could cull evil and wreak havoc without the nagging bureaucracy, red tape, and senseless bean counting. It took all the fun out of being a minion of hell.

  But Vervek was in too deep now. He'd accrued a ton of vacation and sick leave, and the benefits couldn't be beat. Plus with three little hellions at home to feed – the youngest with too-straight teeth that needed mangling, and the oldest going off to Damnation U. next fall, he didn't exactly have the latitude he'd had in the old days.

  Vervek clenched his jaw, and before he pushed on with the endless task at hand, he uncapped his red marker and exed out another square on his calendar. Only two million, eight hundred fifteen thousand, three hundred forty-seven days left until retirement.

  ###

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  HELLHOUND RESCUE

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First P
ublished by Flash Scribe, 2009

  Three-inch fangs pierce my flesh. I seethe and withdraw my hand from Vaughn's maw, my blood glistening on his teeth.

  "Bad dog!" I scream, but Vaughn bats those big brown eyes, irresistible even with the fiery depths of hell lurking beneath. They're creating all kinds of poodle crossbreeds nowadays: cockapoos, schnoodles, and now my foster dog – Vaughn the demon-doodle.

  The doorbell rings. They're here. I should feel bad about placing Vaughn with this nice family, but he's already devoured my ottoman. My shoes.

  My roommate.

  I swallow the pain, pocket my maimed hand, and open the door with a smile.

  ###

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  BLUE MOON

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  The desert chill was quick to strike once the sun sank behind Bartlett Peak. The wind pierced through to the bone, but it wasn't something that a little friction couldn't remedy. Zamara caressed Rusty's face with her muzzle, then clawed through his flannel shirt, revealing a carpet of matted chest hair. As Rusty's body tensed up beneath hers, Zamara bared her teeth in a way he'd interpret as a smile. "It's okay. I won't bite."