Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

How fast was he going and how high was he launched to soar thirty feet? He tries doing the math, but the numbers ooze like broken yolks across his mind. How possible or impossible his arrival to this point in time and space is irrelevant because he is here now, and he’ll die if he doesn’t get elsewhere.

No matter how hard he tries to hold on, he’s going to fall. His arms will lose the strength to hold him up. His death has only been delayed. He is still going to die in the gulch. He is still going to die today.

He starts to climb. His strings are taut, betraying no sign that they’re about to fall out of the sky.

He climbs fast. His muscles ache and his breathing is ragged, but he keeps moving. He fears that if he pauses to rest, he might never get going again. A short break might kill him.

After climbing for a while, he comes level to the road.

Now he has two options. He can climb a bit higher, swing from his strings, and hopefully land on the road, or he can forget about the road and survival, just say fuck everything and climb as high as the strings and his body will allow.

Neither option guarantees survival.

His body decides for him. It moves upward faster and faster, eating up strings at an incredible pace. He has no idea what to expect, so he expects nothing. He should be lying dead in the gulch. Or he and Celia should have had a child, grown old together, died together. They had talked about that, how when they got to be a certain age they would meet in a dream and leave their bodies behind.

They said that’s how they’d live forever, by running away.

Now Simon is running away. It is not a dream; he’s doing it alone.

He climbs faster. His limbs feel like burning match-sticks, but he does not dare stop. The air grows thin, hard to breathe.

The blue sky assumes a feathery texture. A chartreuse trembling gnaws at the edges. The sky is molting.

Strings crisscross everywhere.

Simon shudders with anticipation and exhaustion as he reaches an altitude where he can no longer breathe. He cannot go on, but he must. He must be close to breaking into outer space. He goes on. After a while, a square of darkness forms above. The strings are now so thick around him that he cannot see the sky. There are only the strings and the darkness above. The square of darkness must be the source of the strings.

Simon’s strings begin to merge with all the rest, forming one massive blue stalk.

I’m never coming down again, he thinks.

Closer, the darkness reveals its substance.

The darkness is made of wood.

The blue stalk hangs from the dark square like the cord of a household appliance.

Finally, Simon pulls himself up onto the dark wooden square that floats in the sky. He can see the charred remains of walls around three sides. This was once a room.

His hands are bloody leaves. The dark square has scalded his hands, but when he screams, he does not scream out of pain.

A dead, half-eaten shark lies on the wooden platform.

The tail of the shark is missing. Its blackened ribs jut out from rot ting folds of skin like broken cast-iron fence posts. The stalk of tangled strings vanishes into the festering, cave-like hollow of the shark’s head. The strings are sprouting from the shark’s brain.

The shark’s mouth is clamped shut, as if it died while grinding its teeth or smiling.

He is alive, alone with the shark head in the sky.

Cameron Pierce is the author of Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden , Ass Goblins of Auschwitz , Lost in Cat Brain Land and The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island .

He has been a taxidermist’s assistant, a paperboy, a shellfish farmer, and a college dropout. He grew up in southern California and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Visit him online at:

www.meatmagick.wordpress.com.

Hauke Vagt was born in Hamburg, Germany. In 1997, he relocated to Lisbon, Portugal, where he works as a street painter and freelance illustrator.

Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden

Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

Lost in Cat Brain Land

The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island

Portland, OR

ERASERHEAD PRESS

205 NE BRYANT

PORTLAND, OR 97211

WWW.ERASERHEADPRESS.COM

ISBN: 1-936383-53-5

Copyright © 2011 by Cameron Pierce

Cover art copyright © 2011 by Hauke Vagt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Printed in the USA.